Browns wide receiver Josh Gordon says he made $10k a month dealing drugs in college
If you’ve been in college, you know you have to learn to get by without much money coming in, if at all. It’s a real-life struggle and seems anyone without privilege will have to deal with it.
NCAA athletes have it even worse. They’re not allowed to work and have serious restrictions about earning income while they play sports for their schools because God forbid something gets in the way of the NCAA adding to their billion-dollar revenue.
For troubled NFL receiver Josh Gordon, the drive to get money outweighed obeying any institutional rules. In a recent interview with Sports Illustrated, Gordon said he pulled down around $10,000 in monthly income by dealing drugs.
From SI:
“As a sophomore at Baylor he says he was receiving as much as six pounds of weed—vacuum-sealed and wrapped in Mylar, sprayed with kerosene and covered in coffee beans to mask the smell, shipped through U.S. mail—every week from a dealer back home. He would drive to Dallas, Austin and San Antonio to sell it, and he estimates he was bringing in upward of $10,000 in profit every month. He was arrested for possession in fall 2010 and one year later was indefinitely suspended for failing a school drug test.”
Gordon was suspended by the NFL two years ago for violating their substance-abuse policy, and he’s battled with addiction since his days at Baylor. He’s now on the verge of making his comeback this weekend by suiting up for the Cleveland Browns against the Los Angeles Chargers. This comes on the heels of realizing he needed to make real change in his life.
“If I was willing to go to any length to [get a fix],” he said. “then at what point am I going to go to any length to get something positive for me?”
If this is truly a change in trajectory for Gordon, you have to applaud the dude for conquering his demons and getting back on the field to play the game he loves. But if things fall back into the same downward spiral, we can only hope he doesn’t end up ruining his life like so many other athletes have in the past. That’s about the only thing worse than playing for the Browns.
