For the career, and what comes after.

Professional athletes typically owe income tax not only in their home state but in every state where they play a game — a widely used industry term for this is the 'jock tax.' For an athlete based in Georgia, this means Georgia income tax applies to earnings sourced to games played in-state, while other states' rules apply to games played elsewhere, creating a multi-state filing requirement most single-state CPAs don't handle regularly. A short, unpredictable earning window compounds the stakes: cash-flow smoothing, entity structuring for endorsement income, and disability coverage for career-ending injury matter more than they would for someone with decades of level earning ahead.

NIL income is generally treated as self-employment income for federal tax purposes, which means it can trigger self-employment tax and estimated-tax payment obligations that a W-2 paycheck never did. Since the NCAA's 2021 policy change permitting NIL compensation, athletes and their families have increasingly needed entity structuring, quarterly tax projections, and a plan for the portion of NIL income that should be saved rather than spent, since NIL income is typically irregular and can end without notice. Setting up the structure early — before the income arrives, not after — is generally the difference between NIL money that compounds and NIL money that evaporates.

Most professional sports careers end well before age forty, often abruptly due to injury rather than on a planned schedule, which means the post-career transition typically has to be modeled years in advance rather than reacted to after the fact. Planning generally addresses three things: a transition budget that doesn't assume the peak-earning-year income continues, disability and career-ending-injury coverage secured while still active, and a second-career or licensing income stream that doesn't depend on athletic performance. Athletes who start this planning during active playing years typically have more options than those who wait until a contract isn't renewed.

Contract negotiation is typically an agent's job, compensated as a percentage of the contract value — a separate relationship from financial planning. 755 Financial doesn't negotiate contracts; the sports-management practice sits inside the same fee structure as the firm's other wealth management work, disclosed in Form ADV Part 2A for the advisory portion, with any insurance-related placement following the insurance practice's separate commission-based structure. The distinction matters because an agent's incentive is tied to closing a bigger contract, while a financial planning relationship is separate from whether or how a specific deal gets signed.

Yes, though they play different roles: an agent negotiates and closes the contract, while a financial team models what the contract actually means after taxes, escrow, and signing-bonus timing, and builds the plan for the income once it arrives. When the two don't coordinate, decisions can conflict — a deferred-compensation structure the agent negotiates for tax reasons can interact poorly with a state-residency or investment decision the financial team wasn't consulted on. A short, high-stakes earning window has less room to absorb a coordination gap than a longer, more forgiving career would. The distinction matters because an agent's incentive is tied to closing a bigger contract, while a financial planning relationship is separate from whether or how a specific deal gets signed.