Is the NFL doing enough?

You know, this is something that should be done league wide. How many stories have you seen on TV about Player X who played in the NFL for 3 or 4 years and when he left, he had a few million in the bank and was broke a year later. Or Player Y who played for quite a few years, making a nice salary and had NO money when they retired because they spent it all on Ferraris and huge houses. Money management should be required. Also, they should set up somet kid of investment plans that players are required to put X% of their yearly salary in. And yes, things like drugs, alcohol, and guns should be covered as well.

The problem with that is, say you have all of the teams participating, and 50% of the players in the league think all this stuff is pointless and don’t want to do it (and you know that would happen). There will be some Owner X out there that will lure players to his team by telling them that they won’t have to do that stuff because he’ll cover for them or whatever (lookin at you Jerry Jones). And that would happen to.

I think it’s a really good idea to offer some kind of comprehensive program that covers all of this stuff and strongly reccomend that players attend, put there’s only so much you can force on people. You can lead a horse to water… as they say.

is make programs available for a lot of these issues. The old saying “you can lead a horse to water etc” holds true here. Grown men should be able to take care of themselves. Poor little millionaire athlete isn’t cutting it for me. If your going to carry a weapon for example, learn the laws and proper handling. It’s not that difficult, IF you bother to try.

The problem is by the time a lot of these kids get to the NFL it maybe too late. As you know the NFL is about 70% black, and in the last 40 years the amount of black children raised in two family homes has decreased to the point where more black kids today or being born into unmarried parents exceeds that of married couples. I’m of the opinion that this has a market affect on how kids, particularly boys(although the effect is seen in girls but in a different way) grow up. They don’t get the good advice and common sense about their behavior, interactions with women, etc. that a man needs to navigate the world, they miss out the real toughness and wisdom that comes from dad, they end up not really knowing how to be men. Their sense of manhood is locked to their bling and cars and the other stuff larger culture around them deems important. Add to that unlimited money, people around them willing to give them what ever they want and the status of being the family meal ticket no one wants to piss off and you end up with the Pacman Jones’s of the world. By the time Goddell gets to them it may to forgone a problem.

Aren’t these grown men we’re talking about?

make every player drafted pass a competency test before he gets his first paycheck. I only say this partially with tongue in cheek. After all, we make high school seniors prove they learned basic skills before we issue them their dipomas.

Let’s admit it. A lot of these kids maintain eligibility in college by taking basket weaving courses and have extreme amounts of tutoring (read… people who do 95% of the work for them) only to fall flat on their faces when they get into the real world. They are no more able to manage their lives ( or large amounts of money) than the average 10 year old.