These athletes lost all their money, sometimes going broke as soon as they left their sport.
Debi Thomas, a bronze medalist at the 1988 Olympics, was an African-American trailblazer
and once the most popular figure skaters in America.
After retiring from skating, Thomas graduated from medical school and began practicing orthopedic
surgery.
Her attitude caused problems.
She bounced from job to job.
She tried starting her own practice, but it failed.
According to the TV series Fix My Life, on which she appeared in 2015, she lived in a
bedbug-infested trailer with her fiance.
Her medical license lapsed and her only income came from selling gold bullion.
In 2012, she approached a police officer, saying she had a gun and that she planned
on hurting herself.
This led to a bipolar diagnosis, which she denies.
Thomas told the Washington Post,
"I'm very misunderstood because I look at the world differently.
You can call it the Olympian mentality."
Behind the facade of a hoops prodigy, Kenny Anderson hid a more complicated life.
As he told SB Nation in 2013, he was molested by two different men and spent his childhood
in the shadow of his mother's addictions.
His NBA earnings totaled more than $63 million, but his demons remained.
His lifestyle, which included numerous mansions, 11 cars, and eight children by three different
mothers, took a toll on his wallet.
He filed for bankruptcy in 2005, the year he left the NBA.
As he explained to Forbes,
"I wasn't a gambler or a drug addict, but I did foolish things."
In the 2017 documentary Mr. Chibbs, Anderson showed what it meant to lose so much.
Anderson says he lives comfortably now, and his main focus is being a better parent to
his many children.
"I had everything.
Millions.
And I was, like, miserable."
Vince Young's college football coach told Sports Illustrated his former star quarterback
was "obviously one of the best to ever play college football."
Many fans consider Young's 2006 Rose Bowl performance one of the best.
It bought him a ticket to the NFL, but despite winning Offensive Rookie of the Year and earning
two Pro Bowl appearances, Young struggled.
After clashes with his coaches, he played his last NFL game in 2011.
A suicide scare and a DUI turned him into tabloid fodder, and a lifetime of ignoring
his finances led to bankruptcy that same year.
He was far too generous, notoriously spending $15,000 for one meal at a Cheesecake Factory.
In recent years, Young has righted his financial ship and took a job at his alma mater, the
University of Texas.
He played for the Saskatchewan Roughriders of the CFL in 2017 before an injury forced
him to retire, most likely for good this time.
Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario won 14 tennis Grand Slams and became only the second woman ever
to be ranked No. 1 simultaneously in both singles and doubles.
Despite earning $17 million in prize money over her 17-year career and another $40 million
in endorsements, the icon told Spanish magazine La Otra Conica,
"My parents left me with nothing, and now I am indebted to the [tax authorities] and
I will not be quiet."
Sanchez-Vicario sued her father and her brother for restitution.
According to her lawsuit, her family was living extravagantly, thanks to offshore accounts
and duplicitous dealings, while she got by on €1,500 per month.
Crowned World Council heavyweight champion in 1986, Mike Tyson went on to win the World
Boxing Association and International Boxing Federation championships.
He ruled the ring into 1989, but things started to fall apart.
His wife, Robin Givens, divorced him, alleging physical abuse.
In early 1990, he lost the championship to an underdog.
In 1991 he was accused of rape, and in 1992 he was sentenced to six years for the crime.
When he got out of jail after serving only three years, Tyson returned to boxing.
During a match with Evander Holyfield, Tyson was disqualified for biting off part of Holyfield's
ear.
The boxing commission withheld $3 million from his purse.
He lost another big fight in 2002, and filed for bankruptcy in 2003.
He wasn't earning enough to support his $400,000 a month lifestyle, and his debts totaled more
than $20 million.
He was probably regretting the $173,000 diamond chains.
"I never really learned the art of handling money as a kid.
That's a art."
Hall of famer Dennis Rodman spent millions of dollars not on diamond chains but on NBA
fines.
In 1997, he was fined $25,000 for kicking a cameraman.
An 11-game suspension for the incident cost him around $1 million.
Later that year, he was fined $50,000 for "expletive-laced" comments he made about Mormons
while he was in Utah.
In 2000, he raked up $13,500 in fines in five games.
Fines weren't the only things sucking the cash out of Rodman's personal fortune.
Rodman's lifestyle cost him around $31,000 a month, and he wasn't taking home enough
money to pay for it.
In 2012, CBS reported he owed $860,000 in child support payments and owed about $350,000
in California state taxes.
According to CNBC, before his infamous murder trial, OJ Simpson was worth an estimated $11
million.
The trial cost him around $50,000 a day.
Yet he continued to generate income while he was in custody, mostly through the sale
of memorabilia, which actually increased in demand.
OJ Simpson autographs were even more valuable if they were dated from the time of the trial.
Even so, during the civil trial that followed his acquittal, his attorneys claimed he was
$850,000 in debt.
As of 2014, the Goldman and Brown families say they've been able to collect less than
1 percent of the $33.5 million they were awarded in that case.
