Author Archives: itlneil

Waves In The Pool

22 Thursday Sep 2016

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At this point, we’ve covered the ramifications of the recently confirmed SRA that the NFLPA has published for the 2017 draft class. As you know, the default agent fee will be 1.5 percent v. the previous rate of 3 percent, which was already lower than all major sports.

We still don’t know how this will impact the agent business, though we know it won’t be good. With a week until the NFLPA’s deadline for paying 2016-17 dues, there’s a great chance several good contract advisors will opt to get out of the business.

However, problems for some could be opportunities for others. In the last week, I’ve had a handful of financial advisors ask me how I saw the new agent fee affecting their part of the business. Would it be a negative or a positive? Maybe, just maybe, this could be an opportunity for financial advisors. Here’s why.

  • Good agents will leave the business due to this move. There’s no two ways about it. What’s more, eventually, the news of this move will trickle down to the young, motivated people who annually register to take the agent exam. This means it’s possible draft prospects could find a lack of good advisors that know the ropes.
  • Financial advisors, many of whom (though new to the game) have an intense desire to help young players make smart decisions about their money, could fill the gap.
  • The lion’s share of the financial advisors who can capitalize on this are younger and more patient though probably less accomplished. Elite financial advisors rarely want do the day-to-day hand-holding that the business requires; after all, they’re superstars in their own right.

As I mentioned, financial advisors are already starting to think along these lines. This year, we’ve matched up four former NFL scouts with agencies to work with them in the run-up to the draft. I had a financial advisor ask me last week if I thought this might work in his business. I told him I’d get back to him, and I haven’t yet, but I think maybe this is an idea with traction.

The rule of thumb in this business is that about every three years there is a major new development that hits the football business like a tidal wave, requiring agents, financial advisors, trainers and the like to adapt. Obviously, the less agile can’t, don’t or won’t adapt, but those who can identify these trends early can often turn them into opportunities. One previous such wave was the rise of combine training. Another big one was the shift from low-interest loans and letters of credit to marketing advances or outright signing bonuses to entice draft prospects.

We’re about to see how many people across the football world can benefit from this, and how many will get pulled under. Just maybe there are those in the money world who can make this an advantage.

Agent Samantha Stephenson on LaQuan McGowan and ‘Undrafted’

15 Thursday Sep 2016

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If you read this blog regularly, you’re a fan of what happens in football behind the scenes as well as on the field. That’s one reason shows like ‘Undrafted,’ which debuted Tuesday in its third season on The NFL Network, have become so popular.

I made sure to tune in Tuesday after my former ITL intern, Murphy McGuire (and probably the rookie agent of the year as the only independent first-year contract advisor with a draftee this year) tweeted that the show was kicking off this week. It was then that I remembered that another ITL client, Samantha Stephenson, had a client on the show. I was especially excited to find out that she was the only agent that got airtime Tuesday night.

With that in mind, I reached out to her about the show and her experiences. Samantha, who’s one of the most approachable people in the business anyway, said she’s already getting attention from other players (mostly true long shots from previous draft classes). I advised her to politely decline them, of course.

Here are a few thoughts from Sam that I found interesting. They run a little long, but I found Sam pretty insightful and I thought you might, too.

“They had done their own kind of keeping an eye on players throughout the season, and they were looking for players this year that were really close to the cusp of being drafted or undrafted. Not only good football players but a good story to tell, things that make them more unique, than just the average football player you see on the field. But you’ll find so many of these guys have stories to tell, and have overcome adversity in one form or another. LaQuan had gotten quite a bit of press going into the season after the 2015 Cotton Bowl when he scored the 18-yard touchdown catch. After that, people started to notice him as a 400-pound tight end. And he had done Sports Illustrated (and other media), and there was press out there about him playing the position he did at the size he was. (The producers) reached out to Baylor, and they gave (the producers) my contact info, and I thought it would be a great opportunity.

“LaQuan is also very different form the typical football player, very quiet and to himself, and very protective of his story. To some degree, at Baylor, he probably felt like he couldn’t say no (to the media), so at one point he said, ‘I’ve already told my story to all these journalists, and there’s nothing else for me to tell.’ I definitely had to show him the upside, and I think during the filming process, we experienced that as well. He’s more of a ‘to himself’ guy, so having cameras and microphones follow him around was pretty exhausting for him.”

