Why Athletes Go Broke

Brian Cuban (attorney and brother of Mark) blogs about "Why Athlete's Still Go Broke."

Bro-Cube's post is actually a look back at a post he wrote in June 2008, along with a TV interview he did on FOX News.  He's reposted it after reading Sports Illustrated,'s long take-out on the same subject: "How (and Why) Athletes Go Broke" by Pablo S. Torre.

Brian cautions anyone thinking that athletes financial problems are greatly disporportionate to the general population's:

Smart, busy people who can afford it, hire people with targeted expertise to help them. This allows them to focus on their expertise.[...]  This happens to everyone. That is life. It happens all the time. It just does not make front page when we screw up. If there is any question at all as to how badly we as the general public screw up, just look at the personal bankruptcy filing statistics."

Gotz to wonder how many athletes got taken advantage by Bernie Madoff and Robert Stanford?

The knee jerk reaction upon hearing a player go broke is: "dumb jocks" (more often than not, with a dash of racism thrown in) but checking the searchable Madoff victims list on the New York Times site, you of course can find the owner of the Mets, Fred Wilpon, along with family and friends, including Sandy Koufax, who got taken in by Maddof's $50-billion Ponzi scheme.

Robert Standord — currently ranked #2 on the Ponzi schemer list — was a big PGA backer, so it won't be surprising to find out that there are some PGA players a Stanford admissions list (should one ever be found).

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