1-6 NFL Players Go Bankrupt After Retirement

The average salaries for college graduates are significantly less than professional athlete, and they wonder how does someone who makes that much money end up filing bankruptcy?

A working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that 16% of NFL players file bankruptcy with 12 years of retirement.

The authors of the paper — Kyle Carlson (Cal Tech), Joshua Kim (University of Washington), Annamaria Lusardi (George Washington), and Colin F. Camerer (Cal Tech) — studied 2,016 players drafted between 1996 and 2003.

Ben Leubsdork of the Wall Street Journal first reported on the study.

That bankruptcy rate is similar to the national average across all 25-to-34 year olds, the study notes, even though NFL players make significantly more money than their 25-to-34 year old peers. The average NFL player makes more money in six years than the average college graduate will make in their lifetime, the study says.