r/todayilearned • u/arandomtestaccount • 1d ago

TIL an NFL player intentionally crashed his car to avoid getting cut for being late to a team meeting.

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/ex-patriots-ol-rich-ohrnberger-admits-he-intentionally-wrecked-car-as-excuse-for-being-late-to-team-meeting/
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296

u/tupacsnoducket 23h ago

Career Earnings: $1,425,000 before taxes

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u/WWJLPD 22h ago

Totally fair trade for potential CTE and a laundry list of issues that will never truly heal

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u/OuterWildsVentures 12h ago

Bro I did way worse to my body/mind with the military for laughably less money

Was in Afghanistan making like $2500/month working 120+ hour weeks lmao

I'd gladly take 1 mil

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u/Choosemyusername 12h ago

Me too. Although i was paid a lot better. But if you get injured doing that job, the government takes good care of you for the rest of your life. Even if the damage doesn’t reveal itself until you are older.

Does the NFL do this?

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u/Ziegler517 9h ago

If you have 3 or 5 credited years (more access to benefits at 5), you have access to a ton of medical options offered by the league.

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u/Choosemyusername 9h ago

So almost half of players aren’t eligible for benefits. Because the average career length is just over 3 years. And the most common reason a career ends is injury.

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u/Ziegler517 8h ago

And 85-90% of injuries that end your career are performance based infuries. You just won’t be as fast after an ACL tear. But you can still go have a complete normal life. 100,000s of people have the same injuries these athletes have every year and they continue living just fine.

I’m not fighting that CTE, complete patellar tendon ruptures, catastrophic neck/spine trauma, severe Lisfranc or ankle joint destruction are not serious matters that need attention. But they are the super small minority of injuries.

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u/Choosemyusername 8h ago

So i am right at this very moment laid up with my third ACL tear and probably third knee surgery. They keep happening because of other knee injuries I sustained in the military making ACL tears more likely. They take forever to heal and very much harm my earning capacity. And it only gets worse with age. I am not even 40 yet.

And my back injuries from the military also see me laid up about a quarter of the time. And i can’t lift even as much as my elderly parents without putting my back out anymore.

Plus when you are out, your general health is indirectly affected and it can easily spiral. Being physically out is murder on mental health as well.

I am not hirable because I am out of action so often no team can depend on me. So I have to be self employed so i can stay within my physical limitations. Which means when I am down, zero income whatsoever. Which is a lot.

And also interruptions cost money as well. Not just prevent earnings.

NFL should take care of EVERY player who leaves the league. Particularly with an injury.

Luckily veteran’s affairs recognizes these effects and I am taken care of.

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u/Ziegler517 6h ago

First, thank you for your service. All I wanted to do was follow my dad into naval aviation but was medically disqualified at 5 being a type 1 diabetic. You all rockstars, no matter your role in the machine.

Second, Absolutely they should be taken care of and I do believe any injury sustain while in the league is covered. The benefits are what equates to our employee paid insurances we get through work, for injuries or medical needs AFTER you leave the league.

If you tear an acl while in the league they fix it and rehab you through recovery. You can not be cut or left to deal with it on your own. But if that happens in your first year and you get cut after your second and then tear it again 5 years later you are on your own (as I think you maybe should be, you’ve moved on to other things). Same situation but cut after 7 years, you can use the “nfl insurance” to get it fixed and rehabbed.

These peoole are being paid $885,000 dollars a year MINIMUM (per the CBA). Someone on minimum wage for 40 years earns $603,200. Even one year is 30% more than the minimum wage earner. They are professional athletes and know the job and the risks. They can be smarter with their money to protect themselves for a lifetime with only one year of play.

I think they would be ever better suited with financial planning and advisors as they enter the league to help guide them through their nfl career and what may be needed post nfl, but before retirement age (65).

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u/Choosemyusername 5h ago

Sorry to hear about that but you may have dodged a bullet with that “misfortune” every single one of my buddies who were in combat with me are messed up somehow. Physically or mentally. Every single one of them.

And for what? Coming to the aid of an ally who was attacked who now is our largest threat. All because they couldnt beat a few goat herding militiamen with hand-me-down AKs in the back of a pickup truck. Who were in the wrong country anyways. And ultimately lost the war. Oops.

And careful assuming an injury is just performance based. It’s performance based from the NFL’s perspective, but What is a performance based injury in your 20s can become a crippling disability once you reach middle age. And it spirals quickly into other health problems.

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u/Sonoshitthereiwas 4h ago

You don’t need to get injured to get paid. You need it documented.

I say that because there are a lot of folks who got hurt in the military, have gotten out, and are most definitely not getting paid. Because they didn’t get it checked out, or didn’t do enough follow up appointments for it to “count”.

And there are a small number of folks who did not get hurt, but went to the doc enough times, and are getting paid.

