Bryant McKinnie

Remember that firm I told you about that is owned by Darien Dash, Jay-z’s former business partner Damon Dash’s cousin? The one that was helping arrange loans for cash strapped players during the lockout? The one that sounded seedier than all get out but you didn’t hear that from me?

Well apparently right before the lockout began Ravens LT Bryant McKinnie borrowed money using the firm’s services and never paid it back. This season, the firm will seek to garnish McKinnie’s wages:

Baltimore Ravens offensive lineman Bryant McKinnie could lose about $4.5 million in wages due to a lawsuit filed in New York Supreme Court and a related case in Baltimore alleging he failed to repay a loan taken out last year.

Pro Player Funding, a private New York sports lending agency, alleges in a November lawsuit that McKinnie took out a loan of about $4.2 million in February 2011 in anticipation of the NFL’s player lockout that lasted about five months last year. Pro Player says McKinnie failed to repay that loan, as well as a separate loan of about $229,000 he took out in July.

The Ravens management, according to court documents, has agreed with both McKinnie and Pro Player Funding to garnish McKinnie’s future wages in the coming season, placing the funds in an escrow account until a second lawsuit in Baltimore City Circuit Court is settled.

In that lawsuit, Pro Player is seeking to recover the money from McKinnie’s future wages this season. But lawyers representing McKinnie filed a counterclaim alleging that Pro Player Funding’s loans were unscrupulous and that the loan agency failed to advance McKinnie at least $1.7 million of the original $4.2 million loan. That lawsuit is still open.

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The NFL and NFLPA have lots of programs running to help NFL players develop their lives and interest outside of football. Their office of player engagement has partnered with the Clive Davis Institute which is part of NYU’s Tisch’s School of Music to boot on a bootcamp for 20 current and former NFL players including the Rams Brandon Lloyd and the Baltimore Ravens’ Bryant McKinnie. Also, Bryant Scott who I interviewed a few months ago when his single Dedicated was released on itunes.

I was vaguely aware of Lloyd’s interest in rapping back when he was a Redskin. You can check out his old myspace page here  and see him getting his freestyle on via this MTV2 Sucka Free clip. McKinnie owns his own record label and frequently tweets about the label and his artists. Here he is talking about why he started the label.

The complete list of players participating in the bootcamp:

This might be the funniest headline I’ve ever written.

According to National Football Post, Carolina Panthers Tight End Jeremy Shockey saved fellow tight end Ben Harstock’s life when he almost choked on a piece of pork tenderloin in the team cafeteria.

It’s more of a story with a good ending than it is a funny one. Hartsock tried drinking some water to clear his throat and when that didn’t work it became evident to others in the room he could not breathe.

“He started to go to the bathroom and I don’t know if he collapsed, but he couldn’t breathe,” McCartney said. “Some new guy came and tried to give him the Heimlich. It didn’t work. Then, Shockey hit him in the back pretty hard and out came the meat. The Panthers told me it was really scary.

“Ben told me Shockey came over and gave me the Heimlich Maneuver and saved my life. He was in good spirits and he’s real thankful for Shockey.”

This has been a week full of heroics by NFL players.

If you didn’t hear, Baltimore Ravens rookie Wide Receiver Tandon Doss broke up a knife fight in Baltimore at Five Guys Burgers and Fries.

Doss said he was not worried about his personal safety when he intervened.

“I mean, it was two dudes on one,” he said with a shrug. “I was trying to help the situation out. I broke it up.”

Ravens coach John Harbaugh said he was not aware of Doss’ role in the fight.

“I’m not on Twitter,” he said. “I’ll be looking into that.”

Doss downplayed any description of his involvement as being heroic.

“I saw the guy on the ground bleeding, and I saw a guy on top hitting him,” he said. “So I stopped it.”

WELCOME TO BALTIMORE TANDON!!! As aggressive as the Ravens play, it’s good that Doss is already showing he isn’t afraid of a fight. I expect big things from him against the Steelers. That’s the real test.

And finally, some positive news about Bryant McKinnie. Not only did he sign with the Ravens after being cut from the Vikings for being out of shape, he also donated all the contents of his Minnesota home to charity rather than taking everything with him to Baltimore.

Former Vikings left tackle Bryant McKinnie has decided to donate the furniture and appliances from his Eden Prairie home to a local chartity, his publicist said today.

“All of my furniture in my old home is practically new and in decent condition, I look at this as a positive way to move to my new location, while still providing families in need of appliances and household goods,”

 

I soooo did not want to write this post. I can’t even type the phrase “torn achilles” without grimacing. It just sounds so damn painful! Anyway, I wondered if it was common to have 10 players to injure their achilles in two just two weeks of camp, and it looks like this hasn’t happened in the past. Judy Battista at the New York Times took on the subject in her column yesterday.

But so far, the unintended winners of the lockout are orthopedic surgeons. With training camps open for less than two weeks, unofficial counts have 10 players with Achilles’ tendon tears, season-ending injuries that Monday claimed their latest victim, Mikel Leshoure, a rookie running back for Detroit.

The number is notable because nine players are thought to have torn their Achilles’ tendons in all of the 2010 preseason. According to figures compiled by Football Outsiders, a Web site that tracks every game of the season, nine players were on injured reserve with Achilles’ tendon injuries in the first week of the season last year.

