Over the past few years in the National Football League, we’ve seen a long list of players experience the difficult ramifications of poor financial decisions. According to a report by Sports Illustrated, 78% of NFL players are bankrupt or facing financial pressure within two years of leaving the league. This summer, quarterback Mark Brunell was forced to declare bankruptcy at age 40, despite a long career in which he earned more than $50 million.

Today Super Bowl MVP Drew Brees talked to me about his own financial experiences, and his project, launched with the backing of VISA, to provide financial education for young people and particularly young athletes. Called Financial Football, you can read more about the project and play its interactive game at practicalmoneyskills.com.

Stay for the last question: Brees won’t rule out a career in politics after he’s done playing football.

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You can subscribe to the Coffee & Markets podcast by following the links above, and if you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show, and you can listen to more at our episode archive.

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Over the past few years in the National Football League, we’ve seen a long list of players experience the difficult ramifications of poor financial decisions. According to a report by Sports Illustrated, 78% of NFL players are bankrupt or facing financial pressure within two years of leaving the league. This summer, quarterback Mark Brunell was forced to declare bankruptcy at age 40, despite a long career in which he earned more than $50 million.

Today Super Bowl MVP Drew Brees talked to me about his own financial experiences, and his project, launched with the backing of VISA, to provide financial education for young people and particularly young athletes. Called Financial Football, you can read more about the project and play its interactive game at practicalmoneyskills.com.

Stay for the last question: Brees won’t rule out a career in politics after he’s done playing football.

Download Podcast | iTunes | Podcast Feed

You can subscribe to the Coffee & Markets podcast by following the links above, and if you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show, and you can listen to more at our episode archive.

Tom Brady comes off an MVP season and leaves his pregnant girlfriend for an SI cover model, and no one says he “disgraces the game.” Michael Jordan screws anything standing up and gambles madly, and no one says he “disgraces the game.” But Tiger Woods? That’s a different story.

It’s finally arrived.

Eight sports: Fantasy Football. Baseball. Basketball. Hockey. NASCAR. Golf. NCAA Football Pickem. March Madness.

Ten players: Tom, Emily, Jeff, Ellis, Brad, Kevin, Chris, Leon, Andy (the pro), and me.

One league: The Ultimate Fantasy Sports League.

Yeah, we know.  It’s crazy.  But we’re doing it.

Because this is America. And we can.

I am not supposed to be happy about what Josh Hamilton did the other night. At least, not if I read the sports blogs out there. I’m supposed to put on my shiny pretentiousness hat, given out with every .com purchase on GoDaddy, and approach Hamilton’s story with sarcasm and ridicule for the man’s faith. Maybe dismiss him as old news. Maybe put up an old mugshot from his crack-addicted days and mock him as a jackass. Maybe make some crack about how he’s going to give that worship up since he didn’t win the Home Run Derby, and that he’ll keep switching religions til he does. He just hit 35 homers, yeah, whatever.

But I’ll leave that to the commenters at Deadspin.

This article from 2006 wasn’t the first one I’d read about Josh Hamilton and his tragic tale of personal failure. Neither was this eerily similar one from 2007, or any of the other profiles out there. I can’t remember what it was. But I know it was a long time ago. Way before he never made it past A ball. Way before he ended up as one of the worst draft picks of all time (according to ESPN, number 35).

I remembered seeing a TV interview with Hamilton when he was drafted 1st overall in 1999, watching it in my college dorm and realizing he was my age – and that he looked like just a good, All-American kid – and I remember reading about how it all fell apart. How he made it all fall apart. How he blew all his money, got kicked out, driven down. How he disappeared.

I saw a picture of him in a magazine in 2003. This was the new Josh Hamilton, staring out of sullen, sunken eyes – a picture that said drug addict, bust, failure. He didn’t look like The Natural – he looked like any other Crown Royal-swilling crack addicted piece of white trash – covered in tattoos, garish and ornate, demons and patterns, his skin telling of late nights and drug fueled blackouts and lost memories. As Dave Sheinin wrote: The Devil and the Son of God, waging war.

There’s a plot twist to this one, though. The Devil lost.

It’s funny the way you start paying attention to an athlete – one who’s never played on any of my teams, or even in the same state. But for the past several years, every roto league I’ve been in, I’ve drafted Josh Hamilton. First it was just the last pick of each round – like he was a mascot or something. Then earlier. Then this year, I took him in the sixth round, knowing the eyebrows of others would rise…and at the halfway mark of the season, he’s ranked 4th in points among all Fantasy Baseball players.

He says he made the long road back out of the blackness thanks to his loving family and his Christian faith. He says it’s saved his life. And he’s not shy about it. He wants to tell everybody. He knows where he’s come from, and what a gift this second – or is it third, or fourth – chance is.

