Wow! It’s March already. If you’re registered to take the NFL agent exam this summer, you’re probably eager to start digging into preparation for the exam (especially if you’ve been registered since last year).

We have a lot of people who check in on our exam prep materials but don’t know for sure how they should use them. Let’s go through them, and I’ll provide a few tips on each.

ITL Study Guide: This is the best exam prep resource on the market, bar none. We’ve been offering it for close to a decade, and it’s rare when a client doesn’t provide rave (and unsolicited) reviews. Once you have this, it cuts the CBA down from a gargantuan document to a more manageable size. However, the most important benefit is that the study guide focuses on the relevant topics and cuts out all the fluff. After you buy it and we verify payment, we email it to you, usually within an hour of purchase. I think it’s smart to spend at least a month on it and really absorb all the key concepts. “Exam was easy thanks to the resources available on ITL – study guide laid everything out perfectly,” said one recent client.

Practice exams 1 and 2: These are pretty self-explanatory. We offer two 40-question, multiple-choice exams. Once you complete the 40 questions, the answer key (with explanations of how we arrived at each answer) are at the end. You can take the tests as many times as you want, and I encourage all our clients to do that. The questions are very similar in format, tone and context to what you’ll see in July. So much so, in fact, that test-takers often say the questions were exact to what they saw on the exam (that’s awfully kind, but not true). Once you buy Exam 1 ($175 for non-ITL clients, $125 for clients), you can buy Exam 2 ($75/$50), though I don’t recommend buying them at the same time. In my opinion, buy the study guide, get the information down, buy Exam 1, ace it, then get Exam 2. “Appreciate the practice questions, wasn’t sure what to expect when I paid for the service blind, but I was impressed,” said one client. Said another: “The practice test is great, and I am glad I discovered you guys.”

Inside the League: This is the mother ship. If you subscribe to ITL ($29.95/mo), you’ll save a little money on the practice exams. But more than that, you’ll learn about the business of the game, and maybe more importantly, the (off-field) players in the game. You’ve got to know the big agencies, the scouts and executives who are on the rise vs. falling, the trends in the game, the kinds of players who are getting signed and succeeding in the game, etc. If you are as interested in the game off the field as you are on the field — and if your aim is to be an agent, you should be — check us out.

Zooms: Last year, with the whole world sequestered in their living rooms, we began bringing members of the NFL business community to online settings, mostly at the $25-$30/per night price point. We had current and former scouts, current and former agents, cap experts, etc. It was a lot of fun and very informative. Our first Zoom session of 2021 will be next week with Mike Sullivan, who not only has negotiated the contract of the top pick in the draft twice, and not only worked as Denver’s Director of Football Administration from 2012-20, but also won the Eugene E. Parker Award for Lifetime Service to the agent industry (read more here).

Exam prep class: At last year’s combine, we had our first-ever in-person class for test-takers. It was in Indianapolis during the combine, and led by a current player representative with a history of representing first-rounders. There’s no combine this year but the class isn’t going away. We’ll have more details in the coming weeks. 

Still have questions? Maybe signing up for our free Friday Wrap would help. It’s a weekly look at the football business, and widely read across the industry. You can register for it here.