If you’re wondering how a football player can sign a contract at age 23 that guarantees him more than $25 million and be broke by age 29, Vince Young’s spending habits may help you understand.
Young, the quarterback who’s currently out of the NFL but was the third overall pick of the Titans in the 2006 NFL draft, is currently embroiled in a lawsuit with his former financial adviser. And that adviser testified that Young once took out a loan because he didn’t have enough money to throw himself the kind of birthday party he wanted. That party must have been something a little fancier than the birthday parties I used to have at Chuck E. Cheese’s, because Young spent $300,000.
Ronnie Peoples, president and CEO of Peoples Financial Service Inc., said in a deposition that between the end of the 2010 season and the start of the 2011 season, Young decided that he had to have a huge 28th birthday bash. And when Peoples told Young that he didn’t have the money, Young instructed Peoples to place a phone call to take out a loan.
“I think we still would have been OK to go ahead and survive until the next season, but he had a birthday event coming up that he paid 300 and some thousand dollars for,” Peoples testified. “That’s what prompted that call.”
Young’s lawyer disputes Peoples’s accounting of the situation and accuses Peoples of mismanaging Young’s money. Young is openly lobbying for another shot in the NFL, but so far has found no takers.