On the risk of Samantha looking bad on the show:

“I mean, of course, players are always looking for the agent that will land them as a first-round draft pick, and they were with us all day long on draft day, and we know the story (LaQuan goes undrafted). It was a hard day, a very emotionally hard day, and viewers will see me texting teams and making calls that go unanswered, and I’m sure some will attribute that to my agent abilities. So there was definitely that risk that I knew I was taking, and it’s still very very possible (he wouldn’t be) drafted, and it will all be on TV for everyone to see that he didn’t get drafted and people will attribute that to his agent. So I knew that going in, but it wasn’t until they were already filming when they asked me to be a part of it (and be on camera). I had planned to go to Baylor for pro day, but he wanted me there (for the first day of filming) to kind of filter and help him feel more comfortable with it, so I went down. On the first day, I’m sure the producer was saying, ‘this agent, she’s a lawyer, what a nuisance!’ It wasn’t until Day 2 (of filming) that they miked me up and heard more of my story and how I’m connected to LaQuan, and became an agent after my first year of law school, and that night the executive producer called me and said, ‘hey, we really want you to be a part of it. This is more of a story than just LaQuan’s story.’ It wasn’t until then that they wanted me to be a part of the process, too, so in that moment, I had to decide, is this about me or LaQuan? I thought, if this is a good look for LaQuan, and it reflects poorly on me, it’s OK because this was good for him.”

On the risk of LaQuan looking bad:

“Honestly, I can’t think of a time (when we had to discourage them from filming something or the direction they wanted to go). I’m not sure for the other guys, but for the filming for LaQuan, it was the same director, same camera guy and same (microphone) guy, so eventually LaQuan warmed up to them, and they started to warm up to him and understand what they could get and what they couldn’t.”

On LaQuan’s uphill battle:

“I can’t get on a whiteboard and draw up the best play in X’s and O’s, but the thing that I say is that, I know the business of football. Those of us that know the business of football knew LaQuan was a long shot. Even at the combine, when we were having the happy hour after the (ITL seminar), and (other agents) know of LaQuan, but he’s 400 (pounds) so that’s gonna be tough (to get him in an NFL camp). Everyone else thinks, ‘I‘ve got strength and I’m bigger and can run the 40, why isn’t that great? And they don’t understand that there’s this distinct mold you have to fit in to make the NFL, and 400 pounds is not that mold. It was Year 3 as an agent for me, and I knew what I was taking on, and I knew he had to lose weight to have a chance, but it was the other outside voices that made it hard. Like ‘you killed pro day,‘ and he had coaches that made him feel he was good, and dealing with those outside voices is what made it the hardest.”

On walking through the entire process with him:

“I was with him (on his pro day). It was my idea originally (to be there), and they ended up liking it, but I had already planned to do it. I was the only agent around my player for his pro day, and I guess that’s not the norm, but I couldn’t imagine sending my guy out for the biggest interview of his life by himself. That’s not the agent I want to be. Just preparing him for the interviews, going over questions, helping keep his nerves calm, getting the right nutrition in him the day before. Draft day was the same. I just couldn’t imagine not being with him. And it was even harder because we had to deal with the cameras and mikes in our face. It was very hard, and they interviewed me for the wrap-up interview a week and a half ago. It was a really hard night. LaQuan had to handle it, and I flew my best friend in and I wanted her there for emotional and technical support. I had 60-70 numbers I was monitoring, and I had her sending texts so I could be with LaQuan. I told the film crew, and I’m sure it will be on the last episode or two of the show, but I had to go to dinner with my friend and let the emotions out, and then film again the next day. I couldn’t have imagined not being with him. As much as he didn’t understand to a degree, I can’t imagine going through that alone. If you want to be an agent, you have to be able to face those  hard situations. His family was hurting, but I couldn’t, being able to see him again on Sunday and talk to him one on one, it was hard, but let’s pick ourselves up by the bootstraps and keep moving forward.”

 

Re-Thinking Jared Goff

14 Wednesday Sep 2016

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The national media has been abuzz with the fact that No. 1 overall pick Jared Goff has not cracked backup duties for the Rams and was, in fact, a healthy scratch for Monday night’s 28-0 loss to the 49ers Monday night.

Obviously, there’s a long way to go before anyone can make any judgments on Goff’s NFL future, but the optics are bad. Still, I wondered if scouts felt the same way. Was Goff a guy that teams felt was a near-certain future star? Do his early struggles make sense to people in the business?

Based on their responses, the jury is still way, way out. We got a lot of comments that were on the fence, like these:

  • “Too soon to judge, IMO.”
  • “(We thought he was pretty much NFL-ready but) if you’re not a very good team you don’t want to throw him out there either. Many more showings like (Monday) night and they won’t have a choice.”
  • “I saw him preseason and thought he would play this year after a few games. (Backup QB Sean) Mannion is better than (Monday) night’s (performance).”
  • “He wasn’t my guy so I don’t remember much of the read on him, but I remember him being talented with good traits.”

