Laremy Tunsil got hacked tonight in case you guys didnt hear and while he still got drafted, some posts were dropped on Instagram and they were images of text messages alleging Ole Miss paid for his rent and bills for his parents, and mentioned the athletic director. Considering they're already under investigation this is pretty damning. However considering how toothless the NCAA has been in the UNC allegations and Miami, I think you can expect repercussions by 2050
http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/college/ole-miss/2016/04/28/laremy-...
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He then admitted to it in the press conference.
There was also pics of him in a gas mask attached to a loaded bong.
This was done and pics and tweets made public 13 minutes before the draft began.
He was expected to go as the first draft, by many.
He fell to 13th. Like that guy in Draft Day.
Boo hoo - instead of $4 million a year he got...what...$2 million a year?
Sorry but i'm not sympathetic at all to any athlete who complains about $$$ they get per contract.
I similarly think the NFL is a manipulative and steaming pile of shit, but I digress.
Tangent: It's interesting that the NFL players have a "Union" whereas us minor folks don't.
EDIT: If it wasn't clear, I am for unions. I find it ironic that a multi million dollar industry has one and we all support it, yet we're all divided if unions are good for this country as a whole.
NFL players have a union because they have the bargaining power to do so. Due to a salary cap, they are paid far less than their true market value. If there was no union the owners would behave even worse than they do today.
Just because they make significantly more than most of us "minor folks" doesn't mean they don't deserve every penny.
I am not sure that anybody that makes multi-million dollars per year is playing for less than true market value. The NFL is a non-stop spiral of money. The players want more, so owners need a bigger cap, which means they need to raise ticket prices which all just hurts the fan who wants to go to a game in person.
I am happy that they can make the money they do to play a game that most of us play for free because we love the game. But they are also making a killing. The majority of the NFL players if they watch their money can afford to retire for life by age 30! I will be lucky to retire by 65.
The "majority" of NFL players have a career less than 3 years, and for less than $1M. You can't live on $2M from age 24-80, if that's your only income.
And basic economics says that if you suppress the ceiling (salary cap) you are interfering with true market value.
The vast majority of revenue in the NFL is from TV money. Ticket prices are going up because that is one avenue of revenue where the majority goes directly to the team, unlike TV money which must be shared.
I would have to disagree. That's about $36K a year... not including interest that could be acquired. I'm no CFA, but putting a couple hundred thousand in the bank at age 24 would surely be enough to retire on 56 years later. I don't feel bad for broke NFL players who make 2 Million. Neither do the folks in Mississippi where the median salary $37K
47 Kentucky $41,141
Guam $38,973 - - - -
48 Arkansas $38,758
49 West Virginia $38,482
50 Mississippi $36,919
Ehhh that's a huge gamble to take, though...
One bad month in the stock market (2007 and 2008 is proof of this) and half that investment could be wiped out overnight. Happened to my in-laws, who had their retirement gutted overnight by an incompetent investment adviser who let them lose a high 6 figure amount before disclosing the information to them, completely altering the course of their retirement (including the loss of their house, and the need to work an additional 10-15 years before retiring). And this doesn't account for inflation, which would potentially devalue that lump sum more over time than interest would increase it.
That's a lot of risk to put on a player who is legitimately putting his body and brain on the line for our enjoyment.
FIFM
What retirement calculator are you using to get $36,000/yr?
$36,000 x 56 years (80-24) = $2,016,000. Sorry, I rounded.
You forgot to take out a large amount in taxes.
$2M / 3 years is just under $700k per year. Fed taxes alone would drop this somewhere close to $500k. Then state income taxes and the agents cut drop that to probably under $400k per year.
So I'd guess it's closer to $1.2M over 3 years. If they get 3 years..
So that's $1.2mil to last 50 years.
A retirement calculator also takes into account inflation, and interest, and in some cases income taxes, and is a much better way to estimate the future value of money and income. You would need about $3.75M in safe investments to retire on an average of $100,000 per year in inflation adjusted $ for 50 years. That's about $6,250,000 in pre-tax income, plus another $100,000 to spend that year for every year you take to make it, less the interest off what you saved the previous years. If managed well you could retire after 10 yr at the figure, but there is a reason most NFL players still work after the NFL. If you can put it away AND NOT TOUCH IT to live off of for a couple of decades it can grow to where you can retire off it.
