Logan Ryan on Investing Journey, Mag 7 Bull Case, & AI's Reach into Sports

Diane King Hall (0:12)

Two Super Bowl wins and an 11 year NFL run marked the career of Logan Ryan. Now he's ramping up his next chapter, which started long before he left the league. Ryan joins us today to talk his financial journey, why he's bullish on tech and private markets, plus how AI could change the future of professional sports. Logan joining us here at the Big Board. Logan, it's good to see you.

Logan Ryan (0:35)

I know, it's good to see you. I didn't know we were matching today. I'm kind of, I'm liking this color.

Diane King Hall (0:40)

I do too, it's like we called each other. Sympathetic resonance is what they call that.

Logan Ryan (0:44)

Okay, okay.

Diane King Hall (0:45)

Let's start out with a conversation about the pivot, right?

You have talked before about making that transition and planning for after the league. How soon do you start planning? Because I know, statistically speaking, the average career of an NFL player is just three years. Yours is much longer than that. So talk to us about the planning phase.

Logan Ryan (1:09)

Well, I would say it's not random that the average career is three years. Literally at four years, a lot of our lifetime benefits kick in.

So we become much more expensive to our employers after three years. So it is hard to stick in the NFL after three years, obviously. And I think a lot of the decisions, the disciplined way of which I prepared to play, how I was financially very disciplined, it allowed me to have some freedom to choose when I wanted to walk away. Because you know, you're not going to play the NFL forever. There's, you know, death taxes in your NFL career is going to come to an end. Yeah, father time is undefeated. But they can either tell you or you can walk away. And I felt like I wanted to be somebody to walk away. One of my skills were still respectable. I wasn't hanging on by a thread. There were some teams that definitely still asked me to return to play. But I knew I was in a good financial situation. I knew I was wanting to be home with my family a little bit more. And I knew I wanted to get more involved in investing financially, that it was time to walk away. So I walked away two years ago from playing in the NFL. Now I'm actually an analyst for CBS and I call the games. I still get to go to the games. My wife's like, hey, you're still traveling. I don't know what happened.

But I'm much better for my body, mentally and physically. And I'm able to be at my kids' events all year, which is pretty fun to be at. So I'm just living a life that my discipline early on in life gave me some freedom now.

Diane King Hall (2:35)

What gave you the foundation for that discipline? I imagine it wasn't just sports. I know sports gives discipline, but what gave you that?

Logan Ryan (2:43)

It's my parents, both my mom and dad, Miriam and Lester Ryan, from Camden, New Jersey. So I'm not far from here. They didn't come from much. My dad immigrated from the country of Trinidad. My mom's first generation, Puerto Rican.

So they were hard working people. And I grew up born in Camden and kind of bouncing around some towns and grew up in Berlin, New Jersey.

And I remember when I was getting drafted, had a successful college career at Rutgers, right down the street.

And I remember when I was getting drafted, I felt this pressure to like, what am I going to buy my parents? Because they, my mom drove me to every practice, work a job or two jobs, drive me to every practice. My dad was a cop in Camden, New Jersey, investigating homicides. And I was, kept him busy, obviously in a dangerous city there. So I remember just feeling like I owed my parents a lot for getting me to where I was. And I remember talking to my dad, like, so what do you guys, what do you guys want? And he's like, we're staying in the same house. We're driving the same cars. I'm not quitting my job, your mom's not quitting her job. We're gonna keep doing, we like what we do. And you don't have to worry about us. And you should do the same. So I remember hearing like, oh, my parents aren't gonna change their lifestyle. I ain't gonna change my lifestyle. So I kind of took my signing bonus and my salary, I put it up, I rented an apartment, I rented a car. As an NFL player, we get a lot of stuff for free. I got free clothes, I got free this. So I really just lived well below my means for many years and kind of didn't change who I am. I didn't change my lifestyle necessarily because my tax bracket changed and it allowed me to save and then eventually start investing enough to retire relatively early in life.