Professional Athletes today, make more money in one single year than the average person in the US will make in a lifetime. However, an outrageous 78% of all NFL athletes, 60% of NBA players, and a Huge percentage of baseball players go broke within 5 years of retirement.

There are many reasons that this happens. Probably the most popular reason is overspending. When many of these super star athletes get their unreal paychecks for over 10 million dollars a year the first thing many of these athletes do is go look for the most expensive cars or houses they can find. Not all, but many of these athletes don’t look ahead into the future to see what that might hold for them.

Another huge reason for bankruptcy having to do with pro athletes is their career span. The average career for an NBA player is 4.8 years, 5.6 for MLB player, and 3.5 years for NFL players. That is a very short span actually. If these athletes happen to make about 40 Million dollars in about 3 or 4 years and then they suddenly are forced to retire or lose their job, what will they do? By this time, most of these huge athletes probably have 1 or 2 houses, at least 4 or 5 nice cars, and still need to pay taxes. So before thinking about saving any of their money, they spend it all and then lose their job. The government takes everything from them that they haven’t already payed off.

The final reason is something called player endurance. It takes a lot out of a basketball player to play 40 minutes every night not including practice times. It is even worse for football players who get hit and tackled at least 75 times a year. These statistics show that many of the players are very injury prone. This means that they have a very high chance of getting injured and having a possible career ending injury. This might be the most realistic reason for Sports players going broke. If a player is at the peak of their career and still has about 10 more years they're not worried about what the future holds. They only care about their 15 million dollar contract they get that year. This means that these players are going out and wasting all their money because they think they will just be reimbursed next year. If they suddenly tear their ACL or have a career ending injury it could mean either a big delay in money or no money at all.

These are just some of the reasons over half of all pro athletes go broke after 5 years of retirement. I believe very strongly that the Sports Commissioners for all sports should take a good hard look at these facts and try to make a change. There are many ways that we can change this. One good idea is to pay athletes in closer intervals so they don’t waste all of their money right away.