One of the most important things that the average person is not taught growing up (I have no idea why). I can assure you that if I came into a large sum of money, especially while I'm young, I wouldn't touch 95+% of it and continue working and live off the income from my job while the larger sum grows over time. The guys who receive excellent financial counsel, are the guys who likely enjoy very happy, financially stable lives, with or without football.
And for the regular Jill's and Joe's out there, save early and save often. It adds up quickly.
Is that $2M a net or gross figure? If the contract was for $2M, and let's just assume that's guaranteed money, his take home will be significantly less than that. You still have to pay your agent and Uncle Sam before you see $1 of it. On top of that While someone COULD live on $36,000 is that they lifestyle they want? In the DC area $36,000 will pretty much take care of your rent and bills but leave very little, if anything, for quality of life.
I don't think money goes as far as everyone thinks. Factor in that you are talking about a 20-24 year old that probably has never had any sort of basic education on budgeting and finance (note: this applies to most 20-24 year olds, not just athletes) and that money can very easily dry up in an instant.
All that being said, if an NFL player is smart with their money and has an average career, they can give themselves a tremendous start for their second career and retirement.
Gross, just like the wages I listed. That was household average as well. Maybe the player marries a McDonalds worker making $15/hr. He wouldn't have to work a day in his life, and they would be set to live in Mississippi and earning $31K (assuming he uses his money like he makes 36K) above the average family in the state. I never said they would be living luxuriously.
He is from FL.
37 Florida $44,299
Okay, fine, they would make $23K more than the average household in Florida.
That's not apples to apples though. An NFL player earning $2M over 3 years vs. a working earning $36k over 55 years, the worker will end up keeping more of the money net. That $2M when factoring the much higher taxes and agents, attorneys, etc ends up as a much smaller net.
While you may be technically correct, it would be extremely difficult for someone who is accustomed to high six figure standard of living to whittle down their spending to meet at $36k/yr goal. Especially since you are assuming he saves all $2M of it.
But those 36K a year are also neglecting the compounding affect of interest.
And it finally comes full circle. My original comment was that it would be possible to make $2M last 56 years without a job which is why I highlighted this...
Extremely difficult or not, it is possible. Millions of Americans do it.
Millions of Americans also don't deal with the kind of medical complications that come later in life that those who play football for that long into their lives develop,
I would bet that the blue collar working class that fall into the compensation range we are discussing would disagree with you. You don't think a guy who works in the mines or on construction sites for 50 years has more medical bills than a guy who plays football in the NFL for two years?
Probably not quite the risk of CTE and the complications that come from that or back/knee problems that have become prevalent throughout the NFL Alumni ranks. And the medical bills for these ailments would quickly wipe away a major chunk of that lump sum they're supposed to be living off of the remainder of their lives from their NFL days.
I bet more blue collar people get cancer than football players get CTE.
Preach brother
We have. My points were that 1) that $2M is faulty and not accurate due to taxes, agents, and impossibility of saving every dollar you earn and 2) it's not as simple and easy as you portray it to be. Certainly anything is possible. I'll use me as an example. My family grosses much more than the numbers you laid out but significantly less than $1M/yr. Unwinding the moderate lifestyle we have to reduce down to living on $36k/yr would require years of unraveling and moving my entire family to a different area/state. While possible, it's not a position I would ever want to be in and would assume a former player would be the same.
I guess we are at the agree to disagree part of the discussion, but thanks for the quality back and forth.
How many people are able to retire at the age of 25-30. ? Take your 2 mil or whatever and get another paying job , then you do not have to live on 36,000 a year. I do not feel their pain!
That's it right there. Use your college education to gain a second career.
Exactly. That is what they went to college for, right? To get an education?
something something Cardale Jones
IIRC the owners still take a good majority of the TV revenues (and possibly all revenues), which is close to 5 billion dollars according to this. The owners don't HAVE to raise ticket prices, they use it as an excuse.
