The next day she was back at work. Cleaning toilets.

“I’m not too proud to admit it,” she says.

To get a break on rent, Compton cut a deal with her apartment complex to serve as a “caretaker,” which is a fancy way of saying she cleaned apartments — living rooms, kitchens, bathrooms — once tenants had moved out, or put trash back in the Dumpsters whenever dogs got into them. When the caretaker deal ended, Compton and her boyfriend had to move because they couldn’t afford the full rent.

It was the eighth time in four years she packed up.

“It’s one of those things: If I want to be an Olympic athlete, this is what I have to do,” says Compton, 29, who’s scheduled to compete in four events at the Winter Games that open tomorrow in Vancouver. “I just had to keep telling myself: ‘Go for this. Don’t let financial reasons keep you from chasing your dream.’ ”

It’s a pep talk that more and more U.S. Olympic athletes are having with themselves as sponsorship and endorsement opportunities evaporate in the global recession like a puddle in unseasonably warm Vancouver. It doesn’t mean the Olympics are any less prestigious for athletes. It just means that unless you’re snowboarder Shaun White or alpine ski queen Lindsey Vonn or have really rich parents, you’re probably going to be poor doing it.

The U.S. Olympic Committee says it paid out $16.5 million to its winter sports national governing bodies for the 2009-10 season, a substantial increase compared with the year before the 2006 Winter Games. But much of that money goes to staffing and infrastructure, and it’s performance-based. The sports with consistent international success get the most; the also-rans are left largely to fend for themselves.

So ski jumper Nick Alexander works as a dishwasher in Park City, Utah. Teammate Peter Frenette scoops ice cream. Freestyle aerialist Jeret Peterson hangs drywall and lays tile. Luger Megan Sweeney is a waitress at the Downhill Grill in Lake Placid, N.Y.

Read the full article HERE. 

If ever there were a San Diego Charger whose postcareer success has matched his years spent on the field, it’s the great Ron Mix. Mix’s glory years came in the 1960s, when the Chargers were in the American Football League. Back in the day, Mix was listed at 6’ 4” and 250 pounds, known as a weight lifter long before football players commonly pumped iron, and nicknamed the “Intellectual Assassin.” On the field, he achieved something that’s never been equaled: in ten seasons, he had two holding calls against him. Off the field, he blazed a trail by becoming one of the few players to earn a law degree — he graduated from the University of San Diego law school in 1969 — and one of the very few who got the degree during his career, not after he hung up his cleats.

Today, at 71, Mix still practices — law, that is, not football. From new offices in Mission Valley, Mix displays only one football memento: high up on a bookcase is his white helmet, emblazoned with the yellow bolt and his number, 74, on the side. It’s safe inside a plastic box, not only heralding an illustrious career, which got him elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1979, but also reminding us that there is life after sport.

Mix says that too many athletes today have “dismal postcareer lives.” There’s a touch of anger if not frustration in his voice. He calls their troubles “startling, sad, pathetic, and outrageous.” He’s speaking of the rise in bankruptcies, marital infidelities, and divorces, as well as legal and personal screwups, the sordidness exposed by our gotcha media. The names in the circus of ex-football clowns are legend: Lawrence Taylor, Ryan Leaf, O.J. Simpson.

How much has changed since his playing days? Nothing and everything. In the 1960s, Mix tells me, athletes prepared for life after football. Unlike today’s players, they worked in the off-season, usually “part-time for a company and setting the foundation to build a career. Or they attended school.” It was, he says, “commonly accepted” that you’d be moving on. Back then, the money was good, “more than the average person made. But we probably spent more too.” After retirement, Mix says, even those who’d saved their money had only enough to live on for a year. Eventually, everyone needed a job.

Read the full article HERE.

That frustrated several members of the House Judiciary Committee, including the committee chairman, Michigan Democrat John Conyers, when Goodell told him the NFL isn’t waiting for that debate to play out and is taking steps to make the game safer.

“I just asked you a simple question. What is the answer?” persisted Conyers.

Goodell replied by saying a medical expert could give a better answer than he could. But some House members complained later that Dr. Ira Casson, chairman of the NFL’s committee on concussions, had not testified.

Rep. Linda Sanchez, D-Calif., gave Casson some exposure anyway, playing a clip of a TV interview in which he denied evidence of a link between multiple head injuries in NFL players with brain disorders such as dementia and Alzheimer’s.

Sanchez said that reminded her of tobacco companies denying a link between smoking and health damage in the 1990s.

Goodell testified alongside new NFL Players Association leader DeMaurice Smith, who said the union “has not done its best in this area. We will do better.” Both men did agree to turn over players’ medical records to the committee.

In addition, Conyers wants information on head injuries from the NCAA, high schools and medical researchers to better understand football’s health risks.

Still, several Republicans questioned the point of the hearing. Rep. Ted Poe of Texas said Congress’ involvement in football would mean the end of the sport.