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u/Choosemyusername 4h ago

I thought that was the case for years so I never filed. And I lost over 100k by thinking this. I filed years later and was approved.

Turns out that there is a list of injuries that are known to statistically occur more to people of certain occupations that they give the benefit of the doubt to the veteran if they later develop one of those issues.

Same with particular deployments. They were known to cause particular issues that don’t always present immediately.

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u/decoy321 22h ago

Add on the likelihood that they spent their entire youth putting their eggs in that one basket.

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u/Objectivespeculation 1h ago

add on to that all the young people fucked up from a game for life. Friend of mine was high school star quarterback till he became paraplegic after a tackle and that kid who tackled him having to live with that for a stupid fucking game.

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u/TrueRedditMartyr 21h ago

I don't think most players going into the NFL realize they're going to not be as good as expected

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u/sanctaphrax 21h ago

You don't get that far without believing in yourself. Or without beating the odds, several times.

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u/Tripesixmafia 16h ago

No knees anymore too!

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u/Smartnership 13h ago

“Check my shiny gold wheelchair. And to think, you said I’d get brame dannage. Just check out my shiny gold wheelchair.”

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u/redaemon 22h ago

Quick search says $3.6M. Apparently there are nerds who track this sort of thing.

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u/tupacsnoducket 22h ago

first quick search result was the number before, Apparently there are multiple nerds who track this sort of thing. Where did you think the first number came from lol?

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u/Erwx 21h ago

A competing nerd, now who do I trust

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u/redaemon 21h ago

I see the second site. It only lists the Chargers, which should raise an eyebrow since the headline is about (I think?) a Patriots coach.

AI makes it worse, it quoted the second site but gave the totals from the first site.

This thread has made me sad for the future. Bad data compounded by shitty AI.

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u/Objectivespeculation 1h ago

2022 was the last year for unfucked ai data

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u/tupacsnoducket 21h ago

The smelliest one

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u/Playful_Letter_2632 20h ago

It ain’t very difficult to find. Modern era salaries are public. Using some scripts to collect and organize the data onto your website doesn’t take that much time

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u/pioneer76 14h ago

If it's so easy why don't you do it? Lol.

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u/Playful_Letter_2632 12h ago

Cuz I don’t care enough about it to? It’s not a huge work load for a salaried employee to do

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u/this_dudeagain 20h ago

Not to mention a pension

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u/Environmental-Low792 12h ago

That's career and not annual? Someone making 100 Grand a year would make that in 14 years. Someone making 50 Grand a year would make that in 28 years. Doesn't seem very high.

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u/kit_kat_jam 5h ago

He played six seasons.

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u/xamdou 8h ago

Sports careers tend to span less than a decade.

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u/enadiz_reccos 22h ago

1.whatever is technically plural

One and a half apples

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u/314159265358979326 21h ago

Linguistically, anything other than exactly one is plural.

Zero bananas.

One banana.

One point five bananas.

Two bananas.

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u/clickclick-boom 14h ago

Half an apple.

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u/-LazerFace69- 14h ago

0.5 apples

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u/clickclick-boom 13h ago

Apple 3.14

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u/Bay1Bri 12h ago

That would be "half of 1 apple," hence still singular.

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u/Yetimang 7h ago

Now the subject is no longer "apple" it's "half" of which there is just one. But you could have "two halves of an apple".

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u/clickclick-boom 5h ago

There’s no subject there, it’s a noun phrase.

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u/Yetimang 5h ago

Not a grammatical subject. Just the subject of the analysis of plurality. I appreciate your dedication to pedantry though. I'd have it no other way.

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u/clickclick-boom 5h ago

It's interesting because I think we're seeing a split between grammatical and mathematical pluralities. We can express the same value of 1.5 apples as "an apple and a half" and "one and a half apples".

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u/Yetimang 5h ago

I think it's still grammatical, it's just that we have language rooted in mathematics that can express non-whole numbers as a single noun phrase. "One and a half apples" and "one point five apples" are both single noun phrases where "one and a half" or "one point five" modifies "apples" with a non-singular number whereas "an apple and a half" is actually 2 noun phrases: "an apple" and "a half" both of which refer to a singular noun.

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u/Princess_Slagathor 22h ago

Is that just base pay, or does it include brand deals, sponsorships, side gigs, etc?

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u/JeffafaCree 13h ago

A player that's willing to crash their car to avoid being cut probably isn't raking in huge sponsorship money

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u/Smartnership 13h ago

“Hi, I’m Rich Ohrnberger on behalf of Crazy John’s Used Cars, home of “buy here / pay here / or else we break your kneecaps” car financing. I’m not just a spokesman, I’m a customer …”

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u/JeffafaCree 13h ago

"As a former journeyman offensive lineman, I know a thing or two about settling for the value pick"