You Herd Me!: I'll Say It If Nobody Else Will (18 page)

It’s nothing short of unbelievable, but the numbers—it’s always the numbers—back it up.

Fans have a hard time coming to terms with such a wild paradox. How can people who have so much end up with so little?

Whenever I’ve watched MTV’s
Cribs
or any other show glorifying the wealth of professional athletes, I come away with an odd mix of pity and bewilderment. On one hand, I completely understand: after a childhood of struggle and hardship—as is the case with many athletes—who wouldn’t display some extravagance? It’s natural to want to surround yourself with outward symbols of your hard work and status.

Those television shows that give a voyeur’s-eye look into the mansions of hip-hop moguls and star athletes could just as easily be renamed
My Garage Is Bigger Than Anything You’ll Ever Own
. From gold-plated bathtubs to diamond-encrusted cutting boards, it’s a step-by-step guide to the excess of the celebrity lifestyle.

I don’t admire the 15,000-square-foot castles. I don’t resent them, either.

At the Union Plaza in Las Vegas, I once met a tanned, tall Texan in his early sixties. Drinking whiskey on the rocks and drawling out story after story, he told me he had recently sold several television stations in his home state. He came from a large family and possessed the confidence and perspective of a man who had been successful but had to fight for it.

In the middle of one of his stories, he looked up from his glass and said, “If you resent success, you will never achieve it. Be excited about it, even if the success is not your own. Bitter people are rarely happy or successful.” Everything he said after that might as well have been an inaudible hum. Twenty years later that sentiment still resonates with me: celebrate the success of others.

That’s why it nags at me when I become vaguely depressed watching young athletes parading around their paradise pointing out all the sunken, pool-sized bathtubs and lavish theater rooms. I want to celebrate their successes, and I do, but it’s hard when you can visualize the repo man, a few years into the future, knocking
on the back door. It’s hard to be in a celebratory mood when you see your favorite NFL tight end squander $3.6 million on his retro jersey collection, only to have the IRS confiscate it for unpaid taxes.

Let me repeat: I don’t resent the money. I am astonished, however, when I see what all that money becomes.

The question that needs to be asked—how in the hell can you blow through so much money so fast?—is only partially answered by the images in those shows.

It almost seems like it just disappears.
Poof
, like a magic trick. Scottie Pippen made $120 million, according to estimates, and has since fallen into financial ruin. Did he shower in Cristal for a decade? Is his roof made of diamonds? Former NBA player Antoine Walker lost $110 million and can’t blame a penny of it on Bernie Madoff. Do these guys have single-use, disposable Armani suits?

Well, the complete explanation might not be as easy as it seems. There are several factors at work, and just one of them is ridiculous spending.

Robert Raiola is a certified public accountant who specializes in sports and entertainment and calls himself Sports Tax Man. According to him, the first order of business for the disbelieving fans is to understand that athletes don’t actually get all the money you read about.

Of course, we all understand taxes and most of us understand that athletes must pay agents and business managers, but sometimes those facts get lost in the haze of the headlines. When you see a story about a Los Angeles Dodger signing a contract for $96 million over four years, an easy vision springs to mind: $24 million a year.

However, Raiola will tell you that our $96 million Dodger is taking home $11 million a year. Before you start playing an
imaginary violin, let me be clear: I’m not asking you to cry for a guy who brings home eight figures a year.

But … but.

The public, including the player’s family and friends and associates and interior decorators and other assorted hangers-on, sees one thing: the headline. The $24 million a year. And what’s a million here or there when you’re pocketing 24?

Let’s break it down:

Granted, that’s still a lot of lettuce, but it’s not $24 million worth. It doesn’t stop there; California has higher real-estate costs, higher food costs, higher gas costs. And all of that points to the root of a bigger problem with young multimillionaire athletes: financial illiteracy.

The ESPN “30 for 30” documentary
Broke
did an outstanding job of bringing the depth of the problem to life. These guys who earn huge salaries rarely have the perspective those stark numbers above bring. They don’t think about the short duration of their careers or the beauty of saving a ton of that money in order to make the rest of their lives that much more comfortable. They feel
they can buy their mom and dad a big house and a couple of nice cars. They can take care of their brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews and whoever else comes crawling back into their lives to get a piece of the action. They don’t see that water on a rock—drip, drip, drip—eventually creates a big hole. When you’re 25 and loaded, perspective is for other people. It’s not your world.

Many of these players come from nothing, and going from nothing to everything is overwhelming. They go from a world with nothing but limits to one that’s limitless. They might have spent three or four years in college, but they’re ignorant of the most basic financial acumen.