EDIT: the players get roughly 47% of all revenue
The Packers financial statements which have to be released as they are a public organization lists all of their expenses versus revenues. The Owners make a small profit on that team per year.
according to Forbes, 20 of the top 50 most valuable sports teams in the world are NFL teams (including the Green Bay Packers). My point is that if we're going to blame the owners or players for the rising prices, I am going to blame the owners, since they're not the ones we pay to watch. My other point is I have a hard time feeling bad for any owners or believing they all of a sudden have to cut back on private jet use because of the rise in salary cap.
link here
I am not arguing that they aren't a valuable commodity, my point was not all of the owners are making money hand over fist. The Packers HAVE to disclose their statements, the other Owners hate them because then their shares from the NFL are also public knowledge.
At least NFL players can get endorsements and ACTUALLY find their true market value.
Seems like a pretty harsh reaction to a kid you don't even know having a vindictive wife beating stepfather hack his social media and cost him literally millions of dollars...
what are you talking about? Tunsil never complained about losing money. Obviously he did lose a lot but the only people commenting on it really were outsiders saying they feel bad for him.
All that revenue has to go somewhere. You'd rather it line the pockets of billionaires? Or the players who play the game?
I want to make clear, I wasn't whining nor complaining. I was simply stating facts and adding info.
Not sure where got the idea I was feeling sorry for this guy.
This only highlights the need for the new stipends. Whether or not this is a money management issue, I can't decide what upsets me more, that Ole Miss is breaking the rules (not a shock there) or that another player is struggling to pay rent while generating several hundred thousands of dollars in revenue for the university. I don't know the details, maybe the guy rented a higher than average cost apartment in the area or maybe mom knew they would send the money and lied about needing it for the bill; either way, the new stipends are a step in the right direction. Now the NCAA needs to take a few more steps in that same direction and actually develop a real punishment for these schools and athletic departments.
Doesn't the scholarship include room and board if they live on campus?
I was waiting for a /s...
I honestly wonder what the split is on this issue between people who had to work their way through college vs people who had it paid for. I kick myself every day for not trying to excel at a sport in HS so I would have gotten free tuition, room, and board. Instead I had to work.
The problem is that so many of the elite athletes in revenue-generating sports are majoring in basket weaving so they can stay eligible. So they're not even there for academics and don't understand the great opportunity they have.
It's a deeper socioeconomic issue than just "they don't understand the great opportunity the have." A lot of these players come from a family/city/school that doesn't prepare them to take advantage of this academic opportunity. Then when they get to their college, they feel so far behind that it's easier to have tutors feed them answers to their basket weaving homework than it is to get an actual education.
You're totally right, but I am probably in the minority in thinking that if a student-athlete isn't prepared academically to be at a D1 school, regardless of their talent, then they shouldn't be at a D1 school. That's what JUCO, and prep school is for.
Totally agree - but this is just another aspect of the hypocrisy that is the NCAA/College Football.
I would love to see a statistical analysis of this too. Would be interesting to see people's opinion on this based on age, political affiliation, financial status, etc.
He asked for $305 from his coach to help pay for his mom's electric bill. I don't know how someone racks up a $305 electric bill (he said, "it includes water" which really doesn't help).
One winter in the village, we had $800 in electric bills in 3 months, including one $350 bill. Our doors/windows didn't seal well, and it was a cold winter. We tried to keep our apt at 67ish, didn't work well. We walked around in coats most of the day.
We got into it with management (FUCK YOU BECKY TOMLIN), and eventually got in touch with a regional manager from the company that owned the village. The morning before she was scheduled to visit, maintenance burst through the door and fixed our thermostat and some other things related to our heat. Bills were reasonable from then on.
I don't think it's that hard to do. My wife and I live in a 60 year old 900 square foot house and we racked up a $180 electric bill this January. Poor insulation, old doors, and cracked windows make it very easy. If it's anything like our house but bigger, I can see this being feasible.
But I assume you did that because you know you can afford it. I can absolutely afford to pay more for electricity too, but I choose to keep my heat low because I don't like spending money. If his mom can't afford $305 then she was taking advantage of the system knowing that his coaches would cover it. And keep in mind that I live through extremely harsh conditions in Wyoming with leaky windows but keep my heat bill in the dead of winter extremely low. I can see how $305 is possible, but it's obvious she was living beyond her means because the coaches would take care of it.
