When Phillip Buchanon was selected 17th overall by the Raiders back in the 2002 NFL Draft, it was likely the happiest day of his life. But it didn't take long for that happiness to subside. Because according to Buchanon—who spent about a decade in the NFL playing for the Raiders, Texans, Buccaneers, Lions, and Redskins before retiring in 2011—his own mom hit him up a short time after the draft and demanded $1 million from him. Her reasoning: She had spent 18 years raising him and was entitled to a payday for doing it.
"She told me that I owed her a million dollars for raising me for the past 18 years," Buchanon writes in his new book, New Money: Staying Rich, which was just excerpted by Fox Sports. "Well, that was news to me. If my mother taught me anything, it's that this is the most desperate demand that a parent can make on a child. The covenant of having a child is simply that you give your child everything possible, and they owe you nothing beyond a normal amount of love and respect. There is no financial arrangement."
Buchanon's claim might seem crazy. But we've heard about other NFL players—and athletes as a whole—going through similar situations with family members. And it almost (almost!) makes us glad that we're not making millions of dollars every year to play a sport.
You can read the rest of the excerpt from Buchanon's new book here. Believe it or not, his mom made even more ludicrous demands after asking him for a mill.
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[via Fox Sports]
