It probably makes me a horrible person, but this article made me chuckle.  Especially the part about having no friends. 

Gee, you treat people like shit and act like a complete ass for most, if not all of your career.  The only people who hang out with you do so because you are a famous, wealthy athlete.  Now that you are no longer wealthy or an active athlete, they leave for the next gravy train and you're left playing X-box online and trying to befriend some guy whose handle is "Hollywood 69" because you have no real friends and your former teammates all hate your guts.

And to top it all off, you've managed to piss away $80M.

Fucking priceless!!!

"I never mind TO that much."

Neither did I. I just find it ironic that a guy who never cared about anyone but himself is now bitching about not having any friends. It like the Menendez brothers complaining that their parents never visit them in prison.

"A sport of self promotion that stops just short of the WWE."

The main difference being that when someone acts like a moron or hits you with a chair in the WWE, its all part of the act, everyone knows it's coming and it's part of the storyline being sold to fans which ultimately benefits everyone.

Football is a team sport which requires players to put the good of the team ahead of the good of the individual.

I'm not a huge fan of Ray Lewis the person, but I've gained a tremendous amount of respect for Ray Lewis the teammate from stories I've heard and after this past weekend when he stood up for his kicker and told reporters that one play didn't cost them the game and that the Ravens both won and lost games as a team.

I never really followed real estate investments.  It isnt something that is done around here on the high end scale of things.  Flipping a low cost house is the most common type and that is generally done by contruction guys that can do the work themselfs.  I have had my eyes opened to how it can work in locations with a better economy.  Still it is an up and down market.  If I was going to invest in property it would be farm ground.  10 years ago you could find farm ground for $3,000.  It is going for at least twice that now.  Plus it makes you money in the mean time.   I dont see that market crashing with crop prices right now.  However it is a game only the rich investor or large farmer can play. 

If I signed a multi million dollar contract I would be ultra conservative.  As a sports star your career could end at any moment.  That money has to last you a life time.  Hell I am not even close to uppr class and I am still conservative.

APRTW wrote:

I never really followed real estate investments.  It isnt something that is done around here on the high end scale of things.  Flipping a low cost house is the most common type and that is generally done by contruction guys that can do the work themselfs.  I have had my eyes opened to how it can work in locations with a better economy.  Still it is an up and down market.  If I was going to invest in property it would be farm ground.  10 years ago you could find farm ground for $3,000.  It is going for at least twice that now.  Plus it makes you money in the mean time.   I dont see that market crashing with crop prices right now.  However it is a game only the rich investor or large farmer can play. 

If I signed a multi million dollar contract I would be ultra conservative.  As a sports star your career could end at any moment.  That money has to last you a life time.  Hell I am not even close to uppr class and I am still conservative.

You're being much too reasonable about it AP.  Most of these guys never think their career is going to end and assume the money will never stop coming in.

I didn't read it too closely, but it appeared that most of what Owens was doing was rental property.  The likely plan was to charge enough rent to cover the mortgage, upkeep, etc...  When the property market went south, it likely made it impossible to charge enough rent to cover the cost of the property which itself had become significantly devalued.  At some point, you let the bank foreclose, but your original investment is lost.

forsberg_us wrote:

"A sport of self promotion that stops just short of the WWE."

The main difference being that when someone acts like a moron or hits you with a chair in the WWE, its all part of the act, everyone knows it's coming and it's part of the storyline being sold to fans which ultimately benefits everyone.

Football is a team sport which requires players to put the good of the team ahead of the good of the individual.

I'm not a huge fan of Ray Lewis the person, but I've gained a tremendous amount of respect for Ray Lewis the teammate from stories I've heard and after this past weekend when he stood up for his kicker and told reporters that one play didn't cost them the game and that the Ravens both won and lost games as a team.

Speaking of that kick, this will fire up Artie Patriots conspiracy theories. 

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nfl-shutdown-corner/why-billy-cundiff-rushed-fateful-field-goal-try-013101618.html

APRTW wrote:

forsberg_us wrote:

You're being much too reasonable about it AP.  Most of these guys never think their career is going to end and assume the money will never stop coming in.

I didn't read it too closely, but it appeared that most of what Owens was doing was rental property.  The likely plan was to charge enough rent to cover the mortgage, upkeep, etc...  When the property market went south, it likely made it impossible to charge enough rent to cover the cost of the property which itself had become significantly devalued.  At some point, you let the bank foreclose, but your original investment is lost.

I bought a house thats property connected to my own a couple years ago.  The thought crossed my mind to rent the property to recover some of what I paid for it.  I bought it for $20,000 and figured I could rent it for $350 a month.  That means it would take 5 years to recover what I paid.  Then you add in the $2500 in taxes I would have had to pay on the property, insurance and upkeep and it just wasnt worth it.  Then you have figure out how to collect the money.  I just dont see how it could be worth the $2000-$3000 a year that I could have cleared 10 years down the road.  Seems like a poor investment.  A swing set for the kids now sit where the house used to.

The idea is to purchase property in an area where the property values are appreciating wildly.  For example, a friend from the police department joined DEA and his first assignment was in San Francisco.  He and his wife bought a condo for about $300K.  He was transfered 3 years later and sold the condo for almost $600K.

Now, imagine you had bought that same condo, rented it to someone who paid you enough rent to pay your mortgage (including taxes and insurance), and then sold it 3 years later for almost double the money.  You make $300K and your only investment is your credit score and whatever time you may have invested in maintaining the property (or in the case of someone like TO, the wages you paid to someone to maintain the property).

During the housing boom, this sort of scenario wasn't unheard of, and I'm sure it sounds attractive to someone like TO.  And he was probably told there wasn't any risk because, after all, the worst that could happen was that the value of the property didn't go up, but he still had someone else paying his mortgage, and he still would benefit from the equity acquired in the property.

The problem, of course, comes when the housing markets crashes, the value of the property falls from $300K to $180K and there's no tenant to pay the mortgage.  Now you're screwed.  Now multiply that by 15-20 properties, probably valued at higher than $300K.