We keep our thermostat on 68 in the winter and have all flourescent light bulbs. We do everything we can to save electricity and thus save money. What I'm trying to say is there are some variables in electric bills that you can't control. I don't think it's fair to say she ran up that bill intentionally especially when you consider the circumstances some of these guys come from. I wouldn't be surprised if their house was just as energy inefficient as mine.
I live in a small, 1950's house in Arlington. It is VERY energy inefficient and we turn off lights, try to be reasonable with the thermostat, CFL's, whatever, and we still have a bill of 250-300 a month. Not unreasonable.
You should check your meter readings. My neighbor was getting bills of ~$120 a month and her heat was off the entire winter. Turns out the meters were swapped and she was paying for someone else's electricity.
I have an 1800 sq ft house with new windows and doors, newly installed siding with a layer of exterior insulation, and a lot of attic insulation but all my heat is electric baseboard. I'm in Central PA and I usually have 3-4 months of electric bills per year that exceed $300. In the late spring, summer, and early fall, I pay less than $100 a month because I don't have A/C.
I'm not sure where his mom lives, but if she's up north, it isn't that uncommon. If she lives down south, then you could probably flip the higher costs to the summer and it would be just the reverse of what I pay. Not really surprised.
missed payments? Missing 1 payment - no problem. Missing 3-6 payments, that's when the electric company flips the switch. It's easy to get a bill up to $305 in that time period and the most critical time to ask someone for help.
But apparently he had money for weed.
Pretty sure a future 1st rounder doesn't have to buy his own
Good friend from high school goes to ole miss, can confirm.
SEC school pays players under the table!!
In other news, grass is green, water is wet, and LOLUVa still sucks at football.
Ha Ha.....UVA Sucks.....ahhhh that makes me happy
You mean to tell me that a consistently average SEC program didn't just wake up one night and start beating out Alabama and LSU for 4-5 star recruits through good ol' hard work? I'm shocked.
Even Alabama is being cited for recruiting violations so yea.... they all cheat I'm not surprised in the least. I'm sure every school pulls some level of bullshit
Yeah...it couldn't have been more obvious what was going on there. They suck for about 50 years, then start landing all of these 5 stars - including miraculous last minute flips.
As for stipends? Does anyone really believe that giving guys $1000/month or whatever is going to be enough to end all of this? That would short Cam Newton's Dad's church 188k...
I'm just happy all of the cheating didn't get them anywhere. This time.
Edit: Beat me Lozo. I'll drink. Rules are rules! :p
A loss to Memphis.
I am okay with giving them the $1,000 or whatever stipend plus a $500 likeness fee from EA Sports
The NCAA will do nothing because they are just short of running a scam. Remember they are a non-for-profit group that makes BILLIONS. And they won't do anything to the SEC because they are so afraid the SEC will take their football and go create their own league. We saaw that when we had to watch LSU vs Ala. for trhe second time. Now if we did something like this, we would be slapped with multiple infractions.
Not billions, though yes, just short of $1B (as reported for 2015, $912.3M). But they are a non-profit. 96% of their revenue is redistributed to member institutions. The remaining 4% is used to run central services in the NCAA.
4% is still roughly $36.5M. That's a pretty good chunk of change.
No disagreement there, but I have to push back on the common, and largely false, notion that the NCAA is doing a Scrooge McDuck dive into money on the backs of poor college students. There are issues of profitability in NCAA sports, but those are largely on the schools' level, not so much the NCAA. Different issue entirely, though.
that's fair. I've never really thought of the NCAA as a money hogging entity making tons and tons of cash off of college students. I only hate them because the seem completely worthless when it comes to doing their actual job and schools all over the country are getting away with all kinds of shi* they shouldn't get away with. For $36.5M I would expect an institution to be more competent.
The system is quite obviously dysfunctional. I seriously dislike that schools are taking advantage of it because they know the risks are very low that anything will actually hurt them if they get caught. Mostly just bad PR and that can be smoothed over. People are forgetful. A year of chatter is just a drop in the bucket, really. But I don't necessarily blame the schools for taking advantage. I don't condone it, or support it, but I think the blame should fall at the feet of the governing body for not doing a damn thing about it.
