10 NFL Players Who Tackled Investing

2. Eli Manning

The former New York Giants quarterback and two-time Super Bowl winner has also become an investing player, both on his own as an angel investor and as a partner since last year in private equity firm Brand Velocity Group.

Manning experienced his first deal as a Brand Velocity Group partner last fall when the firm acquired a majority position in Score Sports, a youth league apparel business, Bloomberg reported. The portfolio company’s eventual sale might feel like a national championship, he told the wire service.

(Image: Bloomberg)

3. Tom Brady

The recently retired quarterback, six-time Super Bowl winner with the New England Patriots and one-time Super Bowl champ with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers was among the celebrity endorsers and investors in collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX.

He and his ex-wife, Gisele Bundchen, own more than 1.7 million shares in the company, which are now thought to be essentially worthless after FTX sought bankruptcy protection, Bloomberg reported last month. Crypto newsletter Milk Road tweeted in January that Brady’s FTX investment was once valued at $45 million.

The legendary quarterback also is among the FTX endorsers facing an investor class-action lawsuit.

FTX wasn’t Brady’s only business activity, however.

Brady in 2021 co-founded Autograph, a nonfungible token platform that has raised $205 million from investors including Andreessen Horowitz, and he has made a few startup investments, Crunchbase reported.

(Image: Bloomberg)

4. Steve Young

Former San Francisco 49ers quarterback and Pro Football Hall of Famer J. Steven Young, a three-time Super Bowl winner, co-founded the middle-market private equity firm HGGC LLC, where he is partner and chairman.

The California firm, founded in 2007, has made more than $6.8 billion in cumulative capital commitments and completed more than 500 platform investments, add-on acquisitions, recapitalizations and liquidity events with an aggregate transaction value totaling over $68 billion.

(Image: Bloomberg)

5. Ryan Nece

The former NFL linebacker has been involved with numerous philanthropic, community and business activities since his professional sports career, which included six years with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and one with the Detroit Lions.

He’s co-founder and managing partner at Next Play Capital, a Silicon Valley venture capital platform that “provides investors access to top-tier, access-constrained venture funds and venture-backed companies,” according to his LinkedIn profile.

“We grant athletes and sports luminaries unique access into venture capital while maintaining a laser focus on cultivating tangible cross-community value,” his profile says.

Forbes noted that before founding the firm more than eight years ago, Nece had watched other athletes lose money on bad tech investments. Next Play recently raised $200 million for its third fund.

6. Glover Quin Jr.

Quin, a former NFL safety with the Houston Texans and the Detroit Lions, was able to retire comfortably when he stepped away from his 10-year career in 2019, thanks to modest spending and prudent investing, according to reports.

Quin earned about $33 million in his NFL career, and made it a habit to save 70% of his after-tax earnings and spend 30%, NBC Sports reported at the time.

ESPN reported in 2016 that he invested in familiar, publicly traded companies and drove the same Yukon Denali for years, even as he watched fellow players buy flashy cars and jewelry.

Financial advisor Humble Lukanga had recommended the 70-30 savings-spending plan, and Quin’s investments essentially matched his NFL salary over five years, according to ESPN. He eventually started making private equity investments in businesses that he felt might change the world, the outlet reported.

More recently, Quin opened a custom framing business, according to his LinkedIn profile.

(Image: Wikimedia Commons)

7. Brandon Copeland

Copeland, a University of Pennsylvania Wharton School graduate and NFL linebacker for several teams over nearly a decade, teaches a personal finance course at Penn in addition to writing and making videos about money and investing.

He, too, eschewed flashy spending, choosing to live on only 10% to 15% of his pro football earnings, CNBC reported in 2019, noting that Copeland recommended people save at least half their salaries.

The NFL Players Association noted in a profile on Copeland that every summer at his youth football summer camp, he shows campers how short the average 3.5-year NFL career is in an 85-year lifespan — an effort to put their potential athletic careers in perspective and see how they might use them to make the most of their lives later.

(Image: Wikimedia Commons)

8. Devon Kennard

Kennard, a linebacker who has played for four teams in a nine-year NFL career — most recently for the Baltimore Ravens, who reportedly released him in December — writes and speaks about personal finance, real estate investing and entrepreneurship, among other topics.

He describes himself as an avid real estate investor, entrepreneur and philanthropist who has built a portfolio of 20 single‐family and multifamily properties and 30 real estate syndication investments including residential properties, storage facilities, hotels, senior living centers and industrial properties.

“I passionately invest as well as mentor others on how to develop generational wealth through passive income strategies for everybody,” he says, and offers his “NFL brothers financial guidance including through the NFL programs and teams.”

In a Q&A on the NFL Players Association website, Kennard said he advises people to know where their money’s going and that if they don’t understand something, they shouldn’t invest in it.

(Image: Wikimedia Commons)

9. Carl Nassib

Nassib, a Tampa Bay Buccaneers linebacker and the first openly gay NFL player, keeps to a frugal budget despite signing a $25 million, three-year contract with the Las Vegas Raiders in 2020, according to CNBC.

He told the network in a 2019 appearance that he had an Acorns account and favored simple investments like index funds.

“It’s a matter of realizing your spending habits and realizing living below your means, and more and more NFL players are doing that every day,” Nassib said at the time.

A 2018 reality TV show captured him advising his Cleveland Brown teammates on the power of compound interest.

Nassib was following a fairly tight budget — $3,500 a month during football season and $5,500 in the off-season, he told CNBC in 2019.

(Image: Bloomberg)

10. Jake Stoneburner

Former NFL tight end Jake Stoneburner joined his father’s financial advisory firm, Stoneburner Wealth Management, after retiring from the gridiron in 2017 and started helping other players and NFL veterans.

Football players can be high earners one year and then find themselves earning nothing after being cut — and many know little about finances — he told ThinkAdvisor last year. Players need to figure whether and how much to invest and how aggressive to be, he said.

Stoneburner said he tries to help players handle their post-retirement lives, and tells them, “You’re wealthy today, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to be wealthy tomorrow.”