Lamar Campbell | Life After The Game

Ask any inner city kid playing high school football what they aspire to become when they grow up and 9 times out of 10 the answer will be “to play in the NFL.” Just as rappers rapping in hopes of amassing a fortune, young inner city kids with any amount of athletic skills have hopes of playing in the NFL or the NBA so they too can get the multi-million dollar contracts. But reality can seem to render half-truths with the façade of champagne lifestyles and caviar dreams.

I too thought that once you sign into the pro’s you’re on your way to a life only regular folks dreamt of until this interview. Not all pro-ball players get the 7 figure salaries. Most often than not, their salaries are more like $200,000 to $300,000. Who’s better to tell the reality of it all than someone who actually lived it such as an ex-pro ball player?

“I played with the Detroit Lions when we were winning!” –Lamar Campbell

Lamar, let’s go back to when you first started playing football in the NFL, were you drafted out of high school or was it college?

No, actually my senior year of high school, I had to transfer schools out to a suburban district. It was a new situation for me. It was a team that actual had perennial football powers and had a lot of guys that were already going D1 (Division 1). It was a situation where I was just trying to “get in where I fit in.” Allegedly I had gotten into some trouble back in the inner city and they thought it would be better for me to go to school out in suburbia. The new school had a really good program and it was a good school. They had won the presidential award for education. It was a great opportunity. I was just looking to take my mind off the streets and get into something positive. I’m from Philadelphia. City of brotherly love isn’t always that brotherly love feeling. When I got to Strath Haven High School (Wallingford, PA), I was a 5’8, 155 linebacker and wide receiver. They were already stacked at all the other positions and once again I just wanted to “get in where I fit in.” You know, I really didn’t take to camp real well and I didn’t like being out there in the sun with the temperature hitting 95 degrees while all my boys were just hanging out; it was just what I wasn’t use to doing. In the 1st pre-season game, during one of the scrimmages, the coach threw me a pass and I got my head knocked off. That kind of pissed me off of course with me being a competitor so I told the quarterback to throw the same pass again. He was like no, I’m not supposed to do that and I said listen, throw the same pass again and I went 95 yards for a touchdown. When I got to the sidelines my coach said “wow, I didn’t know you had that in you.” I said listen, to keep my mom off my back and tell her I’m doing a good job, I’ll score as many touchdowns as you want me to. And that’s pretty much how it all started. We had a great season. I really wasn’t recruited highly. I had never played before so when they came to see the other people play, I had an opportunity to get scholarship offers from the big 10 universities, a lot of SEC universities and then some out in the Pac 10 and I just took it from there.

How did you get into the NFL?

Lamar – Well, I took a scholarship to The University of Wisconsin. Barry Alvarez, a great guy, came to my neighborhood where a lot of football coaches wouldn’t come to recruit guys.

So why was Barry Alvarez there? Was it because he had heard about you?

They sent films out and they had actually come to a bigger game that year. We had a guy that had been pre-season All American three years in a row and we were playing against a guy who was number one defensive lineman in the country. So obviously they came to see him and I just had a hell of a game.

So were your plays intentional because you knew that Barry Alvarez was there?

No, no! You know coach called me in about a week later and said Wisconsin and other schools had been calling about me. My family didn’t know anything about recruiting and I didn’t know what that entailed. I had never been on an airplane before to fly out to universities, but I flew out to Wisconsin and had a chance to meet with Mr. Alvarez. Deep down I wanted to go to Penn State. Joe Paterno told me I wasn’t a Big 10 guy; I wasn’t big enough to play in the Big 10. So I decided that if I was going to play in the Big 10, I wanted to play Joe Paterno every year and make it a point to bust his butt every time. I went to University of Wisconsin and ended up starting as a freshman and played for four years. University of Wisconsin is a great school; number one partying school in the nation. It was a crazy transition but definitely the best four years of my life. I wasn’t drafted out of college so it was pretty much a walk-on situation for me out of college to the NFL. Detroit brought me in, my signing bonus was $2000, but I had my foot in the door. I played five years in the NFL for the Detroit Lions and got a chance to start my last three years. I had a chance to play some great hall of famers and it was a great transition from my high school years into the NFL.

