Carrying The Ball In Business

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Could Billy Joe DuPree be the same type of hands-on manager if he played pro basketball or baseball instead of pro football? Probably not. As rare as he is in the National Football League, DuPree would be an endangered species in the National Basketball Association or the Major Leagues, where 82- and 162-game regular seasons, respectively, and the travel they involve make office work virtually impossible. As one baseball agent puts it, "The only time I try to discuss business with a client while he's playing is during spring training." On the other hand, if DuPree played basketball or baseball he could expect to be making an annual base salary two or three times the average NFL wage package of about $90,000, which might make deferring his entrepreneurial dreams a little easier.

Willie Davis was one who waited, and it hasn't seemed to slow him down. Davis, the Pro Football Hall of Fame defensive end from the glorious Green Bay Packer teams of the 1960s, never made big money in the NFL, but now he owns a beer distributorship in Los Angeles and five radio stations from Texas to Washington State, and he sits on the boards of such corporate giants as MGM/UA Entertainment Co. and Mattel Inc. Pretty good for a guy who never even got to go out for a pass.

If he really wanted to build a business empire before his playing days were over, DuPree would be better off competing in an individual sport such as tennis or golf, where the money is generally bigger, the allegiance to one city or organization is more limited, and the competition is both global and year-round. John Newcombe and Bjorn Borg, two tennis superstars of recent eras, both quit the sport long before their top competitive years were over. In Newcombe's case it was because the opportunity was there to make more as a broadcaster and businessman than he ever had winning Wimbledon. For Borg, the millions he had already won, plus the strain of having ruled the tennis world as a teenager, persuaded him to hang his racquet up early. Both have enough far-flung business interests to keep them busy -- and wealthy -- for a long, long time.

Perhaps no athlete of modern times has built more of an entrepreneurial track record than Arnold Palmer. The golfing legend of the 1960s, Palmer oversees a vast empire that includes dry cleaning shops, automobile dealerships, golf clubs, golf course construction, and his endorsement of scores of products both in the United States and abroad. Palmer was also the first client of Mark McCormack's International Management Group, based in Cleveland. What kind of managerial advice does IMG dispense to today's up-and-coming pro athlete?

"If he's still an active player," says IMG senior vice-president Bud Stanner, we like to steer him away from investments which require active management. It's just too tough to play and manage a business at the same time. The exception might be the race-car driver who runs his own engine shop on the side, but that kind of business is directly tied to his athletic career. Otherwise, we're very cautious. If, say, a [Washington Redskins quarterback] Joe Theismann wants to get into the car-wash business, we'll structure a deal for him that costs him no money up front, gives him 20% of the business, and allows him plenty of veto power over how his name is used for promotion. Then if he wants to go into the business full-time when he retires, at least he knows something about it."

Stanner points out the huge gap between managing an international star and advising an NFL roster player. "Somebody like Borg or Jackie Stewart is making significant money in something like 20 countries annually," he says, "so you've got a small business going just figuring out all the applicable tax codes. That's far different from representing, say, a nose guard on the Chicago Bears. He might be quite well known in Chicago but unknown anywhere else. When he wants investment advice, he usually gets it from a lawyer or accountant friend with no direct fiduciary responsibility to him."

Steve Freyer, an ex-Denver Bronco and ex-banker who is now executive vice-president of Sports Advisors Group, a multiservice athletes' agency in Boston, agrees on two points: Solo sports are more fertile to entrepreneurism than team sports, and most jocks get lured into questionable investments by old school pals with laundromat plans up their sleeves. But he also sounds a somber note when assessing the dramatic rise in players' salaries over recent years and the entrepreneurial opportunities such personal capital brings.

"Most of the big contract signers are still playing," says Freyer, "so the effect hasn't been felt yet. But wait 5 or 10 years. Then I think you'll be reading more and more horror stories about millionaire ex-jocks who've lost small fortunes through unscrupulous business practices or sheer stupidity. I already know of one ex-Red Sox [player] who dropped $300,000 in a shopping mall that never got built, and that's not that unusual. I'm absolutely confident there are plenty of others out there who are also getting raped -- and on a huge scale."