Talented Generation Salutes. . .

Lee Roy Selmon

To some, Lee Roy Selmon was a former Buccaneers football player who donned a number 63 jersey. He wasn't just any football player. After his senior season playing college football at Oklahoma, Selmon won the Lombardi Award and the Outland Trophy as the nation’s outstanding lineman. His college coach, Barry Switzer, called Selmon “the greatest player I ever had play,” and said he never had a bad game. He took his talents to Tampa Bay after they chose him as their first round pick and began his journey as a legendary pro football player.  

In his nine years in Tampa (1976-1984), Selmon was unofficially credited with 78.5 sacks in 121 games, 28.5 fumbles caused and 380 quarterback pressures. (The N.F.L. didn’t begin to keep sacks by defensive players as an official statistic until 1982, Selmon’s seventh season.) He recovered 10 fumbles, returning one 29 yards against the Lions in 1979 for the only touchdown of his career.

Selmon was named first team All-Pro in 1979 and played in six consecutive Pro Bowls, from 1979 to 1984. In 1995 he became the first Buccaneer to be elected to the Hall of Fame. Following his 1995 induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the City of Tampa renamed one of its major toll roads as the Lee Roy Selmon Crosstown Expressway.  


It was his exceptional stats that led NFL Films to rank him #98 in the top 100 greatest players of all time.

Despite his accomplishments on the field, Mr. Selmon was humble and had a great spirit. He was a community legend known for giving back using not only his money but his time as well. He had a great desire to help others and to give back to the community, particularly by helping the youth.

After moving to Tampa a few years back, it became apparent to me that Mr. Selmon was a man to be admired. He is as much apart of Tampa's culture as Ybor City and sunshine. Selmon was a huge factor in the creation of the football program at University of South Florida, where he started as associate athletic director in 1993 and served as the AD from May 2001 until he stepped down in February 2004 because of health concerns.


In a perfect world, we would give people the respect and honor they deserve while they are alive but our world is perfectly imperfect. 


Lee Roy Selmon become much more than a great football player, he was a great man. My condolences to his family, friends and other affected by his passing on last Sunday. May he forever RIP.


Talented Generation Salutes Lee Roy Selmon! #Salute

STRAPPED: Athletes Face Long Odds to Stay Rich

FRESH off of the excitement of the NBA Draft (where players celebrate like this), I read an article that reminded of a few stats about professional athletes:
6% of high school football players go on to play NCAA football.
Fewer than 2% of college football players get drafted by an NFL team.

Why am I talking about football when the NBA is clearly basketball? Because regardless of the sport, professional athletes face homogenous circumstances.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news (well not really, news is news), but statistics gathered by Sports Illustrated shows 78% of athletes end up bankrupt or in financial strain because of joblessness or divorce within two years of retiring. 60% of NBA players are broke five years after retiring. With the NFL lockout still looming, many athletes are set to face financial strain before they retire. When my bank account is low, I get sympathy from my family. When pro athletes go broke, they get ZERO sympathy from the general public or anyone else. The athletes make poor judgment or get caught up in bad investments and before they know they will have lost everything. How do you go from making $168 million to not being able to afford the world's smallest violin?  Seriously, who would feel sorry for LeBron if he made an announcement tomorrow that he is broke? Would you feel sorry for Magic Johnson? You wouldn't? Neither would I.

Allow me to explain something some of you may not understand. To many professional athletes, playing sports exceptionally well was their ticket out of the "hood." This is especially true for African American athletes who are more likely to come from broken and BROKE homes. I'm always happy to see them move their family out of the hood and start living good. Word to Trey. I hear what you're saying, the league minimum is $400,000 for baseball and even more for the NBA, where the frick does all the money go? First off, you have to understand the newly minted pro athletes do not have a lot of time to allow their financial knowledge to mature. While most people have a few years to learn, their instant riches only gives them a few months. Now lets look at the numbers: Lets say an NFL player is making $340,000 of which he pays $151, 030 in taxes and union dues. From the $188,970 he is left with he pays $10k to his agent, $9k to a trainer and other upkeep costs, $3,6000 in financial management fees, $2,000 for a lawyer (yay lawyers!) to write a will and prenup and $1,500 for insurance. Considering a car, donations, family, shelter which could add up to $48-50,000 the athlete is really only left with a little over $42,000. BIG WOOP.