It seems like playing professional sports is like you getting a major record deal and so many people get glamourized because they think that now you are with the NFL, you’re getting paid millions of dollars. What’s the ratio of players who actually gets the million dollar contracts as appose to middle to lower tier players with the regular $200,000 and $300,000 contracts?

It’s really solid money for the middle tier guys who get the $200,000 to $300,000 salaries. They can’t expect to play forever and some guys are not going to be the Deon Sanders, the Terrell Owens and the Chad Ochocincos where you’re going to get the hundred million dollar contracts. The average NFL career use to be 3 1/2 years, now it’s just 3 years. Even with the lockout situation that just passed this year. You know, we’re not worried about the multi-millionaire guys, we are worried about the guys who make $300,000.00 and then Uncle Sam comes in and takes half of that so you really only have $150,000. There are a lot of stand-up guys that even with the $150,000, they go home and do the right thing. They take care of mom, they take care of grandma and they put their siblings through school. You know those were some of the things I did; putting my sisters through school and helping the family out. So those are the guys that worry during the lockout situation because at that time you really have to re-up on everything that you helped your family out with because you have nothing to show for it other than the pride of helping your family out, of course. All of us want to continuously make that big check, but you’re not going to play in the NFL forever.

Let’s talk about the nest egg. It really doesn’t matter if you’re making $200,000 or $4,000,000 a year, you do have a lot of athletes who go into pro sports making all this money, but don’t have the financial literacy to invest properly and spend wisely. When their career is over, a lot of them are broke as hell. How did you educate yourself about financial literacy?

You know what, I was lucky enough to have some really good veterans around me. My family wasn’t the type of family that really talked about finances even though we had the Sunday dinners. They never really said, Lamar make sure you understand credit.

I’m going to put this on record to say, in the past, most black families didn’t really educate their kids on credit because there wasn’t an understanding of credit. It didn’t matter where you’re from then. I’m from the islands, but I grew up in the U.S. and we never talked about credit. It was like, what’s that? I learned about credit when I went away to college and began receiving a bunch of credit card offers in the mail and the effects of not paying those bills on time.

You get those credit cards in college and all you’re saying to yourself is, this is free money and not realizing you have to pay it back. You don’t really understand credit or the importance of credit until you have to buy that first car or that first home. Then unfortunately, if you’re a ball player, you have enough money to just pay those debts off so you never really understand how it affects your credit and that how much you pay in finance charges is really determined by how well you pay your bills. You do have a lot of guys who go into the NFL not educated about their financial future. They’re ignorant. They just don’t know because no one ever taught them about handling their finances.

Say you have a mom on welfare with two kids. People complain about how they don’t understand why she stays on welfare and not go get a job. What they fail to realize is that once you’ve been on welfare for a long period of time, you get hooked, complacent and have a lack of motivation to do anything other than the typical (live day-to-day). You can’t just cut people off welfare without equipping them with the tools to be able to sustain themselves. They have got to learn how to earn a living and be educated on money management.

You know my son is four years old, but he understands interest rate. He would ask me for $1.00 to get some candy and chips and I would tell him he could have the $1.00, but he had to pay me back $1.25. I do that so he will grow up understanding credit and what I’ve been privy to. My parents didn’t come from a lot of money, but I’m sure if they had known that credit was that important, especially in this market, I know for sure my parents would have made it a point to discuss finances. You know, it’s been tragic for everyone the last 10 years or so. If they would have known this was something that I needed, they would have told me. They grew up struggling so they never had to worry about high money coming into the house-hold; they just got by. Their financial literacy was just to get by each month. Now times have changed. Credit has become so important; no telling what it’s going to be like for the next generation.

Let’s talk about young Lamar. You said that before you got into football, you were allegedly in a little trouble. What were some ideologies and processes you learned to cultivate who you are now?

