Lions cornerback and return man Jamal Agnew has a very rare problem among NFL players: He has a lot of student loans to repay.
The vast majority of NFL players went to college on a football scholarship, but Agnew attended the University of San Diego, a smaller school that doesn’t offer football scholarships, and he took out $50,000 in student loans to pay for it.
A 2017 fifth-round draft pick, Agnew has made about $1.2 million so far in his NFL career, so he’s certainly better off than most twentysomethings saddled with student loan debt, but he still feels the debt hanging over his head.
“Obviously I’m dreading having to pay these loans back,” Agnew told Michael Rothstein of ESPN. “But I think about it. Like, 90 percent of the people I’m leaving school with are going to have these loans and they are not going to be making nearly as much as I am [right now], so I’m just grateful for the position I’m in, the type of money I’ve made so far in the NFL. I’m in a position that a lot of my best friends who I went to school with, I mean, they want to be able to do the same thing I’m doing, which is pay these loans off as fast as possible.”
The good news for Agnew is that the end is in sight: He expects to have all his student loan debt paid off by the end of this year.