However, I also had a conversation with one scout that I thought encapsulated things best. He said scouts were all over the place on Goff, with some liking his upside, and others seeing him as comparable to Memphis’ Paxton Lynch and even Mississippi State’s Dak Prescott. These scouts preferred North Dakota State’s Carson Wentz. Despite Wentz’s small-school pedigree, they liked his intangibles and the multiple national titles he was part of at NDSU.

These scouts also had concerns that Goff had gone from nowhere as a sophomore to a possible No. 1 overall as a junior. They just didn’t feel his total body of work justified the investment.

“That’s a concern when you’re taking a guy first overall, with a lot of (varied) grades,” my friend said.

I’d agree. Teams have to make the best decision based on the information they have, and obviously, opinions vary. However, if Goff turns out to be a guy who doesn’t live up to expectations, it could be because the Rams felt they had to have a quarterback, and he looked like their best option. The one resounding message I get back from scouts is that the surest way to miss on a pick is to draft based on need, and not purely on the best player available.

Once again, there’s still plenty of time for Goff to turn into Aaron Rodgers, another player who spent a lot of time on the bench initially. No one knows what the future holds. That’s what makes the draft so intriguing.

What’s a Sleeper?

07 Wednesday Sep 2016

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I was having a conversation recently with some friends — some agents, some in the scouting community — and the subject of ‘sleepers’ came up. During the conversation, it became necessary to actually define the term. That’s because agents and scouts usually define the term very differently.

This is a generalization, but my experience has been that scouts see most NFL draft prospects as fitting into two categories. Either the prospect is a top-100 guy, an immediate difference-maker and an instant starter, or he’s not. Almost anyone that doesn’t fit into that top 100 could be a sleeper to some or most teams.

Here’s another way scouts define sleepers. If a kid goes to a small school, or a school that’s not Power 5 (the MAC, let’s say, or the Sun Belt, or the Mountain West), he could be a sleeper. It’s a very loose term, obviously, but the players in the latter rounds could almost all be considered sleepers. Just look at how many got cut last weekend. These are players that teams don’t expect to be stars, and if they do, they ‘awoke’ and became game-changers.

This is very different from how agents look at things.

Players that are legitimate fourth- and fifth-round prospects are a long ways from being sleepers. Shoot, guys that everyone agrees will be drafted aren’t sleepers. Not for agents, at least. Why?

Because these days, once a kid gets identified as a legit draft prospect, word gets out quickly. Sooner or later, word gets back to the player himself. Maybe he already saw himself that way, but either way, once he gets that stamp of legitimacy, he expects training. That means an agent can expect to spend $10,000, minimum, getting him ready for his pro day.

Once several agents offer to pay for training, a player’s price and expectation level take off. He might still be a guy that many teams have their doubts about, but agents have to make a significant investment to sign them at that point.

Finding sleepers in the draft is hard for NFL teams, but easier than ever due to the Internet and a number of other factors. But for agents, it’s quite a challenge.

 

The Excitement of Passing the ’16 Agent Exam

02 Friday Sep 2016

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Yes, the agent business is very hard. Yes, we are pretty brutal in our honesty about the way this business runs, and the long odds faced by those who pursue NFLPA certification. I often wonder if I’m a little too direct, and it’s always tough balancing the bad news with the good.

Well, today is a day to balance out the bad. Typically, the players association doesn’t release the results of the exam until mid to late September. However, this year, the news came out Sept. 1. The celebratory tweets started rolling out Thursday afternoon, and soon after, the texts and emails started coming in from the 70-odd people who used our practice exam and/or study guide to prepare.

Obviously, it’s incredibly exciting to help someone achieve a lifetime goal. For me, it’s similar to the high a new agent gets when his first client signs a contract with an NFL team or gets the call that he was drafted. Here’s a sampling.