After
Broke
, I called former New England Patriot and New York Jet Damien Woody, now one of ESPN’s sharpest analysts. He told me, “My tenth or eleventh year in the league, I would start talking to younger guys, just telling them basic stuff. Open up a checking account. Many didn’t even understand how to do that. That is scary. Guys get millions and don’t even understand how to balance a checkbook.”

Open up a checking account
. Is there a more telling indictment of the system than those five words? Woody’s not exaggerating, either. On the HBO series
Hard Knocks
, the cameras went inside the Cincinnati Bengals’ training camp for a rare look at the inner workings and relationships in the game we love. Chad Ochocinco, at the time an established, well-paid star receiver, needed to have head coach Marvin Lewis explain to him how a bank works.

“They come into the league entitled,” Woody said. “I came in the league in awe; many guys now think, ‘I’m supposed to be here.’ They think, ‘I’m rich and invincible.’ I would tell ’em, ‘You’re living in fantasy land now, you’re still a young man when you leave this game.’

“I probably get about four or five guys a year who call me with
money trouble. Looking for something. I just tell ’em, ‘I would rather help you instead of giving you cash I’ll never get back. Let’s solve the problem.’ ”

Extravagant spending combined with a lack of fiscal acumen is a vicious recipe. Since the latter will never be fully mastered, especially for 21-year-old athletes who never had much and are understandably near-sighted, maybe it’s time for jocks to look deep within themselves and ask the really tough questions.

Those questions are the small questions that lead to the big, deeper, more personal questions: When are you going to grow up and be accountable? When are you going to judge your worth on something more than what you own?

Maybe, instead of room-sized tanks filled with exotic fish, more athletes should invest in television stations in Texas.

It gets back to the numbers: 60 percent of NBA players, 78 percent of NFL players. And the horrible truth is, it could be worse. Occasionally you’ll hear the ugly story of a crooked agent stealing money, but the vast majority of athletes use league-certified agents and money managers who watch over their athletes and try to warn them when the spending gets out of hand. And yes, you’re reading that correctly: the agents are the good guys. Where would the bankruptcy numbers be without them?

Honestly, though, with or without agents, how can we expect
young star athletes to understand finances when nobody in their family or social circle has ever dealt with extreme wealth? Would I have a deep and abiding understanding of dentistry or taxidermy at 22 years old unless someone close to me dealt with cavities or the carcasses of dead animals?

Sports is a uniquely kind and cruel business. There may be no clearer example of the extremes of capitalism. The bankruptcy stories are cautionary tales of ambition and riches without the knowledge or discipline to maintain either. It’s a single-car crash at the intersection of I’m on Top of the World and I Can No Longer Afford That Bentley.

The average American millionaire is 57 years old, has attended college, and is married. The average NBA rookie earns his first millions at 21. He’s single with one year of college and little or no business background. The 57-year-old has earned money for a long time and—with some savvy investing and continued hard work—can continue to earn for years. The average NBA rookie, on average, will be out of the league in six years. With those numbers as a backdrop, can anybody be truly surprised so many athletes end up broke once the revenue stream dries up?

Do you want to know what happens to the money, the fortunes, the castles, and the SUV collections? It all gets lost in a sad fog of ignorance and naiveté and invincibility and near-sightedness. Once you hear the stories and look at the numbers and understand the culture, it’s almost predictable.

Nine bathrooms, ten cars, three houses, and zero financial intelligence—in the end, like so much of sports, it all goes back to the math.

If Dallas Cowboy fans want to know why they haven’t been in a Super Bowl in twenty years, this may address the issue: they struggle with even the easy stuff. The kind of thing the Steelers, Patriots, Packers, or New York Giants handle in-house becomes a public circus with the Cowboys.

This story sums up the franchise:

Bill Callahan is their offensive coordinator and offensive line coach. He announced he will be calling plays this season. Then when someone asked head coach Jason Garrett about that … he clammed up. No comment. Anyone think he could be a little sensitive since he’s been calling plays in previous seasons?

This is so typical of the Cowboys. Jerry Jones goes out the day before and sets the fire. He tells reporters the team has a new play-caller, but they have to figure out who it is by watching practice. Callahan announces it’s him, but Garrett won’t confirm it and even Jerry—when pressed, just to tease the reporters—says he won’t disclose it, either. Then why bring it up?

Grocery stores have very thin margins, maybe 3 or 4 percent. What does that mean? Every penny counts. It’s similar in the NFL.
Everything and everybody is built to be 8-8. The best teams draft last; there are salary caps and shared revenue streams. So the difference is slight between good to average to bad.

Therefore, details matter—except in Dallas. There’s a reason you’ve had two of the worst drafts in league history over the last twelve years.

The Cowboys are the show
Hard Knocks
without the HBO part. In Dallas, they just call it … Monday.