There is a lot of pressure to share the wealth. There is also a strong impetus in my community for the person who "makes" it to then take care of the people who took care of them when they were down on their luck. As femme fatale Nicki Minaj showed in her MTV Documentary, it is common for people to buy their mother a nice home and bless their family with material gifts after the big pay day. What goes around behind the scenes? When you "make" it, everyone has their hands out.  The newly drafted players want to be able to tell their mother she will never have to work again. The cousin who allowed you to sleep on their couch now wants help with their college tuition. The aunts who gave you a hot meal want help with their bills and mama wants a house. The friends, who they might have played with before getting drafted also want a piece of the pie. This does not include the child support payments some of them will soon be slammed with. That decision to have unprotected sex the night he got drafted? Oh yea he's gonna PAY for it.

Point is, their good intentions go overboard and lead to their downfall.

The pressure to uplift everyone along with you is intense and mind boggling. You may see your favorite athletes with huge entourages populated with friends, family and pretty women but what you don't know is how much having the entourage costs. Additionally, some athletes get sucked into the "culture" and become engulfed in trying to live like a pro athlete. NBA and NFL players are more likely than baseball or hockey players to have this problem. They buy huge homes that they barely live in, expensive cars they barely drive and blow money like its going out of style. Before you go rolling your neck about assumptions you think I'm making understand that I'm not telling you what I think, I'm speaking about what I KNOW.

Many stories run the gamut of rags to riches. Then they end up broke and back to rags. This is not a situation unique to athletes, entertainers also fight a similar battle. Remember how MC Hammer managed to BLOW $30 millie? Thats a story for another post. Back to my point.  4 years after winning the world championship, Miami Heat player Antoine Walker found himself in bankruptcy court. While Walker's spending habits and bad decisions may have led to his financial demise, some have found themselves similarly situated after trusting the wrong financial advisors. Sometimes they get bad advice and sometimes they don't listen to their advisors. Other issues they encounter include theft from people they trust such as when Kendrys Morales' agent, Rodney Fernandez stole $305,000 from his bank account.

Although the numbers seemed to stacked against them, many athletes make the best of their situation. Players like E.J. Biggers have resisted the urge to compete with their locker room buddies and are financially savvy. Biggers rents an apartment with his friend, drives a 5 year old car and has saved up 20 months of living in anticipation of the lockout.

I sincerely hope the athletes of the present and future become more smart about their money so that the media can stop writing stories about the Top 15 broke athletes.

Source: The Florida Trend

*insert clever and funny ending here* This is the part where I end the post and ask you to share your thoughts while reminding you that you may remain anonymous if you so choose.

HUSL Today Salutes

Muhammad Ali

Only a man who knows what it is like to be defeated can reach down to the bottom of his soul and come up with the extra ounce of power it takes to win when the match is even.

Muhammad Ali was born Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. in Louisville Kentucky on January 17, 1942. In his early years, Ali was trained by Fred stoner who guided him through 6 Kentucky Golden Gloves titles, 2 national Golden Gloves titles, an Amateur Athletic Union National Title, and the Light Heavyweight gold medal in the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome. Clay's amateur record was 100 wins with five losses.

 Ali won his first professional bout on October 29, 1960. In his first title on February 25, 1964, Ali beat Liston and  became the youngest boxer (age 22) ever to take the title from a reigning heavyweight champion, a mark that stood until the mid 1980s. Ali also won the rematch in May of 1965.  In March 1967 after defending his title several times,  Ali was stripped of his title for refusing to be drafted into the Army for religious reasons and had his professional boxing license suspended.

Ali famously said in 1966: "I ain't got no quarrel with them Viet Cong ... They never called me nigger."

In the mean time, Ali appealed his case and fought Jerry Quarry in Georgia, the only state without a boxing commission.  Nicknamed "The Greatest," Ali was involved in several historic boxing matches. After the 1970 decision of the NY Supreme Court ruling that Ali had been unjustly denied his boxing license, he fought Oscar Bonavena at Madison Square Garden in December 1970. Ali stopped Bonavena in the 15th round. His next bout was "The Fight of the Century" against Joe Frazier on March 8, 1971. The fight would result in Ali's first professional loss. After fighting Ken Norton twice losing the first time and winning the rematch, Ali went on to win the non-title rematch  against Joe Frazier on January 28, 1974.

