MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — The bye week is a good opportunity for Miami Dolphins players, after playing 10 games in 10 weeks, to take some well-deserved time off, relax, be with family and maybe take a quick vacation.
And for some Dolphins, they can catch up on business they’ve had to put on the back burner during the arduous grind of an NFL season.
Several Dolphins players are involved in business ventures or other investments outside of football.
Linebacker Elandon Roberts has a daiquiri bar and concrete business in his hometown of Port Arthur, Texas, plus a coffee shop he’s opening in Houston.
Left tackle Terron Armstead has a rap career on the side, has invested in car detailing and limousine businesses and has a vision for a learning center in his hometown of Cahokia, Ill.
Linebacker Duke Riley is the co-owner of a recording studio in New Orleans and has a Louisiana-based fishing business.
Star wide receiver Tyreek Hill opened an athletic apparel store, Soul Runner, ahead of his first season playing for Miami.
Punter Thomas Morstead is a minority owner in Main Squeeze, a juice and smoothie bar in New Orleans, and Mizzen and Main, a dress shirt company his friend started in college.
Safety Eric Rowe is into real estate investments and has invested in a number of startup companies.
The Dolphins, beyond being a team that is hot on a four-game winning streak at 7-3 on its bye, have a number of entrepreneurs and business-minded players that are having their NFL paychecks work for them.
“As my career got going, you’re blessed with an amount of money where you’re like, ‘Man, I want to start something,’ ” Roberts said.
These Dolphins players are defying the stereotypes and stigmas surrounding athletes and money management.
“It was such a negative energy around athletes [getting involved in business],” Armstead said in a video produced by the team heading into the season. “Now, we have so many different athletes and so many different businesses — music, real estate, schools — that, when you retire, you have life after retirement. And I think it’s extremely important.”
Fitting their passions
For these players, the business side isn’t merely about the pursuit of exponential growth in wealth from those game checks. They’re getting involved in business ventures that fit what they’re passionate about.
Roberts has a desire to boost the economy in his hometown of Port Arthur and found the creation of Spindletop Concrete to be a perfect way to go about doing that.
“It brings jobs to the area, and then once it brings jobs, it’ll bring careers,” said Roberts, who is in his seventh NFL season and third in Miami. “I just felt like you can’t go wrong with concrete. We’re going to be making that for a long time.”
Roberts started Land Lord’s Daiquiri Den to give people in his community a safe, clean place to get together and enjoy a cold beverage.
“You get to see people come in, buy drinks but, at the same time, have a good time,” Roberts said. “You got the lounge part of it, see people enjoying themselves.”
His coffee shop in Houston is set to open in February or March.
“I drink coffee everyday, and I always wanted to open something with coffee,” he said. “It was just a no-brainer.”
Roberts’ coffee shop will also have a speakeasy in it, which is inspired by how often he found speakeasies and hideaway bars he enjoyed at his previous stop in New England. He wanted to bring that aspect to the coffee experience.
Armstead was big into making rap music going back to high school with his friends. He took a hiatus when he started out in the NFL out of Arkansas-Pine Bluff.
Armstead has released several singles, including his top song, “B.O.A,” which has over 1.8 million listens on Spotify, which also has him down for having more than 32,000 monthly listeners.
He has invested in a car detailing business called SevenO Luxury Automotive Solutions, is in the process of investing in an SUV limousine business in South Florida and a community center he was building in Cahokia was nearly complete before a frozen pipe burst in February 2021, flooding the building.
Hill is fully focused on football in-season as he leads the NFL with 1,148 receiving yards through 10 weeks, but his offseason “It Needed To Be Said” podcast gave him an outlet to speak his mind and entertain fans while his monthlong pop-up in Aventura Mall, “Soul Runner,” combined his passions for athletics and fashion.
“Fashion is my second dream and what I’ll probably be doing when I’m done playing,” Hill said in August, when his store opened.
Riley’s hobbies and interests got him started with his studio and fishing business.
“Two things that I love outside of ball,” he said.
He started them at the beginning of the COVID pandemic.
“I was like, ‘Man, I ain’t about to be at home not doing nothing,' ” Riley said. “I’m going to be working some type of way.”
While he still has his businesses, signing another one-year deal with the Dolphins led him to have them take a backseat to football for now.
