

How (and Why) Athletes Go Broke - ido
http://cnnsi.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?action=cpt&title=Recession+or+no+recession,+many+NFL,+NBA+and+Major+League+-+03.23.09+-+SI+Vault&expire=&urlID=34801184&fb=Y&url=http://vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1153364/1/index.htm&partnerID=289881

======
pj
_"The solution to the problem is, without a doubt, education," the adviser
says. "Change won't happen until grown men start wanting to learn."_

That sums it up right there and by "it," I mean "all of it." _The_ problem.
The problem with our society. The problem with the educational system. The
problem with our national debt. With our dependence on foreign oil.

Why don't people want to learn anymore? I don't understand why it seems so
easy, so obvious, that "this" just isn't the way.

Am I the only one frustrated by the continued bad decision making? We sell
these poor athletes, and I mean _poor_ in every sense, the illusion of wealth
and fame and happiness and then _rip_ the carpet right out from under them. It
takes years, decades of dedication to a dream and then they are bankrupt. Not
only do they not have the millions they were "promised," but they have no
education, no skills applicable outside sports, their bodies are too old to do
the only thing they can do.

Why do we keep doing this to people?

It's really sad. It makes me really sad.

What's going to happen? I can't see anything good coming from this. I can't
see any good future down this path. It feels so much like the _wrong_ path. I
feel like I'm being taken down this bad path against my will. I don't want to
go down this path, but it's like I'm stuck in this huge pack of people all
stampeding toward a huge cliff and I don't want to run over the cliff.
"There's a cliff ahead!!" I yell and no one hears it, they're too busy
running, not even knowing where they are going.

What am I supposed to do? What are people who don't want to go off the cliff
supposed to do?

~~~
edw519
"Why don't people want to learn anymore?"

Most of these athletes never did.

They are the opposite of us. While we were misunderstood for all those years
working our butts off in anonymity, they were getting their butts kissed. From
the time they were toddlers. All the way through school where they were
promoted along whether or not they ever went to class.

When you have nothing left for the ass kissers to kiss, then what are you
going to do?

~~~
wallflower
I was shocked the other day to read that basically really good athletes at a
top-tier sports schools are basically professional athletes. Boosters lease
SUVs like Cadillac Escalades, give the athletes the keys to the car - and it's
all quasi-legal because the Boosters aren't technically directly affiliated
with the athletic program.

When in the States there is so much societal pressure to be athletic/look
athletic/enjoy the spectacle of sports, I think we are in trouble where Asian
tigers like China have societal pressure _and_ strong peer approval to study
hard and aspire to become engineers.

~~~
biohacker42
Sports programs in US schools are quite remarkable. They clearly bring in a
lot of revenue for the schools and it seems to me that's a good thing.

The bad thing is everything having to do with the student athletes.

So why not just make college sports professional. Just like the NFL and the
NBA, this would simply be another league, made up of college branded teams.

Ah, but we can't do that, we can't call a spade a spade. Society has to
maintain a charade. It's like collectively we're in the closet. And we're very
passionate about college sports but we just can not get out of the closet and
say fuck it, just make the sports program professional.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Only a few schools make money off the football team, for example UTexas and
Duke. Most lose money on sports.

~~~
ShabbyDoo
I suspect that many externalities, both positive and negative, are ignored
(sometimes selectively) when schools make statements about the profitability
of a sports program. A few months ago, I was surprised to learn that the
daughter of my wife's friend was not accepted to Ohio State. She was an in-
state resident with a 23 on her ACT. Hardly a stellar score, but above the
National average. Back in my day (15 years ago), she would have been rubber-
stamped. Apparently, OSU was able to parlay its success on the football field
into lots of undergrad applications. So, they were able to become more
selective. This may be the start of a positive feedback loop that results in a
reputation more like U of M than some random state college.

[No, I don't think reputation is everything. But, if that's what they wanted
to improve, sports may have been a very efficient mechanism for all the wrong
reasons.]

------
yardie
I'm sorry but I feel really unsympathetic about this story. And I've read
basically the same thing in multiple places. You will always find examples of
people with the extreme misfortune of having more money than brains. These
people are in a special class because nothing you do or say will ever change
the outcome.

