Another Bad Investment

You can count former NFL quarterback Ty Detmer among the scores of athletes that have made bad financial investments. The former Philadelphia Eagle and Detroit Lion says he lost $2 million dollars in a scam headed by Kurt Barton, the former chief executive of Triton Financial.

The Austin American-Statesman reports that Detmer was the first witness called Monday. He fought back tears while testifying that he had lost about $2 million since investing with Triton in 2005.



"You lose money, that's one thing," Detmer said from the witness stand. "But I feel like all I've ever tried to do was just do the right thing."

Prosecutors said the Ponzi scheme ran by Barton targeted former athletes, like Detmer and fellow former Heisman winners Chris Weinke and Earl Campbell. Sounds like he had a thing for former Heisman winners.

Prosecutors said Barton wanted to hang out with NFL players and used money that investors thought was for real estate deals to pay for a luxury box at University of Texas football games, a $150,000 car and family trips on private jets.

The worse part of this is that Detmer met Barton through his church and gave Barton control over most of his savings, taking a penalty for cashing out a $1.2 million annuity because Barton told him he could quickly earn it back.


"I trusted him with everything," Detmer said.


Detmer, who now coaches football at a private school in Austin, said he had to cash out the college savings plans for his two youngest daughters and sell his house.

Locally I know Detmer's name brings up some ill feelings among Lions fans, since he did have a seven interception performance, but this is bigger than football. True indeed the Detmer has earned more than I'll ever see in my life, but he seemed like a good honest man and I actually feel sorry for him. I think he was taken advantage of since he was honest and trusting. I hope he can bounce back from this setback.





 





 








 

Jones-Drew Won't Apologize To Jay Cutler

When Chicago Bears quarterback Jay Cutler missed the second half of the NFC championship game due to a fringe knee injury, Jacksonville Jaguars running back Maurice Jones-Drew led the brigade of NFL players ripping on Cutler and calling him soft, a jake, anything that you can say that can insult a player.

Today Jones-Drew says he's not backing down from anything he said about Cutler. Jones-Drew took to Twitter when he learned that Cutler was sitting out the second half with a trip to the Super Bowl on the line. I'll say this about Jones-Drew, at least he hasn't went back and said his account was hacked or he reflected upon it after x amount of time and felt he should make amends about the situation. In an interview with the NFL Network, Jones-Drew said he has no regrets.

“I don’t regret anything I do,” Jones-Drew said. “You think about everything you put out there. I’m not going to be one of those guys to say, ‘I shouldn’t have done it.’ Because I did it. I knew what I was doing when I tweeted it. I just didn’t know that many people were following me at the time.”


Asked if he had apologized to Cutler, Jones-Drew said he hasn’t seen Cutler but sees no reason that he would need to reach out.



“I haven’t gotten a chance to, but I wouldn’t apologize because I didn’t do anything wrong, I don’t think,” Jones-Drew said. “I didn’t commit a crime. I didn’t kill anyone or rape anyone or anything like that. I mean, I stated my opinion, and it seems like you get more backlash for that than committing a real crime in some sense. I feel like I didn’t do anything wrong, I just said what everybody else was thinking.”

Jones-Drew didn't do anything wrong. If he hadn't said it maybe someone else would've. I'm just glad he didn't go back on what he said and claimed it was a mistake made by someone else. Clubber Lang would be proud for being a real man in this case. The only thing I might would be disappointed with is when he said that he didn't know that many people were following him.

You're a celebrity/entertainer/athlete, you have more followers than the average person.