Do you know what professional athletes like aside from money? Attention.
Sure, there’s a correlation between attention and earning money, but when the day is over, professional athletes still love to gain attention, whether it is good or bad. It’s why you hear of former pros doing random things when their playing careers are over, presumably just to see their names get published somewhere for some reason.
One of the easiest ways to gain attention for professional athletes is to do things that other professional athletes don’t do. And when professional athletes left and right are flaunting their wealth, and boasting their ridiculous homes, expensive accessories and overpriced cars, it’s easy to get noticed when you go against such a common grain.
So when top QB draft pick Mitchell Trubisky, rolled into the Chicago Bears minicamp in an old 1997 Toyota Camry, people did notice. That tends to happen when a guy makes it into the NFL and is expected to immediately cash in their signing bonuses and get themselves a six-figure vehicle, because let’s be real here, like 99%* of top-10 draft picks tend to do that.
Now I don’t think a guy like Trubisky did this too deliberately; if anything at all, he’s fulfilling a joking obligation with the Bears’ GM to show up to camp in the car, when they were so amused by it in the first place when they went to North Carolina to meet him prior to the draft. I don’t dislike Trubisky; in fact, I appreciate the fact that he was drafted so high, because I still remember the guy that threw two picks in a game against Virginia Tech and lost 34-3, and it only makes Tech look better ultimately.
He also doesn’t strike me as a dumb guy, with any visions of having a Tom Brady-like career that will span decades and earn millions. There’s a far greater chance that his rookie contract and signing bonus might be the only contract he’ll ever have, and there’s never any fault in being cautious with his money from Day 1.
But this is the second straight year where a football player has rolled into camp in an uncharacteristically modest and humble car, with Alfred Morris making waves showing up to Dallas in a 1991 Mazda 626, and the media and everyone else like me talking about it. I feel like this is going to be like an NFL meme, and wouldn’t be the least bit surprised next season, when a player rolls into camp in a Honda Accord or a Chevrolet Lumina. Because by next season, the recipe will be public, and showing up in a beater equates to attention, attention for appearing humble, humble is likeable, and being likeable is profitable.
*unsubstantiated figure, but not entirely inaccurate in all likelihood