WOW, so before the pre-season even begins, more players have injured their achilles in training camp than would typically injure them in the pre-season. Battista quotes a doctor who says that not training enough during the lock out could be contributing to the problem.

I hope that players’ muscle memories can hurry and catch up, because if 10 more players injure their achilles tendons it’s gonna be some trouble!

Speaking of not working out enough, Bryant Mckinnie was cut by the Minnesota Vikings for being out of shape. Yes, I know you knew that. But what you probably didn’t know is that his weight was reportedly 400lbs and his cholesterol level was a soaring 400. Just so you know, anything headed into the 200s is considered high. And sure offensive tackles like McKinnie are big but 400lbs? Even at 6’8 400 is pushing the envelope.

Still, McKinnie is looking for work.

From Jason La Canfora:

Rosenhaus’ (Mckinnie’s agent) email to NFL teams reads as follows: “Free agent Bryant McKinnie would be willing to sign a one year contract for $2,500,000 plus reasonable incentives. Please let me know if you have an interest.”

Don’t all jump at once!

McKinnie has been one of those guys who’s ALWAYS questioned about his behavior. I defended him in this blog post when the innanets blew up about him supposedly spending 100K on a bar tab. Some of the other things he’s done have been borderline indefensible. But as I always say, character issues in the NFL are of no consequence as much as we like to pretend we care. What matters is winning, and guys can’t perform when they’re out of shape.

The Jacksonville Jaguars  also released a player, Vince Manuwai, for being out of shape. But it looks like most of the guys across the league came to training camp in good condition. Or, good enough, at least given the circumstances.

That reminds me, I hear New England Patriot Albert Haynesworth is lookin good like I knew that he would! And that’s all that matters, really.

Sometimes I wonder about the ability of people in America to exercise logic at all. When “news” broke that Vikings Offensive tackle Bryant McKinnie spent 100K on a bar tab during all star weekend, the logic went like this:

Bryant McKinnie spent 100K on alcohol> no one should spend 100K on alcohol > Bryant McKinnie doesn’t make the same decisions I believe I would make if I were him > Bryant McKinnie is therefore overpaid > Football players are overpaid

Oh boy, these must be the same people who put together the House Republican Budget for 2011.

Given the fact that a significant amount of Americans have a propensity to overspend, by this logic, we’re all over paid. Perhaps everyone should just work for free.

I’m fully aware of the fact that over half of athletes, especially NFL players, end up poor after retirement. I get it. I also know that McKinnie has a history of spending like a wild man at parties. But his perceived “overspending” has no correlation to being paid based on what you’re worth.

In other words, an employer has no right to say “Hey, this guy doesn’t know how to handle money so I’m not going to give him any despite the fact that he works for me.”

I’m also fully aware that McKinnie is somewhat of a party animal. But hell, if he was skinny and white we’d call him a socialite and make goo goo eyes over his purchases until he did, indeed, go broke. At that point is when the bashing would begin.

But when it comes to athletes I guess people like to start early. Especially the guys over at Pro Football talk who listed the bar tab as part of his lockout plan. Snark sells, but I have no access to McKinnie’s stock portfolio so I’m not touching that one. Not to mention the fact that 100K at a bar is really easy for a good accountant to write off as business depending who was there. Don’t hate the player.

Perhaps the logic should go in reverse. Maybe football players should make MORE money that way they can spend like the owners, keep their expenditures private, charge taxpayers for part of their expenses, leave obnoxious amounts of money to their heirs, and no one says a peep.

I went over to ESPNW, ESPN’s new site for women sports fans and athletes, to check out the site so I could do a review here. The very first post on the site is one about athletes and cheating originally written for ESPN.

Anyway, the article reiterates what we already know: cheating is a lifestyle in the sportsworld (for those who want to) and some men will work entirely too hard just to get some side you-know-what. The article is about 3000 words, so I’ll share a few highlights here:

On Enablers:

There are unspoken codes in the big leagues. On football Sundays, some NFL players are known to dole out their tickets to two different mates in separate parts of the stadium — the wives’ section and the girlfriends’ section. Their paths are never supposed to cross. The lifestyle, in many locker rooms, is accepted.

Even the women who marry pro athletes often quickly learn the codes and unwritten rules of being an athlete’s wife.

Never is that more pronounced than when wives travel on the road. They know their husbands’ careers and earnings are foremost, so even if a wife sees a married teammate with another woman, she is expected to remain silent and keep that information to herself — even if she is close to that teammate’s wife.

Vikings Tackle B. Mckinnie on waiting until retirement to get married:

“A lot of coaches and players have a lot of distractions at home, and it will cause them not to play well,” says Bryant McKinnie, an unmarried left tackle for the Minnesota Vikings. “At the rookie symposium, we learned that 75 percent of NFL marriages end with divorce within two to three years after retirement. And that’s just something that’s always been on my mind.”

He has a point, but given the fact that a lot of athletes are caught up in drama involving women who aren’t their wives or even girlfriends, not being married isn’t the only key to avoiding distraction.

On repeat offenders:

Toni Blackshear doesn’t date athletes anymore. She knows she’s going to come across as a groupie. She is 41 now and doesn’t really care. She has a 16-year-old daughter with former NFL player Chuck Smith whom she dated when both were single.

She’s also had relationships with a handful of NBA and NFL players who generally had one common denominator: They couldn’t stay faithful.

Girl…

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