College Athletes Are Being Set Up to Go Broke and the Financial Industry Is Letting It Happen

Nobody Is Telling These Kids the Truth

Eighteen-year-old college athletes are blowing NIL money on Bentleys for prom while advisors and agents stand around collecting their cut and saying nothing. This is financial malpractice dressed up as lifestyle management, and I am disgusted by it.

The Wall Street Journal ran a piece celebrating, yes celebrating, the spending habits of elite college recruits. $2,500 custom suits. $1,100 sneakers. Mercedes rentals for prom. Five-figure watches on the wrists of kids who haven’t played a single college game yet. And somewhere in the background there is an advisor or an agent nodding along, because keeping the client happy is how you keep your seat at the table.

That is not advising. That is enabling. And in my world, we call it something worse.

The Entourage Economy Is Built on Exploitation

I have watched this play out with professional athletes for my entire career. The pattern is always the same.

• Young athlete gets a large check for the first time in his life
• An entourage forms almost immediately, people who benefit from proximity to money
• Every financial decision is validated because nobody wants to be the person who killed the vibe
• The injury happens, the contract ends, or the NIL money dries up
• The athlete is broke, the entourage scatters, and the advisors are long gone

Rob Gronkowski figured it out. One of the best tight ends in the history of the game told me he lived frugally throughout his entire NFL career because he understood the acronym. Not For Long. The average running back lasts fewer than three years in the league. These are grown professionals at peak physical condition, and most of them are out before thirty.

Now we have high schoolers spending NIL money like it is a permanent salary. Nobody is doing the math with them. Nobody is explaining that a torn ACL does not care how much your prom suit cost.

What the Financial Industry Should Be Doing But Isn’t

Here is the hard truth. The financial services industry has a long and embarrassing history of being yes-men to clients with money. I refuse to operate that way and always have. In the 1990s clients pushed me to chase tech stocks and I pushed back. Some walked. I watched them get obliterated in the dot-com crash while my clients were protected.

I will not participate in someone’s undoing. Full stop.

If you are an advisor working with young athletes and you are not having these conversations, you are failing them.

• Their income window is narrow and physically vulnerable. One play can end it.
• NIL money is not guaranteed income. It is opportunity income, and it expires.
• Compounding time is the only true wealth advantage an eighteen-year-old has. Burning it on a prom rental is not just dumb. It is tragic.
• The people clapping and handing them the car keys are not their friends. They are parasites.

Congress Is Focused on the Wrong Problem

Ted Cruz and half of Washington are wrapped up in hearings about NIL structures, super leagues, and transfer portals. Those are real issues. But the thing that is going to destroy the lives of hundreds of young athletes over the next decade is not the structure of college athletics. It is the complete absence of honest financial guidance at the moment these kids need it most.

When the highlight reels fade and the checks stop coming, nobody from the entourage is going to be there. The advisor who nodded along while the kid blew six figures on prom night will have moved on to the next meal ticket.

I built my career on refusing to be that person. More people in this industry need to find the spine to do the same.