Unfortunately, everything I learned came from bad experiences. If you look at my 7th grade picture, there are 12 males and only 5 of them are here to discuss anything today. Most went to jail or were shot and is gone. Recently, another friend passed away in the same place where my best friend died four years ago. It was the same exact place at 2, 3 in the morning for no reason; senseless crime. I lost my older brother while I was in college playing football. He was one of the only people who would tell me “listen little brother, you’re gonna make it.” He was also one of the guys who made sure I wasn’t in the streets doing stupid things. My family tried to make sure I had that support. Those are things you learn from. You learn from experience: mistakes trusting the wrong people in the NFL with my money and bad investments. I was young, rich and thought I knew everything and gotten taken advantage of by my first accountant and tax guy.

You can’t blame anybody but yourself?

And I don’t blame anyone, that’s why I’m not bitter about it. You can’t hold onto the past. Mistakes I’ve made, I learned from them. I can teach on it now and I can never make that mistake again. I’ve learned due diligence. I’ve learned how to do background checks. Usually you want everyone to do everything for you because you want to relax after the season and hang out.

That is the same craziness a lot of artists go through. They are so focused on being such superstars and having all the swaged out gear that they don’t pay attention to their finances. They are “The Minimum-Wage Millionaires!” –Lamar Campbell

In your first year of playing in the NFL, what was a major experience you encountered such as things you need to look out for that can help the next man going in?

As a free agent, I was a long shot to even make the team. I spent my little $2000 signing bonus on a $2000 used Chrysler Cirrus and drove up to Detroit with nothing to lose and not knowing what to expect from the situation. I played with Barry Sanders, Herman Moore and Mark Carrier, hall of fame type guys and didn’t know the world I was walking into. Thank God it was a friendly locker room for the most part. As a rookie, you never know what you’re going into and I had a chip on my shoulder. This was grown man ball, coming from college. The first pre-season game, I think we played Arizona and they were really good back then. I got my head knocked off. I realized it was a business after that game. The next day we went back and watched the film and I never got cussed out and reamed at that much in my life. After the first game in the NFL, seeing how those coaches reacted and guys going through that first cut and being sent home, I realized it was a business; a money making business. That was when my light really came on. I can tap a guy on the shoulders now and say listen, you play the game because you love the game, but this is a business so you need to start preparing yourself for the business side as soon as you sign that contract. You know, it’s really not all fun and games as most people see on Sunday games and Monday night football with the glitz and glamour. I learned the difference and that’s probably the biggest thing. As far as the lockout this year, I think that was a big wake-up call for a lot of guys. I look at that as a positive because you can look back and say wow, it really could be over. If that light had not come on for a lot of guys, it has now. This strike will also make guys put focus on their careers after football is over.

So when was it in your five years of playing for the Detroit Lions you said, I’m not going to play for the NFL forever, I need to look at my options after the game?

I didn’t think about my options until a year after my final game with Detroit. You never really think about that day when you are going to be cut. I was coming off a great season and had just signed a new contract after my 4th year. One year under my new deal with a great pre-season and the cut day came. It’s usually the last Sunday in August and Detroit called me at 3:55pm (cut time ends at 4:00pm) and said Lamar you need to come to the office.

When you got the call, what was going through your head?

First thing that went through my mind was they were going to trade me; not release me. I said cool, I’m on my way thinking I was about to get sent somewhere else. He said Lamar; we’ve been trying to trade you all day and really weren’t getting what we wanted for you. You’ve really been a great contributor to the Lions organization and with your current contract situation; we can get two guys for what we’re paying you. Sign this and we wish you the best of luck. And like that, it was over in 2004.

What was that feeling like after you signed the release papers? What did you do?

Well, the first thing that came to mind was to call my agent. I told him they just released me and he was like “don’t worry, you’ll get picked up.” I was playing well, but had an injury with my hamstring so I really only played 8 games and I thought I was actually going to get picked up. So, I went back to working out thinking it’s just a matter of time until I get picked up. Nope, I didn’t get picked up. You know it’s funny because every Sunday I would watch the injury report waiting to see who’s hurt and who would probably give me a call.

So you just slammed the gym and said, hey, I’ve got to get my body right?

My thought was to just pretty much maintain because with injuries happening during the season, they usually bring in a veteran. I never got a call so I began thinking what’s next. I was educated, had my degree and everything, but it was such an emotional detachment because all I knew was football. It hit me hard. I was kind of lost because I was looking for something I could be as passionate about as I was with playing football. You know that really takes some time.