I get a lot of abuse in visiting cities, but it only bothers me when people are vulgar around kids. The rest I can handle. Some of it is even funny. In St. Louis, I was standing in rightfield when a fan yelled, “My name is Josh Hamilton, and I’m a drug addict!” I turned around and looked at him with my palms raised to the sky. “Tell me something I don’t know, dude,” I said. The whole section started laughing and cheering, and the heckler turned to them and said, “Did you hear that? He’s my new favorite player.” They cheered me from that point on.

So I’ll leave it to more jaded writers to mock how Hamilton said he’d dreamed of this moment – of stepping to the plate at Yankee Stadium, hitting in the Home Run Derby. How he’d dreamed it two years ago, when the whole thing seemed like just a fantasy, an impossibility for a former drug addict whose best hope was a minor league career and a steady paycheck. How his faith led him back from the brink – faith not in his own ability, but in something greater. They can mock. It’s what they do.

As for me, if I’d been in the park the other night, I would’ve been chanting his name with all the rest, realizing that, whatever Hamilton’s career in the big leagues turns out to be in the years ahead, for this night – in this moment – we were all witnesses to a resurrection.

>> The first two are no big deal, but trust me, you want to read number three.

>> Tom Brady says he’s a ham when looking for some roughing-the-passer sympathy. “As I’m falling, I’m kind of looking at the ref with, like, a pouty dog face, like, can you believe they just hit me late?”

Forgive me, Mighty Football Gods, for I have sinned.

You must understand why I doubted your existence. After so many wonderful karmic finishes, where right was rewarded and evil punished, I and so many of my fellow fans and gamblers doubted that the season would end in anything less than perfection for the New England Patriots. The injustice of it all – a team stocked with arrogant jerks, cheaters, and metrosexuals, with a coach who may be the biggest jackass of his NFL generation (and among some strong candidates, you have to admit) – attaining football immortality. The miles upon miles of bandwagon Welker jersey-wearing Pats fans shouting epithets and reveling in their triumph. The prospect of the urtard writing story after story from here til doomsday about whether Tom Brady is hotter than Larry Bird or vice versa.

I’d seen the Giants live this season. I knew their many weaknesses. I thought, in my foolishness, that only a well-balanced team, a team like the Packers, could have a chance to stop the juggernaut. And so when that second Tynes field goal went through the uprights in Lambeau, I lost all hope. Never have I longed so much for Elisha, son of Manning to attain victory, but never have I so strongly believed he would fail. 19-0 was inevitable. You could write a book.

I did not comprehend your plan – how could I have? But if I had, I would’ve seen the magnificent beauty of it. This is the greatest karma of all, the greatest punishment you could wreak upon a franchise. What would’ve been an astounding feat – a perfect regular season – is now remembered only for its shocking, unexpected ending. What would’ve been the NFL’s greatest team now goes down as one of the greatest chokes in sports history. You hit the hardest when you fall from the top of the mountain, before the largest audience in Super Bowl history. And what a wonderful fall it was, at the hands of a team of scrubs, led by Kevin Boss and David Tyree, and quarterbacked by the Elvii-eluding Elisha.

I still cannot believe it. But that is the nature of your works.

I’ve loved this game for so long out of the belief in you – that because of your unseen hands, modern day football, more than any other sport, rewards hard work, toughness, and character over flash, arrogance, and preening egos. But over the past year, my doubts had overtaken me, and I was on the cusp of becoming a non-believer.

The seeds of my doubt were planted during the Art Monk Hall of Fame fiasco. You will understand: after eight years of seeing my childhood hero denied, I saw the writing on the wall with the upcoming class of Cris Carter, Andre Reed, Tim Brown, Jerry Rice…this was the last opportunity for a wideout of the previous generation to get into the Hall. I could not believe it, but it seemed his window had closed. The season was a roller coaster of emotion, with the horrible leadership of Roger Goodell, the tragic death of Sean Taylor, and the celebration of T.O. and Randy Moss. And then, with the recent reports by John Clayton and other luminaries that Darrell Green – one of the greatest cornerbacks to ever play the game – could be denied entry into Canton as well, my heart was set.

I knew it. Karma was dead. The football gods were no more. Asgard lay empty.

How wrong I was. And so in joy and thankfulness, I beg your forgiveness. Help thou mine unbelief, oh mighty gods of the gridiron. I will not doubt thy works again.

>> The tale of Sir Norvous. “Ladanius de la Tomlinson sighs and says, “I sometimes think that all you tell me of knighthood, kingdoms, empires and islands is all windy blather and lies.”

Taylor and his fiancee, Jackie Garcia, were asleep with their 18-month-old daughter when they were awakened by noises in the house. Taylor reached for a machete or other form of knife he keeps nearby in case of emergency, Sharpstein said. He told CNN that Taylor then locked the door of the bedroom, but that an intruder kicked the door in and fired twice, striking Taylor once in the upper leg. Garcia and the child were uninjured.

“This was a deliberate attack,” said Vinny Cerrato, Redskins vice president of football operations.

In pro football, the Free Safety is the last line of Defense against the opposition. He is expected to cover ground at an incredible pace, snag key interceptions on long passes, run stride for stride with the best speed receivers in the league, and outleap the best jumpers at the endzone. He must play smart yet fearless, guard against the big play, be an exceptional open field tackler, and never give up anything. He must guard the line of the endzone.