“It’s kind of hard to juggle everything,” Riley said. “I was trying to put all my focus into this right now, hit it hard this offseason.”
No rush
Not every football player is ready to dive into the business world as soon as they start making NFL money, and some veterans don’t recommend youngsters start until they have substantial savings.
“I didn’t start making liquid investments until I didn’t need to make any more money,” said Morstead, the 36-year-old in his 14th NFL season who has had younger players ask for advice managing money. “Once I got to a place where I didn’t need to work anymore. … ‘I’ll take a shot at this, take a shot at that.’ ”
Former Dolphins cornerback Nolan Carroll, who has run several successful businesses since last playing in the NFL in 2017, agrees.
“I tell them, ‘You don’t have to rush into it,’ ” Carroll said of how he reacts when current players inquire with him about investing their money.
“A lot of guys have this itch to almost be a football player still, like they’re always looking for that big win. You get so accustomed in the NFL to winning, you think that’s what it’s going to be like every single week, and when you’re running a business, it’s not the same. You have certain days where you win. You might have certain weeks where you’re not winning at all. You have to be patient with the process.
“You can be competitive in the business world, but you got to be smart about it. … Much of the time, it’s not about working harder, it’s working smarter.”
Added Morstead: “I don’t recommend players go that route until they have a bunch of other things lined up already. I think it sounds cool to get involved in business outside of football, but for most players, I really try to encourage guys to keep their focus on what butters your bread, which is football. It’s easy to get excited about other things, but if your mind is focused on anything other than football, especially during the season, I don’t think it’s a good recipe for anybody.”
Armstead and Roberts started their careers putting all their focus into football before they got comfortable expanding into business ideas.
“Coming in as a young player, especially a small school guy, I didn’t necessarily think that it was acceptable to have hobbies or different forms of life,” Armstead said in the team-released video feature on him. “I didn’t know because ‘football, football, shut up and play.’ That doesn’t fit me at all.”
Rowe said he was ready to start investing from his rookie season, a byproduct of his mother always emphasizing it to him growing up.
Breaking stigmas
For many decades, athletes have been stereotyped for mismanaging money: going broke years after their playing careers are over, either trying to keep up with a flashy lifestyle that is not sustainable once the game checks stop coming in or falling victim to bad investments or the inability to tell freeloading family and friends “no.”
Carroll believes progress has been made in recent years with players building their own brands and hearing about past athletes’ predicaments, but he wants more emphasis through programs and a reinforcement of financial literacy.
He says the key for athletes to avoid poor investments is simply getting involved and doing their research on where the investment is going. Athletes shouldn’t just trust anyone that approaches them with an idea.
“Let your money work for you. You have the leverage,” Carroll said. “Just understand where you want to use it, how you want to use it, just be smart about it. Educate yourself. Don’t just throw your money into somebody else and have them do it for you. Actually take ownership, take control and be a leader, be a captain.”
He also doesn’t like athletes being told sports is the only way they’re going to make their living.
“NFL coaches, they tell us this a lot, which I don’t like, is they say, ‘This is as good as it’s going to get. This is the most money you’re ever going to make in your life,’ ” Carroll said. “And I dislike that, because you’re putting a limit on what I can actually do. I think I’ve made damn near just as much money outside the league as I’ve made inside the league.”
Among his business interests, Carroll’s rum company, YOLO Rum, is in its 11th year. After building up a 3D printing business with a store location on South Beach, he sold it. The former NFL cornerback is also into coaching, leading Jacksonville Athletic Academy to an Independent Junior College Athletic Association national championship this month. As director of football at JAA, he had to take over as head coach after two coaches quit.
Carroll uses his social media presence, including an Instagram page with more than 100,000 followers, similar to how he coaches his junior college athletes, providing motivation with his posts.
Carroll’s final NFL season in Dallas opened his eyes to how Cowboys owner Jerry Jones built his empire. He also followed NFL examples of Dolphins owner Steve Ross and Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie.
Several current Dolphins are breaking through the stigma of athletes and their money, and they’re still producing on Sundays.
“My focus is still fully on football, but it’s like anything,” Roberts said. “You get a good grasp of it in the offseason, instead of just working out, doing this, doing that, you start venturing off into things. You start to understand what you can do as a pro.”
