By Rick Maese, Published: July 7
With a stock ticker flickering on one wall, the group of students — a room full of jocks, really — stared ahead attentively, taking in every word. The lecturer was pressed for time and had to describe in machine-gun prattle the classroom’s Bloomberg terminals, the revolutionary computer system that consolidates financial information onto a single platform.
The students in the room, in their first week at George Washington’s School of Business, were a bright bunch. They could run the Tampa-two defense on the football field, a motion offense on the basketball court and even a double-twist punch-front through to double tuck in gymnastics.
But in the classroom, they were absorbing a foreign language.
“I need to get back in the school mind-set,” said Isaiah Stanback, a wide receiver for the Seattle Seahawks who hadn’t sat in a college classroom in five years. “There’s a lot of terminology and subject areas that are totally new to me.”
The 22 students are part of the first class in George Washington’s new two-year program called STAR Executive MBA (STAR stands for Special Talent, Access and Responsibility) designed specifically for professional athletes — some active and others recently retired.
The program has a nontraditional schedule aimed to help students balance their studies with their athletic careers. The current group studied in Washington for 10 days this summer. They’ll meet again in New York in February and later next year in Los Angeles. They’ll hit each of the three cities again in the second year of the program. While there is some work and reading assigned during the long gaps between classroom time, the athletes say they have such busy travel and work schedules, the flexibility offered by the program was a huge draw.
Dominique Dawes was in Los Angeles last week for a television audition. Retired from gymnastics 11 years ago after three Olympic appearances, Dawes essentially has run a full-time business off her brand and her name since then.
“It’s all about motivating and empowering young people, especially women, to believe in themselves, to focus on health, fitness and wellness,” the Silver Spring native said. “That’s what my brand has been about. However, this business school experience will help me start businesses that I’ve wanted to start as a young person but didn’t have the knowledge or the skill set at that time to pursue.”
The program carries a price tag of $95,000, and school officials say students receive the same level of education and attention as MBA students in more traditional programs. Their first set of classes includes business ethics, critical perspectives on business and society and financial accounting.
“We never thought about this as a sports marketing program,” said Doug Guthrie, who took over as the business school’s dean last year. “To us, it’s a social responsibility and leadership program. So there’s a big emphasis on leadership, corporate and social responsibility, ethics and giving these people the business skills they need to make the transition beyond their sport.”
Exploring their options
The weekend before classes began last month, students flew in from around the country. Out-of-town athletes stayed in an area hotel. The few locals, such as Dawes and Rocky McIntosh, the free agent linebacker who played the past five seasons with the Washington Redskins, set their alarms early.
Dawes, in fact, had a glass of white wine the night before she reported to class to calm her nerves. And the following morning, Samari Rolle, who played cornerback for 11 years in the NFL, and his wife, Danisha Hemphill-Rolle, woke up early.
“He was so excited,” she said. “‘Come on, honey. We’re here. Let’s go.’”
The Rolles are both in the program. While offered exclusively to professional athletes, the school encourages spouses to enroll, as well.
“It’s sort of the beginning of a new chapter in their relationship together,” said Michael Lythcott, the program’s managing director. “They had a set life for a number of years — and one person might have been absent for a good chunk of that — so this brings them together and gives them something to work on with each other.”
Rolle retired in spring 2010. He has an idea for an invention — an updated version of the blocking sled used by football coaches across the country — and also would like to prepare himself to serve as an NFL general manager. His wife, Danisha, meantime, already has a publishing company that produces SET Magazine (Sports and Entertainment Today).
All the athletes entered the program with a business plan or vision. While a bachelor’s degree is required, students do not have to take the Graduate Management Admission Test, a prerequisite of most MBA programs.
Stanback, the Seattle receiver, is entering his fifth season in the NFL. The 26-year-old didn’t want to wait until his football career ends before exploring his post-football options.
“I don’t love school, by nature,” he said. “I guess you could say a lot of athletes kind of do it because we have to. Later in life, though, we find out how important it was and how many doors it opens.”
Courting football players
Some come to that realization sooner than others. While the program’s inaugural class features an NFL assistant coach (the Minnesota Vikings’ Jimmie Johnson) and a professional poker player (Michelle Lau), most members of the group are football players, including current Baltimore Ravens linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo, a three-time Pro Bowler on special teams; former Ravens linebacker Duane Starks, who played 10 years in the NFL and won a Super Bowl with Baltimore in 2001; and Will Witherspoon, a nine-year veteran currently with the Tennessee Titans.
School officials said it made sense to target the NFL because many football players are forced to pursue a second career much sooner than they might prefer. The average NFL career is less than 31 / 2 years — though the average for players on an opening day roster is actually closer to six years, according to the league. Those numbers are recited ad nauseum to players each year, starting at the rookie symposium that precedes each season.