What was the advice from your agent?

He suggested that I do the arena ball, but being prideful, it was a step down for me. I didn’t want to do the arena ball thing. I wasn’t an arena ball guy. I didn’t start playing football to get to the NFL. Once I realize how good I had gotten, I enjoyed playing. God blessed me with an opportunity to go to school on a scholarship. God blessed me with the opportunity to have a try-out with the Detroit Lions and make the team, but it was never something I aspired to do as a young kid growing up saying I wanna be a professional football player. This sentiment actually pissed off a lot of people in my life, especially the ones who did want to make it to the NFL. A lot of them worked their entire life and didn’t make it as far as I’ve made it. So I was really blessed and talented to do that, but didn’t take enough lumps on the head to think it was going to be over when it did. The plan was to play 10 years in the NFL and it would be a wrap for me. I only made it to 5.

That’s a blessing in itself to make it 5 years in the NFL. You have some guys who get signed and play only a few games before getting injured and can’t play anymore.

Yeah, you’re right. Like Brett Favre, I feel for him. A lot of people talk about him needing to retire. Look how he has been playing football. You look at the emotions of it and he’s saying what am I gonna do after football. I can’t do Wrangler commercials all day. It’s just an emotional detachment from the game where you don’t know what you wanna do.

It’s like the feeling of you working for a job say 10 years and you’ve developed all these relationships with different people and you have to leave the job. Before you leave the job, however, you know they usually give you a going away party wishing you luck and possibly giving you some connections you can use to advance someplace else. It’s that feeling without the party and the well wishes. It’s disillusionment; like what’s next.

With all the great athletes, which one of them has had an easy time walking away? Not many of them, especially the successful ones. Look at John Elway, he won back to back Super Bowls; hell yeah I’m gonna leave after that. It doesn’t get any better than that. Look at Michael Jordon, Wayne Gretzky, Bret Favre, at the top of their game; it was never easy for them to turn around and walk away. And they were successful off the field as well with endorsement deals, acting, businesses and they still had a hard time walking away.

So what do you think is going to happen with Bret Favre?

You know, I think Brett is going to sit out this year. Brett is finally done. I think he’s done and he has come to terms with it. However, I think he will still be around football though. Being his competitor and having a chance to play against Brett Favre, he’s a hell of a player. I have a lot of respect for Brett Favre. You know having a chance to play against Brett twice a year in my division; he’s really a hell of a competitor. You know, I got my first interception off Brett Favre and he came over after the game and said good play rookie. He’s a really good guy! It’s hard to understand the mental aspects of being a successful athlete especially if you haven’t been there. It’s easy to criticize, but when you put all your heart, soul and everything into this team, it’s painful. That’s why when you speak about transition I try to relate because everyone is going through a transition, being laid off in this economy and having to start all over again. They weren’t prepared to lose their jobs and they’re going through the same transition and mental phase that Brett Favre is going through; it’s just in a different career.

You took a year off after being cut from the Detroit Lions, what did you do afterwards? What type job did you go into?

I talked to the NFL which actually has a business program with Wharton School of Business at University of Pennsylvania. They actually have a real-estate program where NFL guys come in and learn from top real-estate professors. You know Wharton’s has the top real-estate program, collegially, in the country and you are able to learn from these professors. I had been around real-estate my whole life with a family of carpenters and also had real-estate in Atlanta so I already had an idea. That was just the natural step for me. I was comfortable with real-estate also because I was dabbling in it while I was playing ball. And to have an opportunity to learn from Wharton was an opportunity I could not turn down. I went back to grad school with Wharton and got out to a terrible real-estate market and I was like, “now what.” So, I began another transition.

So this was your second transition within a year of starting at Wharton’s and coming off your hiatus with being cut from the NFL?

