Travis Henry

Travis Henry was rattling off his children’s ages, which range from 3 to 11. He paused and took a breath before finishing. This was no simple task. Henry, 30, a former N.F.L. running back who played for three teams from 2001 to 2007, has nine children — each by a different mother, some born as closely as a few months apart. Three days after the telephone interview, he was jailed for falling $16,600 behind on support for a youngster in Frostproof, Fla., his hometown.

Henry had just returned from Atlanta, where a judge showed little sympathy for his predicament during a hearing and declined to lower monthly payments from $3,000 for a 4-year-old son. “They’ve got my blood; I’ve got to deal with it,” Henry said of fiscal responsibilities to his children. He spoke by telephone from his Denver residence, where he was under house arrest until recently for the drug matter.

“I love all my kids,” he said in the interview, but asserted he could not afford the designated amounts, estimated at $170,000 a year by Randy Kessler, his Atlanta lawyer. Kessler said Henry was virtually broke. Some of the women claimed they were using birth control and it’s obvious they lied. But he should have still wrapped it up. Why is it that some men refuse to use a condom? Especially with HIV/AIDS doing serious damage in the black community. But right now he has nine mouths to feed that’s costing him $170,000 a year.