A league of his own

Ryan Broyles, 27, lives a simple, middle-class life. He’s been married for nearly three years, with a newborn son. The couple just bought a house in Texas, living on a roughly $60,000 annual budget.

Broyles, though, is a wide receiver for the Detroit Lions entering the final year of a $3.68 million rookie contract. Broyles made sports talk buzz during training camp after ESPN profiled his keen awareness of pro athletes’ financial woes—and his determination to avoid them.

Roughly one in six NFL players files for bankruptcy within 12 years of retirement, the National Bureau of Economic Research reported this April, using bankruptcy court records. Broyles heard about the anecdotes and statistics, even saw mismanagement. The NFL’s advice at its rookie camp was simple: Live a normal life for a few months, keep track of the costs, then make conscious decisions to save. Despite losing a third of their income to taxes, the Broyles family likely will put away more than $2 million of his rookie contract—more with the NFL’s matching 401K.

But there’s more to the story. Broyles and his wife, Mary Beth, are evangelical Christians, more deeply committed since summer 2011. Broyles’ visit to destitute yet joyful Christians in Haiti left him saying, “I want that,” along with his then-future wife, who saw the change in him. From memorizing Scripture to more disciplined exercise, people in all spheres of his life welcomed the change. “It’s like night and day,” Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops said that fall of Broyles’ then-senior year. OU had given Broyles a second chance as a headstrong freshman after his arrest trying to steal gas.

Now entering his fourth year in the NFL, he is still different. Financially, the uncertainty of a football career matters little, because his growing family doesn’t need a new contract to stay afloat. He can just have fun, he told ESPN.

Many pro athletes worldwide go broke—including famous ones such as Terrell Owens, Latrell Sprewell, Scottie Pippen, Warren Sapp, Mike Tyson, Diego Maradona, and Allen Iverson—and for many reasons, from high-risk investments to extreme naïveté. “I studied as much as I could,” Broyles said of his investments. “Talked to people wealthier than me, smarter than me.”

Broyles isn’t alone in planning for life after football, and worldview often plays at least some part in that wisdom. Former St. Louis Ram Jason Brown left football to farm food to donate because the NFL high life was starving his marriage (“Farm team,” Jan. 24, 2015). New Orleans tight end Benjamin Watson, who wants to be home with his wife and five children, considers using his finance degree to “help players formulate budgets and … [be] fiscally responsible” (“More than sound bites,” July 25, 2015).

Broyles himself has no guarantee of a career after this year. He’s played 21 games in three years due to injury, jeopardizing a roster spot even now. Despite that, “I have complete faith,” he told a radio host in 2013, “and I’ve surrendered my life to Him.”

Unorganized sports

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) on Aug. 17 ruled that Northwestern University football players can’t unionize, annulling a 2014 decision by an NLRB regional director. Many big-sport athletes object to the way the NCAA system generates billions of dollars, while they receive only scholarships for essentially full-time work. The unanimous board ruled that a union would create different rules for different schools, causing a deeper divide than current financial disparities bring. —A.B.