Chris Henry, the NFL's director of player development, helped organize this week's Rookie Symposium, which ends tomorrow in Carlsbad, Calif. The four-day mandatory seminar aims to help rookies adjust to the complex world of being a pro athlete. One of the toughest and inevitable realities is the huge financial adjustment.
A couple of months ago, a rookie lineman might have been living off a campus meal plan. Suddenly, he's making six or seven figures a year and being approached with business plans in the grocery store parking lot, when he's out to dinner with his wife or even at a cookout among friends and family.
Everyone has a great moneymaking idea, it seems. Henry says one prominent player told him that he once counted 287 business proposals in a single year.
"Most often, [players] are targeted by people who don't have another means to obtain financing," Henry says. "If somebody's coming to you with a plan, and they've not contacted a bank, there's a reason they're contacting you. You have to be aware of that."
McCrary says now that if he had spent just a bit of time researching - just minutes on Google - he would've learned enough about the developers' background to think twice. At the time, he didn't know better.
Because they're young, the players have little business education or experience handling large chunks of money, and athletes will always be targets, McCrary says.
"You come out as a 21-, 22- or 23-year-old, and you think you know it all, but you really don't have any idea," he says. "The predators out there, they know that."
This week's symposium touches on topics including criminal activities, drugs and finances. Ray Lewis spoke one year, warning rookies to be careful about whom they befriend. The league's rookies will learn about taxes, maintaining personal budgets and surrounding themselves with the right professional advisers.
"Even if they come in and they're responsible and they have an idea of their financial game plan," Henry says, "once you get approached 20 or 30 or 50 times, you start to feel the pressure. You wonder if you're doing something wrong by saying no all the time. And really, it only takes one yes for things to go south."
Life in the NFL: when a 275-pound stack of muscles can try to chew your head in the backfield yet somehow poses less danger than the businessman who's all grins and business cards, the confident friend with a proposal that just can't miss.
rick.maese@baltsun.com