Read the full article HERE.

(Note: Athletes’ earnings are estimated. Some numbers may be low.)

25. Raghib “Rocket” Ismael

Notre Dame/Dallas Cowboys star; received the largest 3-year deal in football history
Estimated lifetime earnings: $20 Million

No jail time, drug charges or bankruptcy here, just bad business moves. Financial vultures bled Ismael’s riches by selling him their “fool-proof” investments. After bypassing the NFL as the presumptive #1 pick, Ismael went to the Canadian Football League and signed the largest deal in their history.

He played two years in Canada and 10 in the NFL, earning an estimated $18 million to $20 million in salary alone. He then started to invest in a series of ventures that went bust, including a Rock n’ Roll Café, COZ Records, a movie, cosmetics, nationwide phone-card dispensers, and caligraphy proverbs kiosks.

Today, Ismael does a sports talk show for the Dallas Cowboys—and looks very closely at any money he makes.

For the list of the remaining 24 athletes, click HERE.

Yet few professional athletes, some of whom make millions of dollars before hitting 25, actually get MBAs. In fact, financial education appears to be far from most players’ minds. Three years into retirement, many ex-football and basketball pros are not only unschooled in ROI ratios—they’re flat broke. And Olympians don’t do much better. Anecdotal evidence abounds about athletes turning to high-school coaching or struggling with unemployment.

For most people who get an MBA, knowing the rules of business represents the difference between a fat paycheck and a fatter paycheck. For the handful of athletes who make it to campus, even those with millions to their name, business education could mean the difference between remaining a millionaire and going broke. That’s not to say all pros need an MBA to fend off a highly publicized bankruptcy, just that for them the stakes are higher.

With that in mind, the NFL has beefed up its education effort, sending players to business classes through multiday programs at top business schools. Full-time MBA programs are doing their part, too. There is an Olympic water polo player at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, an NBA retiree at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, and even a pro skateboarder at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.

Admissions officers thrill when they see pro athletes who desire entry, as more and more programs look for nontraditional applicants. After all, what MBA program wouldn’t want to enroll a sports superstar? Long hours and intense competition are their bread and butter. Faculty and admissions directors say most former pros are uniquely equipped for the rigors of earning an MBA. Greg Comella, a 7-year NFL veteran and legendary trainer, says his classes at Harvard Business School were a lot like “implementing a playbook in training camp.” After a pause, he adds: “But without the puking, I guess.”

Read the entire article HERE.

There were no heart palpitations. No sweaty palms. No feelings of remorse and no second thoughts and no yearning for a final moment in the Berea, Ohio, sun. As old offensive line chums like Hank Fraley and Ryan Tucker and Joe Thomas slammed into one another as if they were performing some sort of water buffalo mating ritual, Friedman thought to himself … well, nothing. Not. One. Tiny. Thing.

“Forgot it was taking place,” he says. “Honest to goodness.”

The oversight is understandable. Friedman, a 32-year-old New Jersey native who recently announced his retirement after a four-team, eight-year NFL career, is now a first-year MBA student at Duke, pursuing his goal of one day becoming an entrepreneur. Though football occ asionally pops into his head, it lingers for as long as a Shannon Hoon solo — usually tailed off by the thought, “Thank God I’m done.”

His odds of returning to the league? “I’d place it at negative 1,000,” he says. “Maybe more.”

Friedman is anything but bitter. Thanks to the NFL, the former second-round pick out of Duke is financially secure and emotionally content. He lived a dream, and reflects glowingly at past battles with men like Joey Porter and Shawne Merriman. Yet there is also this thing called … life. For eight years, Lennie Friedman did exactly as he was told. He arrived at this time. Ate this meal. Did this drill and that drill, then lifted this weight this many times before spending this many minutes in a bucket of ice water. Such is the oft-banal existence of the paid athlete, where active brain waves are optional and existence’s irksome realities — doctor appointments, dinner reservations, rental cars — are neatly handled by others.

Read the entire article HERE.

In 1991 Ismail, a junior wide receiver for the Fighting Irish, was the presumptive No. 1 pick in the NFL draft. Instead he signed with the CFL’s Toronto Argonauts for a guaranteed $18.2 million over four years, then the richest contract in football history. But today, at a private session on financial planning attended by eight other current or onetime pro athletes, Ismail, 39, indulges in a luxury he didn’t enjoy as a young VIP: hindsight.

“I once had a meeting with J.P. Morgan,” he tells the group, “and it was literally like listening to Charlie Brown’s teacher.” The men surrounding Ismail at the conference table include Angels outfielder Torii Hunter, Cowboys wideout Isaiah Stanback and six former pros: NFL cornerback Ray Mickens and fullback Jerald Sowell (both of whom retired in 2006), major league outfielder Ben Grieve and NBA guard Erick Strickland (‘05), and linebackers Winfred Tubbs (‘00) and Eugene Lockhart (‘92). Ismail (‘02) cackles ruefully. “I was so busy focusing on football that the first year was suddenly over,” he says. “I’d started with this $4 million base salary, but then I looked at my bank statement, and I just went, What the…?”