It is not a position for the weak of heart. So Sean Taylor’s heart was huge.

The violent death of Redskins Free Safety Sean Taylor is not something that any fanbase, any team can get over – maybe ever. Even before his death early Tuesday morning, Taylor was leading all defensive players in Pro Bowl votes, and the entire NFL in interceptions. The sudden demise of such a talented young athlete, nationally known, about to enter the prime of his career, has only one real comparison: it is as devastating to a franchise and a city as the death of Len Bias 21 years ago.

Sean Taylor was described as many things – but perhaps more often than any other term, he was held up as an example of the prototypical free safety of a new, more violent National Football League. At The U, he was a physical freak, an amazing specimen, equipped with the size and strength of a linebacker and the speed and agility of a cornerback. Taylor didn’t just cover – he hit, and he hit hard. In just his second year in the league, he became a feared slammer, tagged as “The Hitman,” “The Grim Reaper,” or by some, the term that’s now become even larger than him: “Meast.”

Sean Taylor was a human highlight reel. Footage of wide receivers being decked by Taylor in his first year turned into footage of wideouts developing alligator arms, or giving up on routes rather than risk getting pummeled by the young man from Miami. I was there for much of it – my sister, brother and I had season tickets in 2005, his first full year as a starter – and we couldn’t help but be amazed at what we were witnessing on the field. This was a game-changing old school tough, with the physical gifts to play like a wild man – a once-in-a-lifetime player. A phenom who actually surpassed his hype.

Writers said he was the next Ronnie Lott. No one laughed; a few wide receivers winced. And now he is gone.

The shock of this young man’s death extends beyond the margins of the field, to fans and non-fans alike. People who loved Taylor’s style, if not his team, mourn the loss of one of the most entertaining on-field talents in the game. People who knew him only from television and the sidelines stand and light candles in a cold, dark night as if he was a brother. And as the countless stories shared on websites over the past few hours show us, for many of the youngest Redskins fans, this marks the first confrontation with death.

Others are already locked into a debate, prompted at least in part by Chicago’s Mike Wilbon and his insensitive comments, about the role Taylor’s “association with thug life” had with his death. In reality, this is almost certainly a massive oversimplification. Taylor was the son of a Florida City Chief of Police. He has no drug record, and the 2005 DUI charge against him was tossed as soon as the judge saw the videotape (which didn’t feature a particularly positive performance by Northern Virginia’s finest). His lone standing arrest, for a run-in with the individual who stole his ATV, has been blown completely out of proportion. And even if you accept a view of Sean Taylor as an off-field thug (one wonders what this makes Pac Man Jones, Tank Johnson, or anyone else), his teammates and friends universally hold the opinion that this is a young man who had matured significantly over the past two years. He was never one to engage in public relations activity, but those who covered the team couldn’t help but notice the change, from an egotistical and proud young man to a father and soon-to-be husband.

Taylor’s experience may ultimately have more in common with the bizarre home invasion and kidnapping of the Texans’ Dunta Robinson, or the drive-by murder of Darrent Williams. They are all young, prominent black men, none of them with gang ties, none of them known for frequenting strip clubs or violent locales, all with some degree of wealth – and all of them were deliberately targeted. While there remains confusion about whether this was a burglary attempting to catch an empty house on gameday, Taylor reportedly went on a bike ride Sunday evening before he turned in, so it’s possible his attackers knew full well he’d be at home.

For a few days at least, Taylor’s death transcends sports – and stands as a terrible reminder of the astounding death rates of young black men, one more young life cut short far too soon. The sad truth is that many white commentators will sincerely nod their heads, and sigh, and speak of how tragic it all is…and, growing uncomfortable, move on to other issues they find more pressing. And the death march will go on.

The shock of this death will fade for many – but not for me, and not for those for whom Sean will always be the center of their life. I have no idea if Sean Taylor’s family can help his fiancee and daughter the way they need it at this moment, but I know Coach Joe Gibbs can help this team the way it needs it at this moment, and so do his former players. Moments like these demand the leadership of a someone who knows his Creator, and knows him well. We can only pray and hope there are similar individuals in the lives of Jackie Garcia and her young daughter, who will never know her father’s face.

It is a dark day. But when I think about the last moments of Sean Taylor’s life, I can’t help but imagine that he knew the position he was in as he stood for before the last line, and knew it well.

The story we are told today is that when he heard the noise, he took a blade he kept under the bed for emergencies – he still never owned a gun – and locked the bedroom door. He stood in front of it, doubtlessly focused as he gripped the handle, standing at the ready, his wife and young daughter in the room behind him. He could not know what would come, but he had to know, as any young father does, that whoever it was would never pass by him.

Sean Taylor would guard the line to the end. Let them find the man who did it better.

R.I.P.

[tags]Sean Taylor, NFL, Redskins[/tags]