The NCAA doesn't make that much off of football. In 2012 the NCAA made $797M of which $702M came from the NCAA basketball tournament TV rights. http://www.ncaa.org/about/resources/finances/revenue
Hahaha. Ole Miss will get investigated...findings will be lack of institutional control. They will get hammered by the NCAA. Meanwhile, UNCheat gets a slap on the wrist for acts that were an order of magnitude worse. Look at where the high ranking athletic personnel in each school resides with respect to NCAA and conference posts....will tell you all you need to know.
Rough night for Laremy.. Drop to the lowly Dolphins, missing out on a something like 8mil and then ax your college in the post draft interviews. Smart guy, lucky he has size!
I was thinking the same thing. He knows the NCAA can't touch him now that he left school so why not go ahead and admit everything. A part of me says this is a dick move and shows he is loyal only to himself. The other part of me says Ole Miss deserves this for paying for loyalty rather than earning it. Really the model of the NCAA needs a complete overhaul. They need to admit they are a NFL minor league and work some deal with them to allow for post-college fines and suspensions, it really the only way they can punish the correct participants in all of these infractions cases. The basic strategy now is cheat until you get caught, then go pro before the NCAA can slap your wrist.
The arsonist has oddly shaped feet.
Laremy has a lot on his plate. His stepfather is suing him, his facemask bong video was released right before the draft, his attempt to get money from Ole Miss was released during the draft, and he was interviewing about his selection by the Dolphins when he was confronted with the Ole Miss video.
I, for one, thought he did well enough in answering the questions that were posed to him about all of this trouble while he should have been able to revel in his draft day a little more. I question whether he understood the implications of his admission about the videos but he didn't duck the questions - I thought he came across as honest and genuine, potentially to a fault. I'll take someone who is honest about their mistakes any day of the week. I was actually surprised he didn't hesitate to admit it was him, even though his identity couldn't be 100% confirmed from the video. Side note, it's too bad that this statement is fake because it is awesome.
Polian said that he thought that all the GMs would have known about all of this already. I doubt GMs care at all about NCAA violations like asking for money. I don't think GMs care too much about cannabis use while you are in college, as long as you corral it better than Josh Gordon or Johnny Manziel once you get to the pros. (I'd be way more concerned with Noah Spence and his alleged MDMA use than anything else). As long as you don't have any violence against women, anger management, or multiple hard drug abuse issues in your past, I think GMs generally don't get too much in a twist about it .
I'll say this, though, is that Laremy needs a new set of people around him in his life. Good luck to him, I hope this is as rocky as it gets for him.
Ole Miss, on the other hand...bring the hammer! Woo!
He does have an assault arrest also. I think once you add everything up it could be a lot for a team to deal with once he is in the organization.
I believe his assault arrest was for beating up his stepfather after witnessing/finding out that he was hitting his mother (hence the lawsuit filed by his stepfather 1 day before the draft).
What was it Sandra Bullock said, you want your LT to be a natural protector?
Granted an assault arrest is an assault arrest, but I don't believe he has a pattern of this type of behavior, and really unless it was a domestic abuse situation he was involved in I don't know if NFL GMs even really care all that much.
Yes, he was apparently arrested for assault of his stepfather and I believe that the story is that Laremy confronted the stepfather because he thought that the stepfather was roughing up his mother. I read somewhere that Laremy went into their house, grabbed the guy, and held him up against a wall. The charges were subsequently dropped. I'm guessing a GM would classify this differently than if he had gotten an assault charge for beaten up his girlfriend or some sort of violence against a woman. Now the stepfather is suing him for, like, mental anguish or something. I don't know his stepfather from Adam but he sounds like a piece of work.
You're probably correct that these issues are not a huge deal to most NFL GM's, but I suspect that they care a great deal about such instances becoming publicized. The NFL cares a great deal about bad publicity, and you can be sure that if Mr. Tunsil gets in any sort of trouble as a Dolphin, no matter how minor, the front office will get a lot of backlash about drafting a guy with such 'character issues'.
So his mom's hometowns electricity rate is 11.42 cents kW/hr. So someone a lot smarter than me figure out what that means.
