Broke Athletes
 

So many interesting stories

Evander Holyfield

Four-time boxing champ Evander ?The Real Deal? Holyfield reportedly made over $250 million in cash during his boxing career, but despite this he reportedly is flat broke. Holyfield lost all his money by making ?smart? business decisions look really foolish. You thought buying a house was a smart move? It normally is, but not when you buy a house the size of Rhode Island. Holyfield bought a $20 million house with over 54,000 square feet and 109 rooms. The house has 11 bedrooms, 17 bathrooms, a movie theater, a bowling alley and an Olympic-size swimming pool. Imagine how much it must cost to cut the grass on all 235 acres! You could buy a Range Rover with the electric bill payment alone.

http://sports.yahoo.com/top/news?slu...yhoo&type=lgns

Damn,so one more boxing guy

its crazy to see these guys hurting for $$ after all they raked in over the years

what a shock


lol

Tyson is the best! The term n*gger rich was invented for him!

50 cent bought Tysons old estate when he lost it in his divorce. At least no one can seize his face tattoo, but that he probably paid cash for!

There was a story earlier this week about Allen Iverson maybe being broke. Right out of high school he married his high school sweetheart then went on to be a huge NBA start. By all counts he has made over 300 million during his career. Now he is getting divorced and as they look into the assets it looks like he may have gambled away most of that money.

Too bad they lost their "amateur" status. Otherwise I would put them to work. :-)

brokestraightathletes.com?

They're hot, they're straight but most of all these athletes are broke. Every Straight guy has his price.

What an idiot. He should have bough an education.

he must have a big family or posse or something

what fo, he be being rich n chit

There are some crazy gambling stories i have heard about him.

Replace the names with some people from porn over the years and the stories would sound the same.

Even 50 has been trying to dump that thing. I don't think anyone has bought it. It even has a stripclub in it. :Oh crap

That is insane

You know there's a good market there for a 3rd party company to hold a certain percentage of income in escrow, plus management fees to pay for the lawyers so that when the day inevitably comes that your going to need to live on a decent income, that it's there for you, enough to make sure you never need to work again.

Only problem is, unfortunately even if your fucked up and snorting coke every day, or dangling babies over balconies, there's really no way to lock out your money from you while your going though a midlife crisis. I'm sure at the end of it a fuckload of celebs would really appreciate a service like that...when they come out of the other end of the rollercoaster ride.

The only thing is, they'd sue you out of existence.

there was an ESPN or Sports Illustrated story a year or two ago that estimated that 60% of NBA players are bankrupt within 5 years of retiring from the NBA.

and yes it is a black thing, no need to be politically correct about it, for every white bankrupt pro athlete there are 50 or more black ones - these are guys raised in poverty, they don't have any exposure to financial planning or saving, not their fault that's what they're born into - they become a great athlete in their teens and suddenly stuff starts being given to them, through high school, through college and then they hit the lottery and make it into the pros. all these pro sport leagues have mandatory orientation meetings, they bring in the best accountants, financial planners, attorneys and lecture the players about taking care of their money but it obviously goes in one ear and out the other with these guys. it's a mixture of people preying on them who get them involved in horrible investments, outright scams, agents who steal from them, their own unchecked spending habits, and most of them are very generous with the family and friends they grew up with and they get taken advantage of.

but ya know, i've seen a bunch of these guys who've lost everything interviewed and they aren't as depressed as you'd think they'd be - they were poor once, it's not a shock to them, it's almost as if they were living a fairy tale like Cinderella and accept that the clock struck midnight on them.

Boxers are like models. They come in with nothing, get fucked by everyone then go broke as soon as they retire.

I read that story. It was very eye opening. There was another in Sports Illustrated that covered some of the same ground. It isn't just NBA players it is most pro athletes that end up broke within around 5 years of leaving the sport.

There are several reasons. Like you said it is like winning the lottery. These guys aren't like businessmen that work for 20 years building something from the ground up. One day they are broke, the next they are rich. I remember Drew Beldsoe talking about when he signed to play for the Patriots. He said on Sunday his checking account balance was $1.35 overdrawn and on Monday afternoon he had 1.4 million.

A lot of these guys want sexy investments. They want to own clothing lines, restaurants, records labels and things like that. Most of these businesses almost always fail. Another reason is that most pro athletes don't make as much money as people would think. If you are a third string player on an NFL team you are probably making around 300K a year. The average NFL career is about 3.5 years. Let's say you last 5 years at that salary level. That means over 5 years you made 1.5 million dollars. That is some really nice money by any standards. But once you pay agents, lawyers and taxes you are down to around 700k split that up over 5 years and it is around 140K a year. If you buy a big house, a couple of expensive cars and live a high end lifestyle you can easily blow through that. So your career comes to an end and you don't have a whole lot left. For every guy in the NFL that makes 8 million a year, there are a dozen or more of these small guys and they all factor into the numbers.

Another big reason is divorce. I just read a book about the 1990's Dallas Cowboys. Those guys won a lot of games, made some nice money and live big lives. In the book the author talks about how many of these guys end up getting married early in their careers or before they have the career. Then the wives turn a blind eye as these guys cheat and fuck tons of different women while they are on the road because they are stars. When the career ends and the money comes to an end the wives divorce them and clean these guys out.

With most pro athletes they have a small window of time where they make a ton of money, then that disappears. If they are dumb and blow a bunch during their career then get divorced and lose a whole bunch more, it is no surprise they end up broke. It is the same reason a lot of lottery winners end up broke.

Also, I don't think it is just a black thing. The reality is most pro athletes (especially in the NBA and NFL) are black, but that doesn't mean it is a black thing. There are a lot of broke former pro athletes that are white and there are a ton of people who are white and won the lottery then lost it all and that really is the same thing.

Name one.

yup it is :2 cents: