Genius NFL Star Explains Why He Drives a $9,000 Used Nissan Versa

While some might be under the impression that all professional athletes drive exotic sports cars or enormous diesel trucks, Baltimore Ravens guard John Urschel finds that his used Nissan Versa is more than sufficient. In fact, it’s his dream car.

Many athletes that go from college to the NFL do not hesitate in spending their cash when they get drafted. Urschel, however, thinks differently; rather than spending his money superfluously, Urschel spends his money economically.

According to a profile of Urschel in the Baltimore Sun, when he was drafted in 2014, he bought himself his $9,000 used Nissan Versa as a gift to himself. Urschel even tweeted a photo of his car next to his teammates’ enormous trucks saying:

According to ESPN, after Urshel sent the tweet it was shared across social media platforms more than 1,500 times in less than seven hours.

Urschel told the Sun of his car:

Before hitting the NFL, Urschel, now 24, attended Penn State, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in mathematics in three years. During his senior year, he moved onto his master’s degree in mathematics while also teaching integral vector calculus trigonometry during the fall semester.

In March, one of Urschel’s papers, “A Cascadic Multigrid Algorithm for Computing the Fiedler Vector of Graph Laplacians,” was published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Computational Mathematics. He says that after his football career is over, he will move onto his doctorate’s degree.

Urschel was drafted by the Ravens last year and signed a three year contract for $2.3 million, which includes a signing bonus of $144,000. However, the contract states that if Urschel gets cut at any time from now until 2017, the Ravens do not have to pay him a cent, which is part of the reason why he spends his money wisely.

The Sun reports that Urschel lives on $25,000 a year and maintains frugal living expenses. While this type of behavior is odd for most NFL players, it’s good to know that some athletes still know the worth of a dollar.