Ex-NFL pro Matthew A. Cherry marks film debut with football pic 'The Last Fall'

The NFL is the nation’s number one sport — signing in 2011 a whopping 10-year $27 billion dollar network and cable TV deal and that was before any tickets, jerseys or beer was sold. So every player in the NFL is at least a millionaire right? Wrong. According to ex-pro Matthew A. Cherry, the writer and director of debut feature “The Last Fall,” the median average might be akin to a bank manager's salary making the league a one versus 99 percent deal. “The players whose jerseys are in the stores and have all those endorsement deals are the [tiny] exception,” he said. “Only four percent of players have a career longer than the average, which is three seasons.” Meanwhile, the film reveals that 78 percent of players end up divorced and bankrupt two years after leaving the game. In the film, Lance Gross (“The Game”) plays Kyle Bishop, a journeyman pro on the verge of being retired from the game at 25 after he is cut from the practice squad of his latest NFL team. It is playing a Cheap Jerseys one-week engagement at the Rave Cinemas Baldwin Hills from Oct. 26. Bishop is forced to return to L.A. and live with his hard-working mother, Marie (Vanessa Bell Calloway) and when he finally comes clean to his predicament he realizes that he doesn’t even have enough skills to get a cashier’s job. That presents a bit of a predicament, when having had his BMW repossessed, he re-connects with his former flame Faith Davis (Nicole Beharie), who has a young, football-mad son. “It was awesome to have made it to the NFL, but I always thought of a career beyond the game,” said Cherry, who was born in Chicago and got a full football scholarship to play at the University of Akron in Ohio. “I played for the Jacksonville Jaguars, the Cincinnati Bengals, the Baltimore Ravens and NFL Europe in Hamburg, Germany. I retired in 2006 and moved to L.A. to re-invent myself as a production assistant — having received a broadcast degree.” Ironically, Cherry recounts that he came up against one of the 1 percent’s in another sport, having seen Le Bron James play for his teenage basketball side that used to play games on the Akron court. “I saw the Hummer; King James had the best car on the campus,” he added. Cherry also revealed that when he signed a rookie contract in 2004, the same contract that all NFL rookies sign (it’s the signing-on bonus that separates the Cam Newtons from the less heralded Cheap Nike NFL Jerseys players), it was for $225,000 in the first year, $280,000 for the second and $320,000 for the third year. As it transpired, he was cut from the team in year one and resigned to the practice squad for $80,000. “Forty percent of that goes in taxes and your agent takes another five percent. I made more working as a production assistant for ‘Heroes’ than I did in the NFL,” he said. The idea for the film came to Cherry when he was making a documentary last year about the NFL lockout and in talking to fans in different cities was struck by their negativity towards the players, blaming them for the impasse. “They said players were being too greedy.” he said. “What did they care if a player made $8 million, rather than $9 million. I would defend players saying that there is a gap between the perception and reality. I knew many players who had literally retired broke.” Ironically, it was a former pro, Ellis Hobbs (New England Patriots, Philadelphia Eagles) who stepped in to help Cherry make the film when Hobbs’ wife Monique saw a crowd-funding pitch

on Indiegogo. Filming wrapped last July and it went on to play nine festivals and won three awards. Nicole Beharie and Lance Gross in "The Last Fall." Courtesy Transparent Filmmworks