NEW ENGLAND Patriots wide receiver Deion Branch (top) and Dallas Cowboys safety Roy Williams.

Professional players face the grim reality of a career that, on average, spans less than four years and can be cut short by injury in the split-second it takes to twist a knee. They are constantly tempted, and often expected, to live champagne-fueled, jewelry-laden lifestyles.

But not all succumb to these temptations. Worth spoke with two of the NFL’s brightest young stars—Roy Williams, a safety with the Dallas Cowboys, and Super Bowl MVP Deion Branch, a wide receiver with the New England Patriots—who are determined to not only maximize the potential of every NFL dollar they earn, but preserve their wealth for their progeny.

The Right Game Plan
Williams may be best known for the reckless way he throws his body around on the field, but he takes an entirely different approach to managing his wealth. “I don’t take anything for granted, so I’m careful about the way I spend,” Williams says. “I do the research.”

After Williams commanded a $4 million signing bonus when drafted into the NFL in 2002, the eighth overall pick might have been expected to celebrate with a luxury goods binge. But with childhood memories of financial struggles still fresh, he is more anxious to use his newfound wealth to secure a comfortable future.

The 25-year-old knows football will give him only a small window of earning power that might enable him to live comfortably for the rest of his life, so he makes it a point to learn all he can about investing. “I want to be able to set up my kids and my grandkids,” he says. Williams, a bachelor whose current salary will total nearly $3 million through 2006, adds, “I don’t just want to be rich, I want to be able to create wealth for this generation and beyond.”

But football carries more risks and fewer assurances than any professional sport. No contracts are guaranteed. “Football may not be there next year, or even next week, for these guys,” says John Mangum, Williams’ financial consultant at Raleigh, N.C.-based CapTrust Financial Advisors and a former Chicago Bear.

Growing up in Union City, a poor neighborhood near San Francisco, Williams’ family’s resources were so thin that he did not get an allowance. “If it wasn’t on sale at the mall, I wasn’t going to get it,” Williams recalls. “I wore Payless shoes.”

When he received an athletic scholarship to the University of Oklahoma in 1998, Williams finally had a bit of his own capital to manage. “I didn’t even have a bank account until I went to college,” he recalls. After earning collegiate defensive player of the year honors in 2001, Williams chose to leave college shy of his degree to chase success in the NFL. “It was too good of a professional and financial opportunity to pass up,” he explains.

Williams was desperate for the sound judgment of an experienced third party. When news spread that he had declared himself eligible for the NFL draft, he was inundated by dozens of agents and money managers soliciting his business. He was already determined that he was not going to let his agent handle his financial affairs, a mistake that many of his colleagues have made. “Having an agent negotiate your contract and keep control of your capital is just retarded,” he says. “It’s such an obvious conflict of interest, but a lot of NFL players got taken.”

Realizing his dearth of life experience and the temptations to spend that would come his way, Williams turned to Don Bradley, associate dean of students at Oklahoma, to help him find financial experts he could trust. (Williams later contributed $100,000 to his alma mater to develop a strength-training facility.)

After Bradley whittled the best financial advisor candidates to three, Williams interviewed each one and chose Mangum for his personable nature and hands-on approach. “I liked the fact that I could get him on the phone at any time,” Williams says.

Mangum’s firm serves approximately 70 football players. Of his 50 employees, 15 conduct due diligence, a service that Williams makes ample use of as he passes along business proposals from acquaintances and “relatives I didn’t even know I had.” Before Williams makes practically any purchase, Mangum researches dealers who fit his budget and offer the best value, he says.

Initially, Williams was quick to give loans, but he has lost count of the hangers-on who have defaulted. “I lost a few friends over loans,” he says. Williams now shelters himself from people who hold out their hands. “I like to treat my friends, but some of them take it like a weakness.”

When he came into money, Williams paid his parents’ credit card bills and bought his mother a new car. He wanted to buy her a house, but she insisted he invest his money in his own real estate. Williams has only just begun investing in property. When he signs his second NFL contract, he intends to sink the bulk of his signing bonus into commercial and residential real estate.

As Williams plans his career after football, he is immersing himself in the entrepreneurial facets of hip-hop music. He calls Warner Music Group executive Kevin Liles (see “Horizontal Money,” below) his mentor. In the off-season, Williams frequents Liles’ office to learn how he juggles music and merchandizing deals for Warner and the Def Jam label. “Like Kevin always tells me, ‘If you want to be truly wealthy, you’d better start hanging around with people who have serious money,’ ” he says.

Williams has also established a charity, the Safety Net Foundation, to help poor single mothers. He was inspired watching the difficulties faced by his sister as she raised his nephew. He insists that Safety Net’s grantees use the resources to finish their high school diplomas, undergo job training and write their résumés. “It’s not a handout and they know that,” he explains.

