The other night, I was watching one of my favorite football movies ever called The Replacements.
The movie is based off of a fictional pro-football league, where the current players are unhappy with their salaries, and decide to boycott the league, and a lockout begins for the final four games of the regular season.
In further detail, the teams have to scramble to put together makeshift football players, who are either has-beens, never was, or semi-pro players.
I found myself laughing at the beginning of the movie, when a couple of players were interviewed about the future lockout.
One guy said:
“Look, I know that five million a year sounds like a lot of money. But I gotta pay ten percent in child support, five percent to my lawyer, plus alimony, child support…”
Another says:
“You got any idea what insurance on a Ferrari costs, motherfu–“
Although complete satire, that’s what the common man thinks about pro athletes and how they treat their salaries.
We find ourselves wondering how in the world a man who signed a $30 million contract can possibly go broke, and we immediately point to spending money on unnecessary things like mansions (multiple, in some cases), sports cars, designer clothes, etc.
However, former NHL player Chris Pronger recently took to Twitter to discuss just how easy that money can disappear, explaining all of the behind-the-scenes parts of a contract us regular folks don’t see:
