Comment by svachalek
12 years ago
I just noticed the football comment and now I'm wondering how bad I just got trolled. (Surely a $2M salary makes you desperate indeed.)
12 years ago
I just noticed the football comment and now I'm wondering how bad I just got trolled. (Surely a $2M salary makes you desperate indeed.)
Pro football players have to earn a life's salary in a few years before they get worn out. $2 million over 50+ years isn't really that much.
And they often come out of it with long-term injuries that require ongoing, lifelong medical treatment, similar to boxers. Hence all of the recent discussion about concussions, though there are more factors than just that.
They have the opportunity to. But they don't have to. They have their whole life to continue to make their living, they don't turn to vegetables without any ability to work.
You mean it is impossible for them to work a regular job after retiring from the NFL? Keep in mind that NFL recruits from College, and (if you ignore the cases of cheating the system) most colleges have academic eligibility requirements. Therefore pretty much all pro football players also have a college degree (except the ones that get drafted before graduating -- I don't know what that statistic is).
Heck, if I could have gotten a couple million dollar head start in life by working on my hobby once a week, I'd take that even if I had to delay a regular career by a few years.
Except that you'd be betting that you're the exception:
"According to Sports Illustrated, 78% of NFL players are divorced, unemployed, or bankrupt two years after leaving the game, and MSNBC reports that one in four NFL players live paycheck to paycheck" [1].
Most athletes do not invest wisely, and often lack the experience to handle large sums of money [2]. Are you so sure that you'd be the exception?
[1] Slideshow warning: http://www.complex.com/sports/2012/04/six-reasons-why-pro-at...
[2] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/don-mcnay/like-lottery-winners...
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I believe pro football is a full time job hence occupies more than one day a week.
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I don't know the stats but I suspect that most of them don't have degrees. Many exhaust their college eligibility just "a few credits" shy of graduating.
You make a good point, but football players also have the desperation maker of competition and winning. There are surely players that make it to the NFL and coast, but 1) they have competed to get to the NFL, 2) there are plenty of people willing to take their current jobs, and 3) a Super Bowl win is a big prize that they probably haven't gotten yet and requires some amount of "desperation" to achieve.
ooh come one the NFL is cosy cartel ask a premiership football (soccer) manager about the pressure they are under.
In the UK the bottom 3 teams are relegated down to the lower division now if the NFC and AFL did that you'd seem some pressure.
Most of the young men who play in the NFL do not come from money. In fact for a lot of them, being the best football player in their high school was their only hope to go to college at all, let alone earn millions of dollars.