Simpson has a pension from the NFL worth $25,000 a month, and by law the Goldmans and Browns
can't take any of it.
So he may have lost millions, but he isn't exactly destitute.
Dorothy Hamill was just 19 when she won figure skating gold at the 1976 Winter Olympics.
It was tough for a teenager to suddenly be smart about managing millions of dollars from
endorsements.
Hamill filed for bankruptcy in 1996, claiming $1.3 million in assets and $1.6 million in
debt, with "[no] contracts to perform, to endorse products, to commentate, or to perform
other professional services."
She could no longer self-market her way out of her financial woes.
"It just wasn't everything I thought winning an Olympic gold medal would be."
Hamill blamed her estranged husband for talking her into bad business ventures, although her
friends told the press that she had pretty terrible spending habits.
As of 2018, Hamill says she's changed her ways.
She said,
"The good news is I've finally found people that are trustworthy and I'm a little smarter."
Golfer John Daly made a name for himself on the PGA tour in 1991, when he won the PGA
Championship playing as an alternate.
His performance earned him the coveted title of Rookie of the Year.
Daly squandered the money he earned as a professional golfer in one of the most devastating ways
possible.
He gambled it all away in casinos over about 15 years.
In a 2014 interview with TMZ Sports, Daly says he calculated his total gambling losses
at around $90 million.
Daly told TMZ that he would often take out million-dollar markers and play blackjack.
Sometimes he'd have as much as $600,000 on a single table.
When asked if he regretted his gambling days, he just said,
"Man, I had a great time."
In 1985, at the age of 17, Boris Becker became the youngest men's singles champion at Wimbledon.
By 1996, he had three Wimbledon wins, plus a U.S. Open win and two Australian Open wins.
The New York Post says he was worth about $63 million in prize money and sponsorships.
Becker lost a large portion of his fortune after a brief romantic encounter with a Russian
model named Angela Ermakova.
She got pregnant, which was particularly awkward since the hookup happened while his wife was
also pregnant.
The subsequent divorce and child support for his various children is estimated to have
cost him over $26 million.
The German government later came after him for millions in back taxes.
Finally, in 2017, after decades of financial woe, Becker was declared bankrupt.
Deuce McAllister got into the University of Mississippi on his own merits and made a name
for himself in football.
He went on to a career in the NFL, where played for nine seasons and was voted into the Pro
Bowl in 2003.
He became legendary while playing for the New Orleans Saints, setting their all-time
rushing touchdown record in 2008.
According to Pro Football Talk, McAllister made "tens of millions" during his career,
but then he made the unfortunate decision to buy a Jackson, Mississippi, Nissan dealership,
which went bankrupt in 2009 after Nissan says he defaulted on his payments and went over
his credit line.
By 2011, Whitney National Bank was after McAllister for an unpaid $1.8 million mortgage.
Former NFL quarterback Mark Brunell was once worth about $50 million, but he squandered
it all on nine shaky business enterprises.
According to SB Nation, five of those nine businesses went under, and as of 2011 Brunell
was the subject of six lawsuits.
The worst of all his investments was real estate firm Champion LLC, which lost him a
ton of money when the market crashed.
SB Nation said he was so broke that he planned to get a job as a medical sales representative
upon his retirement, but in 2018 he landed a job as a local TV sports anchor.
He also works as a high school football coach for the Episcopal Eagles, which is a gig he
says he loves.
He told 1010 XL,
"Honestly, when I took the job I thought I may do it for two or three years, and now
I'm going into year six and I have no plans of leaving anytime soon."
All-Pro Lawrence Taylor was a Hall of Fame nominee who played linebacker in the NFL for
13 seasons and earned about $50 million over the course of his career.
A lot of that money went toward a drug and alcohol problem.
"I went on a binge for like, uh, over a year.
Every day for over a year."
At its worst, Taylor said his drug habit cost him thousands of dollars a day.
In 1988, he was suspended for failing the NFL's drug test, and he was later arrested
for buying crack cocaine from an undercover officer.
Taylor also once owned a $10 million business that went bust, and in 1990 he filed a false
tax return that came back to bite him.
In 1998, he filed for bankruptcy protection to avoid foreclosure on his $600,000 home
in New Jersey.
In 2010, he was arrested on charges of having sex with a minor.
He pleaded guilty and got probation.
Former quarterback Michael Vick became infamous back in 2007, when he pleaded guilty to charges
related to an illegal dog fighting ring.
Vick co-owned Bad Newz Kennels, which was training around 50 pit bull terriers to participate
in high-stakes dog fights.
They executed the dogs that didn't perform well.
Vick spent 18 months in prison and accumulated $17.8 million in debt.
In 2008, he filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
Since then, he's tried to redeem himself.
In 2014 he told ESPN that he filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy instead of Chapter 7 so he would
have an opportunity to pay back his debts.
He said,
"I didn't want to stiff people who never stiffed me."
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