You know I stayed with real-estate and made it work, but it was not to the level I initially planned on being successful at. The market just wasn’t working for where I wanted my success level to be. Nobody was hiring. No one was spending any money and no one was loaning any money and you need that for real-estate. That’s why everyone was taking such big hits. I’ve managed to survive based on the relationships I have and of course dealing with residential and investors. It’s not the immediate success I was expecting coming out of Wharton’s. After that, I really got involved in the community when I decided that I was gonna be in Atlanta. I also became a dad. When I came to Atlanta, it was a place of business. I was doing better business in Atlanta than in the Detroit community. I had investments here so it was a better market for me. A lot of young African Americans were here so I came down in 2005 right after the first year I got released. I commuted back and forth to school (Wharton’s), but I made being here permanently. Atlanta is an up-and-coming city where you have a lot of fortune 500 companies here. Thirty percent of my clients aren’t even from the states. Most of them are European investors and they’re coming over here cleaning up. When it comes to tax write-offs, you can’t really beat it here in Georgia. That’s why the movie industry is booming and so many movies are coming out of the Atlanta Metropolitan Area. And now that I have my son, I’m here. It’s a point for me to be a part of the community with my son growing up and I want my son to see me do great things in the community. I want to become his role model; to be his hero.

So you are working with the Atlanta Film Festival, how did you come into that?

A good friend actually introduced me to the young lady who runs The Atlanta Film Festival (previously head of The Miami Film Festival) and it was a situation where a lot of athletes weren’t looking to do music anymore; they were actually looking to do movies just because of the tax write-offs in Georgia. It was in their best interest to do some film projects here in Georgia, so in the last couple years; a lot of retired athletes began getting into acting, doing TV and reality shows and learning the television business. And me trying to give back and help these guys make that transition for their careers after the sport, I thought it would be best for me to actually make some connections for those guys; to become some sort of conduit. I’m a movie buff too so that was really my passion to get into The Atlanta Film Festival scene. I use this analogy when I talk to the kids. When I played in the NFL we would go to a mall and some guy would come up to you and say give me a try-out. You know I played in college, I was a good player so give me a try-out and I’ll make the team. I shook his hand and say hey man I got you and it never went as far as him getting a try-out. Here we are going into the corporate world after retirement and am that same guy in the mall saying hey, I played in the NFL, give me an interview. I have no experience, but give me an interview. I’m sure I’ll do a great job. So the roles are actually reversed now. We are that guy in the mall asking for a hook-up. Being in the corporate world is like being in the athletic world; it’s about show-and-prove. Getting your foot in the door is not a guarantee you’ll get the job. A lot of times guys don’t know what they want to go into once their careers are over. If I knew what I know now, I would have went to every golf tournament or interned at Ford marketing or Ford Finance and just learned. I would have gone to the NFL Network and interned to gain experience so when my career was over, I would have that on my resume. You’ve been playing football for ten years, even if you have a degree in marketing, times have changed; the game has changed so you’re still behind. I tell guys all the time that I always beef-up my resume. You can always beef-up your resume because you never know when that opportunity is gonna present itself. That knowledge, once you get it, no one can take it from you.

So tell me about Life After The Game, how did that get started? How did you get into radio?

It was something that actually fell into my lap. I didn’t start out trying to build a brand. With Life After The Game, I just took what it was like for me after playing in the NFL: phone calls not being taken anymore like they use to or you call trying to get some help, get an interview and they’re too busy trying to win football games and applied it. And they don’t owe you anything; you know they really don’t. So, I started thinking about what relationships I made while playing that could help me out. I thank God I did a lot in the community with Detroit and I had a player development director I talked to all the time and she would take my phone calls. She actually helped me get into the Wharton program. The only connection I had ended up being the only connection I needed. And what happened was a lot of guys would call me for information on internships and having been in the NFL, I kept an eye on everything so I knew what the pensions were and where the 401k’s were going. I wanted to be educated on where my money was and my 401k. I also wanted to know if there were programs out there to help the guys, I wanted to be aware of it so I became a go-between with a lot of guys making that transition. They would call me for a lot of information. I had a chance to go to a transition program sponsored by the NFL were there were a lot of guys with ages ranging from 25-45 and we all had some great conversations. We just put it all out there on how we were feeling and how we felt the NFL was treating us once we were done and let’s not even talk about the crooked NCAA. We can go on about them all day long. It became that a lot of guys needed help so if I could help those guys out, I got paid off the bat and a lot of older guys helped me out so I wanted to be there for the younger guys. This past year in Dallas, I did a lot of interviews with radio stations and we talked about the potential lockout and what guys are doing after football. The program director was a retired ball player with the Eagles. We did a couple shows that weekend and when I came back to Atlanta, he offered me my own show. He said I could create my own platform so the Wharton came out of me and we did a lot of negotiating. I wanted to own my transcripts and own my logo, etc. One of my favorite bible verses is Hosea chapter 4 verse 6 which say our people perish because of their lack of knowledge. So I wanted to provide that information for the guys to let them know what opportunities are out here. It’s not that we don’t want to do a lot of things, it’s just because of that lack of knowledge; we just don’t know. You always hear the negative things NFL players are doing, but there are a lot of them who are doing some great things in the community that done get talked about. Fortunately, the show has been a tremendous success. It’s the fastest rising show on the station which has led to a lot of other opportunities that I’m looking to take advantage of and getting the word out there about what athletes are doing in the community nation-wide.

