Like far too many professional athletes over the years, former NFL running back Clinton Portis lost a good amount of money in investments gone bad. After watching almost all of the money Portis thought he had set aside in a safe portfolio vanish into thin air, the Pro Bowler reportedly staked out one of the men responsible for managing his funds with the intent to murder him. Fortunately, he never took that drastic a step despite committing himself to pulling a trigger.
“It wasn’t no beat up,” Portis said in a feature story from Sports Illustrated. “It was kill.”
Portis says he was wooed by financial adviser Jeff Rubin, who also had business relationships with Terrell Owens and Jevon Kearse. Rubin’s business and investing jargon went over Portis’ head, but that made him feel confident in letting Rubin handle his money. Portis was convinced this guy knew exactly what he was talking about and was going to do everything needed to protect Portis’ assets. But, as Portis claims, that was not necessarily the case.
Portis claims he was talked into investing $1 million in a casino effort in Alabama sometime between 2011 and 2013. That casino was shut down in 2012 for violating state regulations. Portis also claims Rubin and his firm opened an account using a forged signature and that they used the account to withdraw funds adding up to $3.1 million without Portis knowing anything about it.
The men responsible for toiling with Portis’ long-term investments have since lost their jobs but never had to serve any jail time. This incensed the former Pro Bowl running back to the point where he was determined to end their lives. He followed them, staked out in his car with a gun by his side, ready to fire. But he never committed the act because a voice over the phone interfered swayed Portis away from taking that leap off the deep end.
Portis never pulled his gun because he couldn’t put down his phone. The voice on the other line belonged to a television producer he had met when he was auditioning for a reality show as his football career reached its end; her training as a family therapist spurred him to stay in touch as his life came unmoored. Several times she fielded calls from a man who had found bottom—sitting and waiting in the gloom, ready to upend his life and take someone else’s. “He was talking real crazy,” Portis’s friend says. “He was just so depressed.”
Even if the money had disappeared, she told him, the people who truly loved him wouldn’t. She begged him to turn his car around and go home to his mother in Gainesville, visit loved ones in Charlotte, see some friends in Miami. If he didn’t, his four boys would know him not as a charismatic former-NFL-star-turned-carpool-driver but as the man on the other side of a glass prison partition.
“You’ve already lost,” his friend told him, “but the loss you would sustain [by killing someone] would be greater.”
Portis ended up handing over his gun to the TV producer. Over time, Portis surrounded himself with family and made choices to cut down his circle of trust. Included in that circle of trust is another former Miami and NFL running back, Edgerrin James. James has been there to help Portis get going in a positive direction without being soft on him.
“Don’t bring that weak s— over here,” James said. “Let’s just deal with the solution.”
Portis filed for bankruptcy protection in December 2015 with nearly $5 million of debt to his name.
