He's a generational talent who signed a $30 million rookie contract.
I know guys who played in the NFL and they got paid a sliver of that, at best. They are out of the league. 99% of guys who make it aren't Saquon Barkley. Shit, 99% of guys in his position aren't at his level. RBs do not last at the NFL level for very long. There's always some young new hotshot out of the college game who is faster, younger, and not beat up.
The big issue is that most of those guys spent their entire lives to that point to play in the NFL. They didn't challenge themselves in high school or college from an academic standpoint - they focused on football. They took home through that 3 year rookie deal MAYBE $200k-300k total after tax, outside training expenses, agent expenses, etc.
$100k invested in 2017 turning into $2m in 2025 implies a 46% annualized return over 8 years.
Those numbers are not realistic from even the world’s top hedge funds.
That begs the question of what magic well of oil you struck to yield those numbers? The only public investment I can see is TSLA. And I would not recommend an average Joe YOLO $100k into TSLA.
You would not 20X your investment in 8 years unless you got extremely lucky and avoided losing anything in risky bets that did not work out.
Many novice investors have gotten lucky on a trade or two and imagined what their return would be if they had invested 10X or 100X more. However, when you have 10X or 100X more capital on the line, you don't play the same game.
Even a non-famous person with ~$20mm to invest (somewhere around the after-tax amount of his rookie contract) would not get a seat at the table at these VC firms.
for an aging star that's on the downhill side of their prime, it'd help with salary caps and letting them build new stars around them. and the franchise doesn't have to worry about shipping off a beloved player once they get too expensive.
besides, lets player take ownership of the teams that they're building just feels right.
Owners don't have to give up anything. Thanks to media deals and taking advantage of city-owned stadiums (with ridiculous parking fees and nacho prices, etc.), the teams print money no matter how good or bad they are, even if they let a beloved player go.
Reminds me of Steve Young
He was born and raised in Greenwich, CT. Hedge fund capital of the world. Went to school at BYU which is run by the Mormon ~Private Equity group~ Church. Played his pro career in Silicon Valley.
The stars were aligned from the start.
Dividing the entire rookie contract amount across so many investments and so many funds means relatively small investments in those funds.
No way any non-famous-athlete individual would be able to LP in those funds without athletic stardom attached. It's a selling point for those LPs to say he's part of their funds and they get to rub shoulders with a professional athlete.
Starting with $30MM, and having who knows how many millions in endorsement deals to fall back on, makes it easier to absorb the misses. It's not necessarily about talent at this level...
Fly Eagles Fly!
What I'm more interested in is how is he getting dealflow:
>The high-growth startups in his portfolio include Anthropic (currently valued at $183 billion), Anduril ($30.5 billion), Ramp ($22.5 billion), Cognition ($9.8 billion), Neuralink ($9 billion), Strike (~$1 billion), and Polymarket (~$1 billion). He’s also a limited partner in funds including Founders Fund, Thrive Capital, Silver Point Capital, and Multicoin Capital.
If he has sizable investments in these companies at an early-ish stage then one has to ask: is this guy nostradamus? Or is he doing the classic early stage playbook and investing everywhere? Is there someone else making the bets?
It's really easy to look in hindsight at this guy and said he did a good job with his money, but I'd argue for any angel that wasn't already tapped into the network, this would be an impressive portfolio. It's not like Anthropic was hurting for investors. And if it is the case that Anthropic said "why not, I'd love to have a check from 2024 superbowl champion Saquan Barkley", then it's not really repeatable.
I have plenty of friends who made quite a bit of money from previous exits and have also read Zero to One, and their angel portfolio isn't as lucrative.
Because he's Saquon Barkley. Other than your lead + maybe 1 or 2 others, everyone else is pretty interchangable. At least Saquon is interesting.
dkurty•2h ago
NickC25•1h ago
Not all NFL athletes have a shot at getting any endorsements at all. In fact, most don't.
Be a star player or famous role player on a very successful team, that's way different than some backup lineman who is out of the league by the time their rookie contract ends.
American football is by and far the worst culprit - in all the other big or semi-relevant american sports - baseball, basketball, hockey, etc, you can make a decent living playing overseas. Not huge, but decent enough. Can't do that with football.
dkurty•1h ago
NickC25•1h ago
Then the expenses related to their jobs - food, training, etc. Shit ain't cheap. And before you ask - no, not all NFL teams really provide a ton to their players. My local team, Miami, has the best nutrition and food staff in the league. Players love it. Other teams don't provide much besides Gatorade on game days or other shitty protein snacks provided by league sponsors. Forget about full nutritious meals. Then you've got some teams with a great strength and conditioning staff. Other teams simply don't, which leaves players to find their own private solutions. This all adds up.
AaronLasseigne•1h ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jock_tax
wubrr•1h ago
Seems like a lot for playing with a ball, while producing exactly zero in practical value (other than advertising and distraction, which is a net negative for society arguably).
gdbsjjdn•1h ago
I do also have to remark on the irony of someone on the "250k a year to type prompts into a AI to get the wrong answer" website complaining that athletes are overpaid and don't contribute anything to society
gooosle•24m ago
Going the athlete route is generally easier and requires less time investment than going the academic route.
greatwave1•55m ago
cko•53m ago
Think about these fantasy sports gambling apps, your coworkers who distract themselves from the drudgery of work by discussing sports, the financial institutions that take a transaction fee from money being passed around, the infinite scroll of content on social media, all because of athletes.
Not me, I spend nothing and invest it all, but all these investments are basically leveraging what society truly wants, among which is leisure and art.
Functionally, as a curmudgeon, my value to the economy is near zero.
gooosle•26m ago
I don't see how you can claim gambling, and pointless discussion about some arbitrary game you (they) don't even play are positive. Financial transactions for the sake of financial transactions are also completely pointless.
dkurty•24m ago