So do you have young athletes coming to you for advice about transitioning in as well as out of the NFL?

You know, I’m really starting to. The radio show debuted in April; we are now going into September so I am starting to get a lot of request from mothers who need guidance for their kids or request to speak at certain colleges and to talk to some of the guys in the local area. What we are doing now is trying to get to every school, during the football season and get other guys in the community who are retired football players to talk to the guys and give them guidance. Even if we only touch one guy, he can at least spread the word about what we are doing. He can learn to prepare himself and learn to get his degree. He can make sure he builds on those relationships and don’t burn bridges so that he can have the same people to fall back on in case things gets bad for him.

Do they not already have mentoring organizations in Atlanta for rising stars heading to the NFL?

They do and I’m doing the research on that now. But it’s coming from a different voice; someone who has been there, someone who has been down-and-out and is successful. It’s good to hear everybody’s story. And not all stories are good stories, but it educates the guys. They may find themselves in the same situation and they’ll know how to do due diligence on their agents, on their financial advisors, on their stockbrokers and on their PR persons. You know any lessons we can help filter to them would just be a good lesson.

I was watching MTV’s Cribs a couple years back and one of the feature athletes were Carmelo Anthony. Doing the typical floss as usual, Carmelo was showing off his huge house, obviously he had purchased after signing with the Denver Nuggets. I began thinking “what does someone that young know about finances and how to invest their money.” Don’t the national leagues have some sort of financial resource and educational programs for young guys entering the NFL, the NBA, the MBL and the NHL?

They do have those programs. Because of the lockout, the NFL didn’t have their symposium; however, they had the NBAPA Rookie Symposium. Akbar Gbaja-Biamila, who I had on my show, spoke at the rookie symposium. They had all these life lessons, but you can’t get to the heads of these 21 year old millionaires in three days and expect what they hear to stick. I really appreciate them doing that and it’s not like they’re not trying to do the right thing, but in three days. You look at my situation where I was a free agent and only drafted players get to go to the symposiums, so I never had a symposium. You know half the pro-bowlers last year were free agents so there’s a whole percentage of players that come into the NFL who won’t be able to take advantage of the symposiums.

When you went to college, you were assigned advisors rights? You had admissions advisors, you had financial advisors and you had academic advisors. So why can’t the national leagues do the same thing so that these young men can at least have a fair chance of not being taken advantage of? That’s a no-brainer!

You think they would, but the cost behind that is high.

Yes, it will cost, but even if you had 10 players for each advisor, it wouldn’t be as expensive for them to provide this service so that the rookie players would have some sort of expert to call when they need to make those serious decisions.

It’s a what have you done for me right now type of mentality. A lot of times, folks in the NFL look down on doing too much for the players outside of football. They want your prime focus to be football. I’ve had guys that were so involved in the community that coaches would look down on them saying “you’re doing too much; it’s not in your play book.” So that can be frowned upon by certain organizations; not all organizations, but some of them thinks it takes away from the grand scheme of things which is playing football and making money.

