How can an NFL player go broke? Originally answered on Sept. 7, 2016.
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Answer by Matthew Gordon :
Any number of reasons, most of which also apply to any non-NFL-player resident in the U.S.
The NFL minimum salary is $450,000 per year for a rookie. Most NFL players make the minimum salary, because there are far more guys who rotate through practice squads than who make the billboards.
The average length of an NFL career is 3.3 years.
Given that minimum salary rises with years of service time booked, and the NFL disputes the 3.3-year claim, let’s adjust upward a little and say that a minimum-salary player who plays the average length career makes a total of $2 million in his NFL career. That’s substantially less than Aaron Rodgers, Drew Brees, et al. make per home game. Not all NFL players are paid equally.
By comparison, the average American worker makes a lifetime total of $1.8 million . That number looks low to me, but it describes “three decades” and I imagine people working four decades, so that explains the discrepancy perfectly. I picked the average for college graduates because, hypothetically, NFL players went to college.
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The important thing here is that a minimum-salaried NFL career doesn’t pay much more than an average career.
Surely, retired (and I mean “retired” very loosely, as it’s easy to be forcibly retired from the NFL at age 26) NFL players can just go work those average jobs while socking away all their NFL money, right?
Well, sure, if they have the academic knowhow and the medical health. Neither is a given.
Medical problems
- Controversy continues to rage about what should be done when retired NFL players have injuries . The standard tort law approach is to attribute the injury , but this can be difficult with chronic conditions. Retired NFL players often have astronomical medical bills.
- It’s tougher to work a regular job when you have a lifetime of injury . Chronic bone or muscle problems can prevent retired NFL players from seeking jobs requiring the strength they once possessed. Likewise, as many as 40 percent of retired NFL players may have brain injuries , which may impair the ability to perform most jobs.
- The U.S.’s lack of public health care hurts retired NFL players, who often require costly procedures.
- For more on how retired NFL players’ medical problems can change their lives, listen to former Steelers and Redskins wide receiver Antwaan Randle El: Randle El, 36, struggles on stairs, regrets football . He’s not even one of the broke ones.
Taxes and fees
- NFL players are always in the top tax bracket. That means that even if an NFL career has the same gross payout as a non-NFL career, the NFL player pays more in income tax. Obviously, residing in a state with no income tax helps somewhat.
- The NFL standard is that a player agent takes a 3 percent cut of a client's contract . Small, yes, but we’re dealing with a lot of money here.
- The average NFL player is probably paying more money to accountants, financial planners and other professionals than the average American. Still relatively small money compared to that $2 million, but it adds up.
Social situation
- Anyone who comes into a lot of money in a short period of time is a target for everyone, from old friends who want a helping hand to scammers. Pro athletes are sometimes compared to lottery winners this way.
- In terms of the ability to succeed in a traditional career, the NFL is a cross-section. Without the NFL as an option, some players would have been highly successful and others wouldn’t have been. Some retired NFL players were going to be broke no matter what happened, and the NFL career only slowed down the process.
To those boiling NFL player bankruptcies down to bad money management or plain old stupidity, would you do that with everyone else who goes broke? Especially if they go broke because of medical bills?