Jason Pierre-Paul Turned Down A $250,000 Bonus So He Could Skip OTAs

USA TODAY- Tampa Bay Buccaneers defensive end Jason Pierre-Paul chose to train on his own rather than with the Bucs at OTA practices which means he will now miss out on a $250,000 work out bonus. “Jason Pierre-Paul, in his contract that they got from the Giants that he’s now playing under with the Bucs, includes a workout bonus of $250,000 that he just said, ‘Eh, I’m good,’” Stroud said on his podcast known as Sports Day Tampa Bay.

Pierre-Paul’s only job was to be in attendance for OTAs and he would have received the 250k. But instead, he has been working out four hours a day on his own with a trainer.

When I read this story, all I could think of were the immortal words of Bill Parcells.

This truly is the reason you lift all them weights. Yeah becoming a professional athlete and getting paid well to play a game is part of it. But making enough money in your career that you can turn down a cool quarter of a million dollars to attend a few days of voluntary workouts is truly what it’s really about. Eh I’m Good Money isn’t quite Fuck You Money, but it’s a blood relative of it. I’m pretty sure Big Cat, Feits, and KFC all said they would throw their baby in a microwave for a few seconds if they were offered like $10,000. I don’t even want to know what they would do for a quarter milly.

It’s not even like JPP had to travel across the country to get acclimated with some foreign state or city of his new team. Dude grew up in Florida, went to college in Tampa, and currently lives in Florida. Hell, he could have showed up to OTAs, waited for that Direct Deposit to hit, then complained of cramping up and spent the rest of the week in the weight room. But instead he took the honest route by skipping OTAs altogether and letting the team keep their $250K. There’s something noble about that. Granted the mere thought of turning down enough money to almost completely pay off my mortgage makes me feel sick inside. But I’m a doughy smut blogger grinding out dick jokes to make tens of thousands of dollars annually, not a super athlete that will have earned $100 million if all goes according to plan because he is a genetic freak that can sack the QB. JPP turning that bonus down for a few days of working out with his new team is like me leaving a dime and a nickel in the Leave A Penny Take A Penny because I didn’t want to have coins jingling around in my pocket. You have to respect it.