Not being a follower of professional sports, I’ve heard these sort of stories for years and never known whether to believe them or not, but this Sports Illustrated article is pretty convincing: 78% of retired NFL players go broke within 2 years of leaving professional football. For NBA players, it is 60% within 5 years. According to the article, for most of them, the greatest financial loss comes from divorce — apparently all those insanely hot women who marry athletes really ARE just in it for the money. The rest of it comes mainly from bad investments made because guys who are pro athletes aren’t too great at paying attention to lots of boring math ‘n’ shit.
It’s always a little discouraging to discover that the worst stereotypes of a particular group of people — in this case, stupid, spoiled, and overpaid athletes — are really the truest ones. When I was a sophomore in college, I lived in the dorm where the football team ate after practice, and well remember them being ushered to the door of the dorm in big black limousines, often being accompanied by..ahem..professional young women, and generally being treated like superstars, even though Northwestern was the worst team in college football at that time. After all that pampering in college (and I have to imagine it is only worse at schools where the football teams are actual contenders), and all the easy money in the pros, no wonder they are clueless and ready to be taken to the cleaners.
