SportsUnplugged.
“Sports Unplugged: 30 for 30 Director Billy Corben talks about ‘Broke’.” YouTube. 2 Oct. 2012. Web. 22 Apr
2013
The
next video I found was a radio show that interviewed the director of the ESPN
30 for 30 documentary ‘Broke’. Billy Corben the director discussed the reasons
why many professional athletes end up going bankrupt or broke. First, he
credited that when most people stop working at the age of 30 they would run out
of money as well. The average career of an NFL player is 3.5 years. Most
athletes don’t make a lot of money from playing in the NFL. A former coach Herm Edwards was quoted in the
documentary as saying that the NFL was not a career, but an opportunity. Also
most athletes are very young when they are coming into the different leagues
and are overnight millionaires. So most of these athletes think they will be
set for life and always want to give back to their communities and families and
neighborhoods. The problem is most athletes are very generous and give a lot of
money to friends and family that won’t pay them back, and eventually they run
out of money. In college the focus of these student athletes are on athletics
and not academics. Most don’t have a college degree or even know how to manage
their own money. Colleges should take more responsibility to help these
athletes become financially smart and help these athletes get a degree for life
after sports. Corben also said that the financial issues started during the
financial boom of the 1990’s when the salaries of athletes rose by a lot. The
advice he gave at the end of the interview was to say no to everyone, and
obtain an un-related trust worthy financial advisor.
I think that this was a very well done
interview. The source was good because of the guest on the radio show, an ESPN
documentary director Billy Corben who directed the documentary ‘Broke’. This
got a lot of attention because it was one of the first documentaries to show
the problem many athletes have. I agree with many of the things he said, and I
agree that Colleges should do more to help prepare these athletes for the
future, and put more of a focus on academics. Athletes will spend more of their
life out of professional sports than in them, and they should learn how to be
financially smart and make good decisions. I’m not saying that athletes shouldn’t
give to charities or help out their family, but be smart about it. Make sure
that the athlete can both help out and have enough invested and saved to take
care of themselves after their career in sports. I also think that the
professional teams that sign the athlete to their contract should provide a
financial advisor for them to help make the tough financial decisions and help
keep them out of trouble. I hope that colleges will begin to help out their
student athletes and begin to care about the actually athletes instead of the revenue
that they bring in each year.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJq2bEX7ILw
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