Apart from the '85 Bears making their Super Bowl Shuffle music video, I can't ever recall a professional athlete taking the time to focus on some other pursuit during the season, on top of his obligation to his team, that worked out well. Maybe I'm just forgetting them all. But it's easy to remember Lamar Odom and that nonsense with his at-the-time Kardashian wife's TV show, or our recently-erstwhile receiver doing his video feed from the Steelers' locker room, etc. Seems like I'm forgetting a bunch - haven't there been a lot of these in the last decade or so? Have there been any that didn't hurt the player in question's team? I know Brady had his video series but that was focused on football, and obviously it didn't impact his performance enough to matter since we won the SB.
Just my $.02 (although it seems thus far to agree with practically every other post in this thread), but unless you're notching a perfect rating for your position every week and your team is undefeated and steamrolling toward blissful perfection (we were undefeated five days ago but no one thought we would stay that way), it seems to me that if you're an athlete making millions of dollars per year, maybe you ought to put all of your time into maximizing every last ounce of your ability and perfecting your craft. Devoting hours every week to something else comes across as just a wee bit foolish and irresponsible when you get your butt handed to you like this would-be food critic did Sunday night.