I've sat through the classes as the coach brought in a "life coach" to explain
money, contracts, and being an adult. Most will absorb the information and
understand. You get the few wayward knuckleheads where nothing matters. If you
present a real life case of misfortune they will imagine a scenario where they
dance around. Example:

Coach: ...this star athlete let his best friend be his money manager. He
mishandled it and our athlete was broke and owned the government $100ks in
taxes.

Knucklehead: That won't happen to me. I'd let my mom handle the money, she's
good with numbers.

Coach: Son that's not the point. YOU have to be aware of YOUR finances or you
could find yourself in the same situation.

Knucklehead: Nah, I trust my mom. She'd never do me like that.

>> Not the actual conversation but similar.

If they were in the 40s or 50s when star athletes were starting to post large
numbers I could feel a little sympathy. They might not have known, but if you
are in the 20s or 30s chances are someone has given you the speech on
protecting your interests first.

------
tokenadult
Is this the same article as the one submitted earlier?

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=530151>

It sure looks like the same article. It's hard to tell at a glance with this
kind of URL, which evidently doesn't trigger duplicate detection.

------
patio11
Posted here before, but still good.

I wonder if this happens to founders? Surely there are some twentysomethings
who saw their balance go from three digits to seven in a day. They probably do
not have seven kids or a poverty mindset to be unlearned, but surely some have
problems.

------
chollida1
I just counted 14 people that I know who did a master's degree. Almost all of
them in the Engineering, math or Comp Sci fields.

None of those people paid to do it. I wasn't aware that anyone actually paid
to do a Masters. I always assumed that grants, scholarships, fellowships and
research dollars paid for a masters.

Do people, outside of an MBA*, actually pay for their Masters degree?

~~~
RK
Not sure what that has to do with the article, but...

Yes, it's pretty common to pay for a master's. A lot of departments will only
fund PhD students (automatically). Master's only people usually have to "pay
their own way", although that might consist of finding their own research or
teaching assistantship, etc.

------
balding_n_tired
Around the house is my grandfather's ca. 1911 yearbook from a midwestern
engineering school. I was entertained to read a two page item by the yearbook
staff calling for a better sports program to draw attention to the school. The
school survives, but probably remains in D III.

------
DanielBMarkham
Over the last decade from time to time I've been trying to figure out how to
make contacts in rural America to gain startup funding and these athletes are
investing in total crap?

Instead of VCs, I should have been pitching football players.

~~~
mahmud
Read the article again. They invest in crap businesses because the ideas are
simple and the products they offer are physical. The thinking goes, if the
t-shirt company goes I still have the t-shirts which I can autograph and sell.

Your idea wouldn't go very well, stick to VCs.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
I didn't gather that. I mean, I got the part about _Securities are invisible,
after all, and if you don't study them, they're unintelligible. Not to mention
boring. Inventions, nightclubs, car dealerships and T-shirt companies have an
advantage: the thrill of tangibility._

But flotation devices for furniture? Inspirational movies? Restaurants?
Missing prenuptials?

I grant that athletes might tend towards more physical goods, but I'll bet you
good money there has been a lot invested in less tangible ones as well.

Actually I've given up on VCs for now. Their track records are worse than
mine. Bootstrapping is much more logical for technology in this climate.

------
jleyank
As Rod the Mod said a long time ago: He's got a lot more money than sense...

------
jerryji
A good reading for anyone who feels bad about being a programmer.

~~~
jm4
Why? So we can feel better about ourselves because some other person found
more financial success and still managed to botch it all up? I don't
understand this. People read garbage tabloids for the same reason. Why does
seeing someone else's hard fall make people feel better about having never
achieved their own goals?

~~~
thetrumanshow
Yes, precisely, and not necessarily because we think they didn't deserve their
short-lived wealth, but rather for the same reasons that people prefer
relative wealth to absolute wealth (citation needed): Because you can't stand
it when others fare better than you. And what's wrong with that? It is the
foundation of a healthy competitive spirit which drives people to succeed.