But Williams is no choirboy; he can occasionally be found enjoying himself at celebrity hotspots in the Cayman Islands, Miami and Las Vegas with the likes of Beyoncé and former fiancée Kelly Rowlands. But Mangum keeps the player on a strict budget, covering fixed costs like mortgage fees and disability insurance. He explains that the allowance he gives football clients ranges from $3,000 to $10,000 per month. Williams falls “somewhere in the middle.”

Williams admits he recently splurged on a sporty Mercedes-Benz convertible, a purchase he researched and made without consulting Mangum. “Please don’t tell,” he jokes.

A Conservative Superstar
Dressed in a baggy white T-shirt and blue jeans, Deion Branch, 25, makes a habit of defying convention. In January, he became only the fourth wide receiver in the Super Bowl’s 39-year history to win MVP honors, leading his team to their second consecutive world championship. Three years ago, Branch received a $1.025 million signing bonus after he was drafted and is set to earn a total of more than $1.9 million through the 2006 season. Unlike many of his peers, however, he seems reluctant to actually spend any of it.

“I’m not one who wants to show off,” says Branch, whose few large purchases include a home in Massachusetts and a house for his parents in his hometown of Albany, Ga. “I’m not fascinated by having a lot of things: jewelry or cars. That’s not what moves me.”

He admits his mother had to convince him to acquire his one extravagance: a Cadillac Escalade. “It took a lot to get it. My mom told me, ‘You deserve it. You’re the one who has been working so hard.’ ”

Branch, who is single with three children under 3, including twin boys, possesses financial foresight that belies his age. He credits his parents and his financial advisor, Richard Rosenberg of RR Advisory Group in New York, for keeping him fiscally grounded.

Branch hired Rosenberg in 2003 because the advisor’s primary focus was on Branch’s children. “That just spoke volumes about what type of person he is,” Branch says.

“Managing money is very, very challenging for these young kids,” says Rosenberg, who serves more than 50 players. “For Deion, I don’t think his personality is affected by the amount of money in his bank account. His ambition is to build family wealth. He’s definitely a different kind of guy.”

Branch’s story is not one of rags to riches. His father owned a car detailing business and his mother was a supervisor at a Procter & Gamble plant. As a boy, he received an allowance of $40 to $50 a week, which he carefully managed. “I had uncles who always wanted to borrow $20, and I was excited to be able to lend my family money,” he recalls. “I’m the same way now.”

Back to Basics
Rosenberg, a CPA, CFP and former tax manager in Arthur Andersen’s private client group, acknowledges that players often require rudimentary lessons in financial management. Many of his clients open their first bank account with a seven-figure bonus. Like Mangum, Rosenberg’s primary challenges are convincing them to live within a budget and plan for a future without football. “We try to get them to save as much as humanly possible,” he admits. “But there is so much peer pressure [to spend].”

Adhering to spending limits can be a difficult task for Rosenberg’s clients, who are eager to cash in on their newfound wealth. “We advise them not to build a lifestyle they can’t continue if they left the league,” he explains. “There is nothing worse than building a lifestyle, depleting your assets and having to leave the league at an early age.”

After crafting a budget, the first vehicles Rosenberg recommends to his clients are a will and injury insurance. For a player like Branch, $1 million in catastrophic injury coverage can cost $15,000 per year—or 6 percent of his rookie salary. Branch knows all too well about the fragile nature of his earning power, having missed more than half of the 2004 season with a knee injury. “I am not going to be playing football all my life,” he says. “If something should happen and I don’t have a plan set, then I’m done. Then I’d really have people coming after me.”

Rosenberg also advises his clients to delay sharing their largesse, even with family and friends. “Family asking for money is a big problem for these guys,” he says. “They have a very small window of opportunity to make money, and they can’t throw it away.” He suggests that unless a player’s family is in dire straits, the player wait until he is financially independent before including extended family in his budget.

Branch’s wealth is invested conservatively. Most of his capital lies in fixed income products, notably high-quality municipal bonds. Ther remainder is in diversified equities.

Like Williams, Branch has set up a foundation. He plans to use income earned from endorsement deals and other sidelines to fund the foundation, which will support meningitis research. One of Branch’s sons contracted viral meningitis, but is now fully recovered.

Branch is planning for life after football by exploring residential and commercial real estate investments, but sensibly. He is looking at investments “that are within my means,” he says. “I’m not trying to buy 20 condos.”

For now, however, he remains composed and gratified about his success—and refuses to let it change his outlook. “The biggest change is I’ve got more bills now,” he says with a smile. “I see a different statement every day from something I don’t even remember.”

Samantha Marshall is based in New York sammarshall_66@yahoo.com.
Matt Purdue is executive editor of Worth. mattp@worth.com

Illustration by Darren Thompson.

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