Phenomenal competitive drive is needed to succeed at the highest echelon of sports, so it’s understandable that it took Shaun Phillips a while to fully embrace collaboration with his classmates. After an illustrious 11 year career with the San Diego Chargers, Denver Broncos, and Indianapolis Colts, the retired NFL linebacker now interacts in the classroom with players he lined up against on the field football. Set to graduate on May 5th from Miami’s Executive MBA for Artists and Athletes program, Phillips is enjoying graduate school and is planning the next steps in his professional life.
For Phillips, an MBA is a key to financial success. Phillips attributes his desire to learn more about his finances from his playing days. “I had no real experience with money prior to the NFL, there was no real guidance.” Despite little formal finance education, Phillips took on a financial advisor his rookie year and invested in the San Diego Charger’s 401k retirement plan. Yet Phillip’s felt he had to educate himself about his finances because, “when you have to pay people for these things, it starts to compound on you, you need to know where your money is going because at the end of the day, the only person who cares about your money is you.”
Phillips began investing outside of his team’s 401k and put himself on a budget. “There are still ways of being a baller, just be an asset baller,” says Phillips of his lifestyle. When he made large purchases he paid in cash or financed with low interest rate loans and utilized a team of advisors for his investment strategy. Not every investment was a success. Failed ventures into a restaurant and an E*TRADE competitor made Phillips realize that certain investments simply weren’t in his wheelhouse. “I realized I wasn’t factoring in risk and how much money I could lose,” he says. Phillips thinks the pressures of professional sports make it difficult to plan for a second career. “When you’re playing you aren’t thinking about life after sports. It’s hard to think about leveraging your brand [for your next career], football is your focus.”
Given the high rate of NFL players who go bankrupt only a few years after retirement, Phillips advises players entering the NFL to save their money and utilize the financial resources supplied by the NFL Players Association (NFLPA). “When you’re young you think you’re invincible. Educate yourself, read a lot, leverage your assets. You need to know basic finance.” Phillip’s believes, initially, that it should be the sports agent’s responsibility to help the player navigate the benefits provided by the league and to make sure they get proper financial guidance.
Shaun Philips with his eldest son, Jaylen. (Photo courtesy of Shaun Phillips)
Now that his football career is over, Phillips is driven by a desire to learn; the return to the classroom has been a natural progression. Since his playing days, Phillips has been interested in commercial real estate and is developing the quantitative and qualitative skills for future business ventures. “It’s different than the NFL, they are teaching us the skills you need to act like a general manager. We bounce business ideas off each other; in the NFL you kept those things to yourself.” Phillips has bonded with NFL classmates Ryan Mundy, Derrick Morgan and Takeo Spikes, equating the relationships he has developed to team-building in the NFL. “There’s healthy competition in b-school, you’re competitive at first before realizing you need to work together.” Phillips says he has “more big things” in the works and he’s “just getting warmed up.” If the next chapter in Shaun Phillips life is as impressive as the first, then his MBA might be his best investment yet.
