Mark Brunell is all out of money

Yeah, it's not like Brunell signed one deal for the rookie minimum, squandered it and ended up washing cars for money. Dude banked more than $50 mil and has less in the bank than me.

 

He would know the interest rates better than I would. But he might have something locked in long-term. It's hard to imagine someone getting 7% risk-free these days.

 

"A fool and his money are lucky to get together in the first place." -- Gordon Gekko

 

Unless my name is Richard Pryor, and I bought a fucking baseball team, there is not a way in hell I could piss away 50 million dollars.

 

The yin to Mark Brunell's yang, Jeff Foster of the Indiana Pacers, who has just about all of his money.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/jeff-foster-the-buffett-of-basketball-10202011.html

It helps, of course, that Foster comes from a comfortable background (not wealthy, but comfortable), learned about money growing up, and started saving relatively young because he didn't plan a career making millions in professional sports. (He was going to be a journalist, so he already knew he'd better not waste any pennies.)

 

I think he has some agreement where he can't touch the main amount. Whatever he did, he did three years ago, so it wasn't like he locked in that percentage when the economy was good.

I think banks will give you a good rate if you promise to leave the money there.

 

I hope this doesn't start a big threadjack fight, but paradoxically enough, I have never known a group of people who were better at wasting money than journalists. Some of the dinner stories I've heard -- and not those on the company dime -- are eye-popping.

 

It's also not like he spent it all on sports cars.

Bankruptcy just means your debts outweigh your assets. You own a business that fails and you have to eat the long-term lease on an expensive property? There's a million in debt. You buy a high-end hotel for $20 million with 30 percent down, the economy crashes and now it's worth $10 million? Millions more in debt.

Not saying it's easy to do, but I know people who have experienced it on a smaller scale. In some of these business situations, your losses are almost unlimited which makes it easy to get over your head and makes bankruptcy the only way out.

 

The story about Foster begins with some guy trying to pitch him on a bed-and-breakfast in Pennsylvania. Foster turned him down. He didn't want to be a part of business ventures -- too risky. Yeah, Brunell isn't the athlete who spent all his money on hookers and blow, but, well, like the world banking system, he leveraged himself too much on real estate, and got caught when the market plummeted.

By the way, Brunell makes an appearance early on in that Foster story. So does Rocket Ismail and his calligraphy business.

 

He can also start receiving his NFL pension, which should be considerable due to his long length of service and not garnishable (I think, isn't that why they can't touch OJ's?), at 45 years of age,

 

He still lives in Florida, and I don't think they can touch his house either.

 

I never would have guessed Fred Taylor was the more financially stable part of that backfield.