What’s your take on college athletes being paid?

I don’t agree that college athletes should be paid. I do agree, however, that they should receive a stipend. To keep them at an amateur level, technically, I don’t think they should be on the payroll, but I do think they should receive something like a scholarship to take care of living and other expenses. You get a stipend with academic and music scholarships. With every scholarship you get a stipend, except athletic scholarships. Nine times out of ten the athletic department funds the school and builds high-rise condo dorms and 36 libraries. They had something of ESPN this week called “The State of College Football” and we all know what happened with University of Miami and what’s going on with them right now and the big scandal. Nevin Shiparo, a University of Miami booster, is serving 20 years for running a 930 million dollar ponzi scheme. He turned over a lot of paperwork showing players being paid so they are under investigation right now. Most people don’t know that the NCAA is a non-profit organization taking in over 600 million dollars last year alone.

That is straight raping these college athletes. What does the NCAA do with all the money they take in each year?

I don’t know. I haven’t done the research as of yet. They had a round table with presidents, gm’s, athletic directors and coaches of the colleges and it was a discussion about paying college athletes. Two coaches they had on there was Bob Stoops and Nick Saban. And to hear Nick Saban and Bob Stoops say college athletes should not be paid, but Saban makes 3 million a year and Stoops makes 2.1 million. Let’s be honest, most colleges gets there best players from the inner cities. They ride up in a Cadillac with a big master championship ring, making 3 million dollars a year and you’re gonna tell a kid he shouldn’t get any money! I do think that sometimes we don’t look at the good things as far as free education; the opportunity to be educated, but let’s be honest, most of these kids come from impoverished backgrounds. And other than that scholarship and those books, they don’t have anything. They can’t even work if they wanted to. We can’t work! So, for you to tell them they can’t work to bring in any other money; the temptation for them to take from boosters will be much greater. Understand that the world is viral now so some of these kids are coming in knowing how much their coaches are getting paid, how much money their programs are bringing in and also knowing how much they contribute to their organizations yet most of them don’t have any clothes, a coat for the winter, money for school or even money to live on. I hear people say it’s a privilege to play for these organizations, but the athletes are making them money with that privilege. I’m not saying pay the guys tons of money, but I think if you do pay the guys something, it would deter a lot of bad decisions causing trouble for the guys. Another gripe that I have is that it’s always the players who get in trouble. Most coaches know. Most athletic directors know, but they get a slap on the wrist and it’s the player’s careers that are over. It’s really a slippery scale when you talk about all the fraud and cheating that’s going on out there now. It would be hard to implement it now because we’re in the midst of a lot of programs being on probation. If this would have been introduced when everything was going well, it would have been received a lot differently, but I do think that the players should be compensated for what they bring to the universities.

For the record, I think the players should be paid. Not being paid as much as the pro’s, but pay them in a way to say I appreciate you going the distance and giving your all.

So what’s next for Lamar Campbell other than the radio show? Let’s go back to the radio show. Who are some athletes you are looking to have on the show and what are some of the upcoming topics you guys are going to be talking about?

What’s next for the show is to try and keep the integrity of the show and stay on topic. I negotiated my own format so I’m not gonna just talk about something because it’s popular unless it goes with the format of my show. I would like Life After The Game to branch off to a company where we consult. I have a lot of guest lined up which are guys I played against during my time with the Detroit Lions. One thing that we as athletes hate is the dumb jock theory. We’re not just playing football, basketball and baseball, we’re doing great things in the community, great things in business and great things in philanthropy and I think all athletes feel that none of that ever gets enough airplay. I would love to have Hank Aaron on the show. He’s doing great things with his BMW car dealerships here in Atlanta. As far as doing great thinks in the community, I would love to have Dominique Wilkins on. I’m gonna have a chance to have Desmond Howard on. The possibilities are endless and the more research I do I find that there are a lot of athletes out there doing some really big things. So this is the opportunity I wanna give to them to put them on the platform, really congratulate them and get the word out on what it is they’re doing. I don’t turn down anything but my collar so if the opportunity presents itself, I’m gonna jump on it.

Article By Patrick Kelly
Source: Lamar Campbell