It doesn't matter what the electricity rate is. It could easily be a 3 month combined bill that she had put off because she couldn't afford it and so they told her that either she pay or her power is being cut off and the debt is being sent to collections. There are a number of scenarios that could make it a one month bill or a multi-month bill, but that's not the point. The point is that Tunsil admitted to taking money from someone, whether it is a coach or a booster. The amount just makes the story worse, but taking a dollar is still a violation.
I think the biggest question is why is this kid dealing with parents who are literally struggling to keep the lights on while he's on the field literally making millions in revenue for the university and getting nothing in return?
Oh, ok... so he took some money. And what is the result if he didn't? His mother has the power cut off to her home? How are we even in a situation where we're literally criticizing a coach for giving a kid enough money to keep the lights on for his mother's house? Yeah, not going to lie, if I knew a kid on our team was dealing with shit like that at home, I would sure hope our coaches would have the moral fiber help them out, damn the rules.
And you can make whatever "what if" scenario you want about what the money is really for, but its really not that far out of the question that situations like this arise annually for kids at every program in the country, and yet helping them out, despite what they bring to the school, is explicitly forbidden by the NCAA. And that is the problem.
At a certain point we're going to have to give up the cloak and dagger bullshit and reclassify revenue generating collegiate sports for what they are. A professional developmental league. Give these kids a damn salary, let them jump to the major league immediately if they are talented enough to do so, and just be done with this shit. They're already getting paid ($10 on the table now says at least some of our kids are getting paid) so just remove all the bullshit and make it official. The NCAA already doesn't give a shit, if it did, Miami and UNC would have been shut down long ago, so just make what is already official behind the scenes official in the public's eye.
It's minor league football and the schools are the sponsors. Just call them the Blacksburg Hokies sponsored by Virginia Tech, lease them the stadium and facilities, offer an educational avenue for any players who want to work on their degrees while they are playing minor league football and call it a day.
All of the expenses of running a major college football program...coaches, recruiting, staff...is born by the minor league affiliate. The facilities is what VT has that the minor league's don't, so you need to set your lease rate high enough to fund the non-rev programs.
The model is so out-dated. There was a discussion I heard recently about paying players and someone said "this is the same model that was used before Nike and ESPN existed." That really hit me that we need to rethink the entire thing. The student-athlete model is all well and good if there is no revenue associated with the sports, as it is with 99% of college athletes. But when you are part of a team bringing in millions to fund the rest of the college's sports, to represent the brand of the college to the world, you can start to see where the players and coaches feel they are above the laws that are so outdated.
For those interested.......Billion-dollar Ball (by Gilbert Gaul) is a really good book that delves into these issues and it really is pretty fascinating/bizarre to see the changes or lack thereof in big time college sports and how it has become a farm system essentially.
Its a farm system where the NFL, NBA, and NCAA win big while forcing kids who are talented enough to turn pro to remain amateurs, unable to collect on their talents, while the organizations themselves profit out the ass. And then, just to provide another kick to the balls of the athletes, after spending their requisite time in college, they enter a draft where, at least in the NFL, you are slotted into a salary not based on your abilities, but by the order in which you are drafted, with no regard to how you slot into the big picture, with the most talented kids getting forced into a salary that you're essentially locked into for 5 years.
Yes, the salary range of a professional player after that entry level contract has earning potential through the roof, but there are so many landmines you must avoid before getting to that point, and the vast majority of players whom these organizations make billions off of are never able to earn a penny.
Well of course they're getting money. The majority kids on every BCS schools roster are getting money under the table. I said the same thing a while back and was laughed at. Every one cheats. If you don't cheat, you're behind.
Getting a few dollars or something slipped to a player from a fan or booster is one thing. The schools setting up a payment plan for his mom's rent and utilities is something else.
It just depends. Most players that are recruited get some kind of money during the process. Obviously the bigger the prospect, the more money. 3* players will wind up with a few grand, while the best of the best will hit 6 figures.