He was also known for his pre-match hype, where he would "trash talk" opponents on television and in person some time before the match, often with rhymes. Ali once said "Frazier is so ugly that he should donate his face to the US Bureau of Wild Life."  He descibed his own fighting style as "float like a butterfly sting like a bee."

More after the jump.

HUSL Today Salutes

Jackie Robinson

 Image source: http://hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/Jackie%20Robinson%20sliding.jpg

Jack Roosevelt Robinson was born in Cairo, Georgia in 1919. By 1935, Robinson had graduated middle school and enrolled in high school at Muir Tech High School. At Muir Tech, Robinson played several sports at the varsity level and lettered in four of them: football, basketball, track, and baseball. He played shortstop and catcher on the baseball team, quarterback on the football team, and guard on the basketball team. With the track and field squad, he won awards in the broad jump. He was also a member of the tennis team.  Robinson graduated high school and enrolled at Pasadena Junior College.

Robinson continued his sports career at Pasadena Junior College, Robinson graduated in 1939 and transferred to UCLA. While enrolled, Jackie became the first athlete to win varsity letters in four sports: baseball, basketball, football and track. In 1941, he was named to the All-American football team. Due to financial difficulties, he was forced to leave college, and eventually decided to enlist in the U.S. Army. After two years in the army, he had progressed to second lieutenant. Jackie's army career was cut short when he was court-martialed in relation to his objections with incidents of racial discrimination. In the end, Jackie left the Army with an honorable discharge.

Image source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f7/Jackie_robinson_ucla_track.jpg

In 1945, Jackie played one season in the Negro Baseball League. In 1947, Brooklyn Dodgers president Branch Rickey approached Jackie about joining the Brooklyn Dodgers. The Major Leagues had not had an African-American player since 1889, when baseball became segregated. Because of this feat, Robinson is sometimes referred to as baseball's barrier breaker.

At the end of Robinson's rookie season with the Brooklyn Dodgers, he had become National League Rookie of the Year with 12 homers, a league-leading 29 steals, and a .297 average.


  
Watch Robinson in action as he steals home!

Over ten seasons, he played in six World Series and contributed to the Dodgers' 1955 World Championship. He was selected for six consecutive All-Star Games from 1949 to 1954. In 1949, he was selected as the NL's Most Valuable player of the Year, the first black player so honored,  and also won the batting title with a .342 average that same year.

Robinson also found success outside of the diamond. He was the first African-American television analyst in Major League Baseball, and the first African-American vice-president of a major American corporation. In the 1960s, he helped establish the Freedom National Bank, an African-American-owned/controlled financial institution based in Harlem, New York. In recognition of his achievements on and off the field, Robinson was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal.

More footage of the Hall of Famer

Check out Robinson reciting the alphabet with the muppets.



The southern belle side of me loves that he says "dubya" *smiles*

Robinson was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962. In 1997, Major League Baseball retired his uniform number, 42, across all major league teams. Robinson joined the ancestors on October 24, 1972. His legacy lives on in the baseball players we know and love today sans the steroids.

HUSL Today Salutes Jackie Robinson!

HUSL Today Salutes

Its another athlete salute today. The twist is you will have to read on before I tell you who it is.

Countless buzzer beaters
Epic dunks
Incredible endorsements
Electric performances


What you should know now:
Birthdate: February 17, 1963
Birthplace: Brooklyn, NY
Position: Shooting Guard
3 retirements
2 Olympic Gold Medal Basketball teams

Here's a hint (ok a blatant giveaway): His individual accolades and accomplishments include:
5 MVP awards
10 All-NBA First Team designations
9 All-Defensive First Team honors
14 NBA All-Star Game appearances
3 All-Star Game MVP awards
10 scoring titles
3 steals titles
6 NBA Finals MVP awards
1988 NBA Defensive Player of the Year Award
He holds the NBA records for highest career regular-season scoring average (30.12 points per game) and highest career playoff scoring average (33.45 points per game). In 1999, he was named the greatest North American athlete of the 20th century by ESPN, and was second to Babe Ruth on the Associated Press's list of athletes of the century. He was elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame on April 6, 2009 and was inducted on September 11, 2009.

Read on to find out who it is.