It is every kids dream..  making it to the bigs.

Whether a basketball player, a football player or a baseball player, the one thing every kid has in common is the dream that one day they will be playing on their sports biggest stage.

When the make it, its like they won the lottery.  And that is where the trouble begins.

Would you believe that 78% of NFL Football Players end up in bankruptcy or severe financial distress within 2 years of leaving the game.

Oh..  its true.  And its not just NFL players who feel the pinch.

Within five years of retirement, an estimated 60% of former NBA players are broke.

Numerous retired MLB players have been similarly ruined, and the current economic crisis is taking a toll on some active players as well. Last month 10 current and former big leaguers—including outfielders Johnny Damon of the Yankees and Jacoby Ellsbury of the Red Sox and pitchers Mike Pelfrey of the Mets and Scott Eyre of the Phillies—discovered that at least some of their money is tied up in the $8 billion fraud allegedly perpetrated by Texas financier Robert Allen Stanford. Pelfrey told the New York Post that 99% of his fortune is frozen; Eyre admitted last month that he was broke, and the team quickly agreed to advance a portion of his $2 million salary.

These stories and more are told this month in an Sports Illustrated Feature Story : How (and Why) Athletes Go Broke

Sports Illustrated writer Pablo S. Torre breaks it down in all its sad truths.

The Lure of the Tangible, how players who mostly never have had anything, suddenly can have everything.  They're inability to say No.  Having never had the ability to say Yes.

Misplaced Trust, kids who spend basically their entire lives depending on other people to help them get there, once they get there, find they are now on their own.

"SALARY ASIDE, the closest analogue to a pro athlete is not a white-collar executive. It's a lottery winner—who's often in his early twenties. "With athletes, there's an extraordinary metamorphosis of financial challenge," says agent Leigh Steinberg, who has represented the NFL's No. 1 pick a record eight times. "Coming off college scholarships, they probably haven't even learned the basics of budgeting or keeping receipts." Which then triggers two fatal mistakes: hiring the wrong people as advisers, and trusting them far too much."

Family Matters and for these young men, more often then not, its family that brings them down.  Not just meddling parents or manipulative siblings, more often its the kids, ex-wives and adulteress lifestyle that brings these men down.  They are passion run wild and they create scenarios for themselves which lead down a destructive path they can't seem to resist.

Its a nice in-depth story I highly recommend that you check it out.