Before Ismail can elaborate on his bewilderment—over the complexity of that statement and the amount of money he had already lost—eight heads are nodding, eight faces smiling in sympathy. Hunter chimes in, “Once you get into the financial stuff, and it sounds like Japanese, guys are just like, ‘I ain’t going back.’ They’re lost.”

At the front of the room Ed Butowsky also does a bobblehead nod. Stout, besuited and silver-haired, Butowsky, 47, is a managing partner at Chapwood and a former senior vice president at Morgan Stanley. His bailiwick as a money manager has long been billionaires, hundred-millionaires and CEOs—a club that, the Steinbrenners’ pen be damned, still doesn’t include many athletes. But one afternoon six years ago Butowsky was chatting with Tubbs, his neighbor in the Dallas suburb of Plano, and the onetime Pro Bowl player casually described how money spills through athletes’ fingers. Tubbs explained how and when they begin earning income (often in school, through illicit payments from agents); how their pro salaries are invested (blindly); and when the millions evaporate (before they know it).

Read the full article HERE.

In a letter to the NFL Alumni Board of Directors on Wednesday, Goodell wrote that claims made by the union — including NFLPA executive director DeMaurice Smith — that retired players have the potential to be affected next year “have no basis in fact.”

“In all my conversations with DeMaurice Smith, he has never raised the subject with me,” Goodell wrote in response to questions raised by NFL Alumni board members. “Had he done so, my answer would have been unequivocal — there will be no reduction in pension or disability payments to retired players during 2010.”

In a statement released by the NFLPA, Smith responded by challenging the NFL to guarantee paying benefits beyond 2010.

“If these benefits are now being guaranteed for one year by the NFL, which they currently are not, then that’s a win for the players,” NFLPA benefits director Miki Yaras-Davis said.

Portions of Goodell’s letter were released by NFL Alumni and Fourth and Goal, an independent retired-player advocacy group. Goodell was responding to concerns raised by the groups’ directors after NFLPA members stated retired players would take a hit in an uncapped year.

Smith had told a group of retired players at a meeting in Las Vegas in June that their benefits would be affected.

Read the full article HERE.

The comeback was born here, silver spoon in its mouth, in a mansion outside San Diego, amid the spoils and luxuries of Bret Boone’s 14-year major league career. It was surrounded, loved and nurtured by family. It never wanted for any material thing. It was given the space to grow at its own pace.

If you’ve ever wondered: Why do they come back? . . . And if you thought you knew the answers . . . yeah, it’s all those things — an inability to leave the athlete’s life behind, an addiction to competition, a need for validation — but it’s so much more.

Bret Boone’s 2008 comeback attempt with the Washington Nationals, after two full seasons out of the game, may have been born into a world of wealth and tranquillity — a world made possible by a total of nearly $50 million he earned in his career — but it was spawned from darkness. From the descent into the hell of alcoholism and the climb back out. From primal urges — conquering demons, proving something to oneself, gaining closure.

If the athlete’s playing career is life, and retirement is death, Boone — or at least the ghost of him that showed up in 2008 — refused to go into that good night until his career was given a proper burial.

“I struggled for that 18-month period where I was just kind of lost,” Boone, now 40, says. “Your whole life, [baseball] is . . . not exactly what defines you — but it’s all I’ve done my whole life. You’re Bret Boone, the second baseman, and all of a sudden you’re not that guy anymore.”

Read the full article HERE.

So the act of retiring was simple: Go to your hotel in Eugene, Ore., take off your sweats and your sneakers, leave them behind. Don’t even shower. Change into street clothes, cab to the airport, call the wife and say, “Baby, I’m coming home.” Don’t even tell those folks from the tryout for that Chinese basketball league, the ones who didn’t even know who you were or what you have done in this game, that you were packing it in. And by all means, don’t look back.

But retirement — the noun, the state of being? That was dark. That didn’t go so well. 

It was great at first. Who wouldn’t want the life of leisure? But there were a lot of hours to kill between the time when he would send his wife Rosa off to her job and haul the kids off to school, and the time when everyone got back home. There were too many afternoon beer-buzzes, too many self-pitying viewings of the 1995 NCAA championship game, when nobody could stop Ed O’Bannon and those UCLA Bruins.

There was an angry admonishment from Rosa — “Get a job . . . or else” — and there was a business card with a name and a phone number on it, jammed in his hand weeks earlier and sitting out now on top of the dresser, in plain view, as if O’Bannon knew someday he’d have to call the number.

He called the number.

He interviewed the next day, got hired right away, and started work the day after that.

Read the full article HERE