“They beat into your head that football doesn’t last forever, but it’s hard as a competitor to think about something ending,” said Hannibal Navies, who played nine years in the NFL with four teams before retiring in 2007. “You’re trying to be the best you can be, not really thinking about what happens when it’s finished.”
School officials have big plans for the program. They’ve lined up several current and former athletes to begin classes in February, including Priest Holmes, the three-time all-pro running back. They’re in discussions with the different sports leagues and would like to launch concurrent tracks. A golfer, soccer player or tennis star might have an easier time attending classes in the winter months, rather than the spring or summer, for example.
Eventually, Guthrie thinks the program will bring in actors, musicians and fashion models.
“The key thing about this is the underlying principle,” Guthrie said, “when people have a lot of resources early on in their career, how do they make the transition to sustain business development when those resources might go away and how do they become socially responsible citizens? So that’s a big swath of people that we’d love to see this develop into.”
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Legacy Dividend, the Business of Football
What if a company you invested in never paid you a dividend for your investment, but the value of the company increased by 500%? That would be a pretty rotten deal right? If you invested your hard-earned money in a company, when its value is low, because of your faith and love for the company itself, it would be hard to swallow watching that company grow generating huge profits from your investment.
The definition of a dividend is the following: payments made by a corporation to its shareholder members. It is the portion of corporate profits paid out to stockholders.When a corporation earns a profit or surplus, that money can be put to two uses: it can either be re-invested in the business (called retained earnings), or it can be paid to the shareholders as a dividend. Many corporations retain a portion of their earnings and pay the remainder as a dividend. The most successful companies in the world pay a dividend to their shareholders for a multitude of reasons, the main one being the fact that a dividend makes it attractive to investors.
Now imagine that you are a pre-1993 NFL Legend. You have invested in the company (team) your blood, sweat, tears, and broken bodies, Super Bowl’s, conference championships, Pro Bowls, and the occasional Hall of Fame. In return, from the company (team), you received a minimal return on your investment. That exchange doesn’t seem to equitable does it?
Now imagine that the company (team) continues to take investment funds from you in the form of your media rights and your name and likeness. Imagine that company (team) continues to generate hundreds of millions of dollars from your images, your video, your name, Your Legacy, while you generate nothing from your investment anymore. Even worse, imagine the company’s (team’s) value growing from small-cap status to a large-cap status, to the tune of 500%, with your hard-earned investment and you received no increased return in the form of a dividend or any percentage of the upside. Now that sounds like the worst deal possible right?
Well it’s happening right now, and has been for years in the National Football League. Now, I get the fact that the 32 NFL teams are private corporations and not public corporations, but the concept is the same. The 32 NFL teams are continuing to earn millions of dollars off of the legacy of its players and paying no dividend return on that investment. The NFL Players Association Former Players have been advocating for the past two years for a legacy fund to be created so that these 32 NFL teams can start paying back those dividends earned by the players that helped build these teams from a value of approximately $300,000 to a value of approximately $1 billion. Each individual NFL team should have the responsibility of making whole the investors who helped grow the game to the tune of $9 billion in revenue per year.
Who can argue that the men, investors, Sunday heroes, who we see now hobbled and crippled from their investment, should not be entitled to that dividend which they earned and continue to earn every debilitating day? The 32 NFL owners should recognize that continuing to profit from investors without allowing them to share in the dividends is not just bad business practice, but it’s ethically wrong. What’s worse, using it as a negotiating tactic in the current labor issue hits the moral low ground. Let’s hope in the coming days the pre-1993 NFL Legends will finally see dividend returns on their investments and start to recover from their 18 year economic depression.
by Nolan Harrison III
Senior Director
NFLPA
Friday, July 1, 2011
TEDxBloomington -- Nolan Harrison III - "Childhood Dreams of Heroes, My Long and Winding Road"
I had an outstanding time doing this event. I have spoken for years for different events or causes, but it was new for me opening up on a personal level like this in a public forum, but what better place than Bloomington Indiana. I hope you enjoy watching this Tedx Talk as much as I enjoyed doing it.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
NFLPA Former Player Message June 26, 2011
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"Meanwhile, the entire NFL has a duty to the "gladiators" who paved the way for the league's 
You can walk your way to less disability, reduced arthritis pain and increased balance and strength 
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
NFLPA Former Player Message Friday May 20, 2011
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Wednesday, May 18, 2011
“Our heroes are a lot like us” | Nolan Harrison TedX on USTREAM. Conference
Read more here: http://buildingheroes.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/our-heroes-are-a-lot-like-us-nolan-harrison-tedx-on-ustream-conference/
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