Yea don't think so. You know how hard it would be to hide that kind of money being funneled to recruits and players.
um...tell that to this guy
I personally don't give a shit. If I was 20 years old and my parents weren't able to pay the electricity bill, I would have done the same thing,
I'll put it this way- I had a friend of mine work at the Chick-Fil-A in Ho Grille. When Darren Evans came buy, my friend would always give him a TON of free food because he knew he used that food to help feed his family. My friend never felt bad about it and I'm sure Evans didn't give two fucks about breaking an "NCAA violation" because making sure his kid had something to eat was far more important.
That's really what makes this such a crappy situation. We all know he wasn't just using the money for pot or someth-well, let's table that for a second. But yeah, sometimes families legitimately do struggle, and even though the kid is gonna sign a contract worth millions of dollars in 3 years, Momma needs help with the bills by Tuesday. So on the one hand, I can't blame coaches for wanting to help out (300 bucks for an SEC coach is pocket change, after all). The problem is it's done in such a shady way, it certainly appears to be coaches using this kid's family's struggles as leverage to convince him to come play football for them, and that's about as screwed up as it gets.
In light of the video and leaked messages, I just want to say how awful I feel for this kid. I get he made some mistakes, but last night was something he has probably been dreaming about his whole life, and someone was actively trying to ruin his life in the midst of it. What should have been a dream turned into a nightmare.
EDIT: Now deadspin is reporting someone has been trying to sell the bong video for weeks. Someone is really trying to screw this guy.
I would gladly take a nightmare that I wake up from millions of dollars richer. He was drafted 13th in the draft and will probably go on and have a great career in the NFL.
At least if you fall, you fall to a team in a state with no income tax.
Absolutely
"At least if you fall, you fall to a team in a state with no income tax."
Haha! Love that about Florida! That probably only counts for home games, though. I can think of a state that will want their share.
Looking at you, Maryland.
Home games, practices and camp pay. Yes in the NFL you pay game day taxes on where game is played.
...wut?
All your tax are belong to us.
8 home games in Miami"ish" would not have income tax.
The 8 Away game checks would have appropriate taxes for each state the game is held in, though.
1 preseason game has taxes NJ, and 7 away games in taxes. Still a good deal.
Sorry was typing and wife called and minivan Bluetooth picked up, must have posted what I had typed so far.
This is why DC should put their football stadium inside the District. No "jock tax" in DC, forbidden by Congress. Not sure if it would attract football players, but it worked on Max Scherzer.
I will say this about Tunsil, considering the best night of his life got disrupted in the worst possible way, I thought he handled himself pretty damn well. (And he lost literally $8 million)
Especially with the questions about taking the money. He literally found out about those images being leaked while he was being interviewed by the reporter pool for the first time. I thought he handled it about as maturely as could be expected, and answered honestly.
At this point I might actually root for him to be an absolute stud. I loved the answer the Lions GM had when asked if they would have taken Tunsil if he had been available when they picked, and he said something to the effect of "If we eliminated every college player that smoked weed from our Draft Board, we wouldn't be left with a whole lot of guys to choose from"
Agreed, I saw a tweet that I agreed with (can't find it for the life of me now, unfortunately) that said to not blame Tunsil, but blame the insane family situation he was/is dealing with.
From his stepdad suing him to this fiasco, I hope there is a 30 for 30 about him in 15 years about he defied the odds. If he stays out of trouble, and by all accounts he should as the video was several years old, the sky is the limit for him with his talent.
FTFY
I feel terrible for Tunsil, but....smoking weed with a gas mask needs to be like a strip club: no phones.
you're right about that (but he and his friend looked like they had a great time LOL):
cough, cough...
Good Lord! That gas mask thing? Not saying I know...but...
Anybody wants to get me to do that....
You know what bother's me, that bong is supposed to have water in it to filter out the tar and crap and to condense the smoke so you get a much better "hit". Yet, when he is done he takes it off over his head showing that there is clearly no water in it. At that point it is just a fancy pipe/bowl. And he didn't even clear the smoke. I don't know what the hell was he actually doing here, but it sure as hell wasn't smoking weed. Fucking amateurs. /s
The real reason the Ravens passed on him: he didn't do it right
It's funnier when you know I'm a Ravens fan.
If the NCAA somehow doesn't mess this investigation up, what do you think the punishment will be for Ole Miss?
The woman's lacrosse team will be put on 1 yr. probation.