Marques Colston on how he succeeded despite being a low round pick

Is Marques Colston the greatest seventh round pick ever? You can certainly make a case for that, given how he's easily the greatest wide receiver in

He came oh so close to 10,000 career receiving yards, and is widely regarded to be the best player ever to not receive a Pro Bowl selection. He's first ballot hall of very good, and he's enshrined in both the Saints Hall of Fame and the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame.

These days he's a fund manager for , Sports Illustrated Tickets and Fathead.

Draft Wire had an exclusive with Colston, and we asked him how he overcame the long odds of being a very low draft pick to eventually become a NFL superstar.

"It's one where your self belief in the work that you're doing, your self belief in your preparation is the only thing that carries you in a situation where most people don't expect much from you," he responded.

"And I think that experience was one that really taught me a lot about the kind of the work beneath the surface.

"If you do it long enough and it compounds long enough, at some point it reaches the surface. And I think the interesting parallel for me is leaving football and entering into this world, it was that same journey all over again, right? "

Colston continued, noting that in the business world, the finance professionals typically see former athletes as just brand ambassadors and figureheads, not actual investment decision makers.

"It's the last 15 years of actually doing the work, investing in companies, running companies in a mode where people are still going to see me as the former athlete, not the current fund manager or the current portfolio manager," he added.

"It's really kind of the same cycle all over again, even with champion fund. So it's one of those things where it's painful at first- trying to change minds and change opinions, but the longer you continue to just keep your head down and do the work and let it compound, at some point, the result speaks for itself. "

These days, it seems that you have to be a billionaire, at minimum, to own a sports franchise. And if you want to buy a bigger brand name club, well, you best be a multi-billionaire. Champion Fund looks to break this trend, and give more people a chance to get their own piece of the pie.

"I think that's the biggest takeaway that I'd want anyone reading this to grab is, you know, sports as an asset class feels very complex," Colston added.

"It feels very unreachable, but that's the exact reason we created this fund. It's to give people an opportunity that love sports, enjoy sports, have poured their effort, energy, and dollars into sports, an opportunity to own a stake of it in a way that is not complex, is not underwriting, is not going and trying to pick the next Wrexham.

"It's an investment vehicle that's just very easy to navigate. It's very easy. It's very transparent. So sports as an asset class is now for you, if you're every investor. "

The Saints open up their season at Detroit this Sunday.

This article originally appeared on Draft Wire: