Ok, so there’s Ryan Fitzpatrick, and maybe a couple other quarterbacks out there who have nearly as much brain as bronze, but the majority of the NFL is full of morons. Seriously, it’s pretty amazing. It feels like every day someone is sending me an article about some football player who once had lots of money from footballing around, and no has no more money because of too much footballing around. Not too long ago it was our very own Charlie Batch who had been recently robbed of all his money by some phoney investment, leaving him to scratch his head. The other day, it was Terrell Owens who spilled his guts to GQ about his four babies and his four different baby mamas. $44,000 per year per child is what this man owes for child support. That’s no problem for a HOF wide receiver, right?
Wrong. Because all football players are morons.
Maybe I’m being too harsh. I feel bad for Terrel Ochocinco, err…Chad Owens…err…Terrell Johnson…err…..
What was I talking about?
Oh yeah, football players are dumb.
Remember when it came out that MC Hammer was broke? Remember that gigantic posse of people in baggy Hammer pants he had hanging around at all times? He paid them all. That’s right, he bought them cars, food, houses, you name it. He went broke because his ego was too big to admit he couldn’t/shouldn’t be slingin around Benjamins like they grow on trees. Football players are exactly like MC Hammer.
Protect your money, man! I don’t care if you’ve got $110M or you make the league minimum $550,000, you need to protect yourself and your money. You know what I run out and do when I get my pay check every month? Nothing. I do nothing. I put it away. Why do these guys think just because they make 4,505,595,374,727,695 times more money than I do, that they don’t have to do the same? You have lots of money, which means you need to either find someone you trust (like, really trust. Not some slime ball you saw on “The Apprentice”), and let them take care of it, or put it in a series of accounts at a bank.
Sure, you should invest, but when Christina Aguilera comes knocking on your door asking you to be an investor in this “super ahhmazing” new resort in Saskatoon, Canada, maybe you should think before you write a 5 million dollar check. You’re a football player, so I understand if you don’t understand this, but you should know: you are a football player, which means your career could be over tomorrow, and that lifetime of “riches and bitches” is going to be more like a couple of years with some money and this one girl you met in Houston.
Spoiler alert: She doesn’t call when you blow out your knee.
So, when you’re sitting down to balance your checkbook (you’ll learn what that is someday), remember to factor in the “idiot money” which you will surly blow on something stupid. leave yourself a little something for your efforts, even if it’s something modest like living off of the interest on the $20 Million you have sitting in the bank.
You see, your fans don’t have that much money. Most of them, anyway. We don’t like it when we see stories about your being broke, not because we feel bad for you, but because we are busting our asses day in and day out just to scrape by enough to pay rent and maybe buy a ticket to football game next Winter. So when we see that you’re broke because you have four illegitimate children, three Dodge Vipers and six homes around the USA, it just pisses us off. I realize that you probably got famous too early for your own good, I get that, but it’s time to grow up now, or you’ll be working as a trainer at the local LA Fitness faster than you can say “Roger Goodell fined me more while I was in the NFL than I currently have in the bank.”
As you were.
Follow me on Twitter at @AdamMeckler, I tweet a lot.