Arian Foster, Now A Publicly Traded Commodity?

How many times have you sat on your couch, covered in cheesy poofs, drinking a beer and watched Arian Foster tear off a long run on Sunday afternoon?

Now how often have you thought to yourself, "You know what I wish I could do? I wish I could own a piece of NFL sensation Arian Foster."

Well, fellow couch potato, your dream is finally attainable!

Our own pterodactyl has announced that he will be offering shares of a minority ownership in himself. A company called Fantex Holdings will sell these shares at roughly $50 a share to anyone 18 years or older.

This company is planning on offering shares of other athletes as well. These shares are entirely tradeable and fully regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

To put it another way, this Fantex place is essentially a stock market for athletes where their future earnings, whether they be from that player's salary or endorsements or anything pertaining to that player's brand, would have an impact on that player's stock price. It's a kind of fantasy football with actual stakes on the line.

In other words, once stocks of Arian Foster go on sale to the public, he'll have no right to complain when shareholders pester him about an injury or his lagging rushing totals if he's having a bad year.

Personally, I'm amused at the idea of being a shareholder of Arian Foster, Inc., but the idea of trading athletes' stock almost like you would do with baseball cards is kind of unsettling. I mean, leaving aside the idea of owning shares of a human being (which just sounds even more wrong as I type this), this could open up a whole new level of problems to plague the sports world.

You think cheating is bad now? Wait until some run-down Hall of Famer starts juicing his brains out just to keep his stock price from falling. Think of the insider trading scams that would come from people who sold all their stock just before someone pulls a Barry Sanders and retires suddenly. And I can only imagine how many minutes Johnny Manziel would wait before declaring himself a commodity while still at Texas A&M.

Sure you could make money, but this could mean untold problems in the sports world if Fantex catches on.

What do you think, BRB? Are you going to rush off and buy 100 shares of Arian, Inc.? Is this just a stunt and Fantex is doomed to fail? What kind of issues do you see with creating a stock exchange where players are the commodities? Place your comments below.

H/T to The Arian Race for bringing this to our attention.