Quarterback Brian Brohm thought about leaving college early for the N.F.L., but he decided to return for his senior season at Louisville. He is considered a near-certain first-round draft pick in 2008, maybe the best quarterback in the class, perhaps worthy of the first overall pick and the tens of millions of dollars of guaranteed money that comes with the honor.
Brohm made his decision in January. Now his family is facing another decision: whether to buy disability insurance in case an injury prevents him from reaching his first football payday. The Brohms are trying to put a price on the possibilities and weighing the what-ifs.
They are far from alone. At least 100 players who will be chosen in next weekend’s N.F.L. draft opted to buy insurance. The first three rounds will be conducted Saturday, and the final four rounds Sunday.
“I don’t think there will be anybody drafted on the first day who will not be covered by disability insurance,” said Keith Lerner, whose Total Planning Sports Services in Gainesville, Fla., focuses on insurance for college athletes.
Most of the policies are bought before the players embark on their final college season, and after draft experts — and insurers — predict their spot in the next draft.
Insurance companies, playing the part of fortune tellers and draftniks, have told Brohm’s father, Oscar, that they will risk millions of dollars to insure the family against the slim chance that Brohm never signs a professional contract. The question facing the Brohms is whether to spend tens of thousands of dollars on an insurance premium when fewer than 1 in 100 insured players ever file a claim.
“We’re probably going to do one,” Oscar Brohm said of the policies and quotes he is scouring. “You’re almost in a position where if you don’t, and something happens, you go, ‘Oh, I should have.’ ”
The policies cover the athletes if an injury, sustained on the field or off, prevents them from playing professionally. With rare exceptions, policies do not protect an athlete whose draft stock and potential contract value merely decline because of an injury or accident. The policies expire when a professional contract is signed; some players take out disability policies once they turn pro.
Typically, college athletes and their families will secure loans to cover the premiums. In football, the cost is roughly 1 percent of the policy’s value, or about $10,000 for $1 million worth of insurance. The amount of coverage available for the best players — those expected to be chosen in the first few picks of the draft — has nudged to about $10 million, double what it was at the start of the decade.
Football players envision lucrative futures and fear that a serious injury will leave them with nothing. Last year’s top draft pick, North Carolina State defensive end Mario Williams, was guaranteed at least $26.5 million in his six-year contract with the Houston Texans.
“As salaries go up and up, these college athletes have that much more to lose,” said Dan Burns, president of Pro Financial Services in Schaumburg, Ill., a disability underwriting company specializing in policies for high-income athletes, entertainers and executives.
As the first professional payday approaches, the lure of a life-altering contract proves too much to risk.
“You’ve got young people who have worked all their lives, made a lot of sacrifices, and they’re finally about to get paid for it,” said Jim Schaaf, a former Kansas City Chiefs general manager whose insurance company in Overland Park, Kan., wrote several policies for players in this year’s draft. “They want to protect that asset.”
Insurance companies have offered disability policies to elite college athletes for decades. But many policies are bought through the National Collegiate Athletic Association, which entered the field in 1990 largely to combat agents who were secretly and illegally building relationships with athletes by offering to secure disability insurance while the athletes were in college.
The N.C.A.A. now offers up to $3 million of coverage for football players and varying amounts to top baseball, hockey and men’s and women’s basketball players. The organization and the program’s underwriters will re-evaluate those limits this summer.
About 100 athletes secure policies through the N.C.A.A. each year, and about three-quarters of them are football players, said Juanita Sheely, the N.C.A.A.’s travel and insurance manager. Most of the rest are men’s basketball players, who can apply for policies up to $4.4 million.
Few have filed claims because career-ending injuries are rare.
“Probably less than a dozen over the life of the program,” Sheely said.
Still, she said, the program is “not a profit center for the N.C.A.A.”
The N.C.A.A. receives at least one perk from the insurance program. The policies give elite athletes the security to stay in school longer.
“It wasn’t the original intent of the program,” Sheely said. “Then again, that was 17 years ago. It’s a different world. That’s probably a side effect of the program. Student athletes are much more savvy about their prospects than they used to be.”
After Florida’s men’s basketball team won the national championship in 2006, three players — Joakim Noah, Al Horford and Corey Brewer — considered skipping to the N.B.A. Instead, they took out disability insurance, remained at Florida and won back-to-back titles.
Jamie McCloskey, Florida’s associate athletic director for compliance, declined to speculate whether the three would have stayed in college without insurance, but Lerner — whose Total Planning Sports Services did not handle their policies — had no doubt.
“The fact of the matter is, those guys stayed because they had insurance policies,” he said. “Let’s be real here.”
Policies for elite college athletes are similar to those available to others with big earning potential, like professional athletes, entertainers and executives. A major difference is that a college player has no income history on which to base a policy.
Instead, insurance companies rely on the analysis of draft experts and scouting services. They decipher, a year or two in advance, where a player may be drafted, then calculate the sort of contract such a draft selection would be offered by using information from previous years.
“It’s fairly well established what draft picks are going to get,” said Bill Hubbard, president and chief executive of H.C.C. Specialty Underwriters in Wakefield, Mass., which handles policies made through the N.C.A.A.’s program. “There’s tons of historical data.”
To be eligible for the N.C.A.A. program, a football player must be projected to be drafted in the first three rounds — a guideline that most private insurers use, too, to protect their companies and to prevent players who miss the pros from being saddled with a loan for the premium that they cannot repay.
It’s an exercise in speculation. A player may secure insurance before his senior year, only to struggle through the season and see his draft status plummet. Another athlete may not be eligible for insurance in August but be projected as a first-rounder by November. Some athletes have been known to take out policies before bowl games, or even in the weeks before the draft.
There seems little doubt about Brohm’s potential. He is considered such a sure prospect that he may be eligible for the rare policy that would pay an intermediate amount if an injury caused his draft status to drop but did not keep him from playing professionally, Oscar Brohm said.
Such a policy, however, is about twice as expensive as the conventional coverage. At typical rates, a $10 million policy could cost the Brohms $200,000. That seems like a lot of money but could be a fraction of Brian Brohm’s first contract.
“It’s kind of confusing,” Oscar Brohm said. “I’m not sure what we’re going to do.”
The best solution for Brian Brohm is the most obvious one: Play well, and do not get hurt. |