  • “Thanks a bunch!  Your stuff definitely helped!  Now will probably need to get the list you offer. If you need to use someone or two for promotion, let us know.”
  • “I appreciate all of your help. Wouldn’t have passed without the exam and study guide. I’ll be sure to recommend them to anyone in future. Don’t know what I would have done without you.”
  • “Hey Neil, I passed. Thank you for your help! The practice test paid off a lot!”
  • “Thanks for the help. That test helped big time. Helped understand how the structure of the test was going to be. Can’t thank you enough!
  • “Thanks man. Totally excited beyond words. Now it just comes down to grinding, making connections, and moving with God’s will.”
  • “I just want to let you know that….I passed the exam! Appreciate all your assistance along the way.”
  • “Passed the test… I have a few weeks to make decision on certification which is nice. Test wasn’t difficult at all, felt very confident afterwards and thought I only got 1 question wrong. Seems like the NFLPA did a much better job with the seminar this year than last. A lot of the really difficult test questions were mentioned in the seminar word for word, so if somebody didn’t get them right they just weren’t paying attention. Thanks for the help and the practice test which was very helpful. Appreciate you being a valuable resource for upcoming and current agents who have been getting very little to no support, especially in this SRA dilemma.”

Naturally, the news wasn’t all good. Though it’s early, it looks like results will be a bit better than last year, though not significantly. Based on the first 21 people I’ve spoken to, our success rate is just over 70 percent, right about where we are every year.

For those who came up short, the pain is unbearable, and I share their disappointment. But for today, let’s focus on those who’ll be sinking their teeth into the football business this year.

Can Scouts Identify and Project Divisive Players?

31 Wednesday Aug 2016

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If you’re an NFL fan, you’re well aware of the situation surrounding 49ers QB Colin Kaepernick. And I think even if we can’t all agree on his stand, we can agree that it’s an emotionally charged issue that could potentially divide the locker room and create ramifications that coaches and team officials don’t want to face.

I wondered if there’s any way such a situation could have been avoided in the scouting process. In other words, could scouts find out, with any degree of certainty, if a player — though honest, high in character, and far away from anything criminal — is prone to sparking this kind of situation? I asked several of my friends in scouting and I got these responses.

  • “Yes, you can get this information. I believe most scouts are lazy. There’s a lot of different ways you can (get this information), and (scouts are) in a power position with an NFL shield on their chests and a logo that everyone’s like, ‘wow.’ The more you go (to a school) and talk to people (and you) make it a whole day trip, you learn about how they handle scouts and how you can get info from teams. If you give them good info (about the NFL and how evaluation works), next thing you know, (teams and their coaches are) gonna think you walk on water, and pretty soon, they’re telling you, ‘he’s really a (jerk).’ And you got that extra piece of info that all it took was a couple extra hours to get. Does it take time? 100 percent! From Year 1 to Year 2, as a scout, I figured it out, but it just takes time.”
  • “Definitely you could and would find those guys. There are numerous guys through the years that you would learn of because they were different. I never (scouted) Colin, but it seems to me he had some different things in his character profile.”
  • “Well, I think it’s a different circumstance (with Kaepernick), but with a lot of other players you scout, it comes up from sources at the school(, for example,) that he has “gang affiliations” but there’s been no bad behavior on his part at the school, but you know there’s a small chance something bad could happen down the road. With Kaepernick, I think he’s shifted his personality so drastically the last year or so that it would have been very tough to tell he would do something like this coming out of college. A lot of times, though, scouts may ask, ‘Is this guy a locker room lawyer?,’ or they try to find out if he’s ever been a divisive force in the building.”

A Silver Lining

26 Friday Aug 2016

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There’s been a good bit of hand-wringing in this space over the NFLPA’s new policy setting 1.5 percent as the default agent fee (though savvy contract advisors may still seek a maximum of 3 percent from their clients). Here and here and here are some examples of agents’ concerns, and here and here and here are thoughts from combine trainers, who’ll probably have to make a few concessions, as well.

However, after a few conversations with members of big firms, there may be good news for small and mid-sized firms that may see the new SRA as a doomsday scenario.

In the past, big firms spent the spring and summer recruiting players (juniors and seniors) projected as Top-100 picks in the coming draft. As the season unfolded, they’d either lose interest in some of their recruits, or be rejected, or some other scenario that might lead them to look for other prospects. At this point, they’d reach out to scouting contacts, who would in turn update them on the players who’d improved their status. The big firms would then barge in and soak up these players, usually pushing out the smallish firms who’d spent spring and summer forging relationships with them. It was really, really bad news for the upstart agencies. The bullies on the block always won.

This year, however, I’ve been told by two agents I highly respect (and who come from Top 10 agencies) that their agencies will cut back this year by reducing the number of players they sign. In the old days, they could pay for training on their long shots with the premiums paid by big players, but now that fewer will pay 3 percent (though both told me their agencies will still fight for 3 percent), there’s less margin.

This still means the guys out there hustling to make names for themselves will have to spend the summer and fall building relationships. However, just maybe, those relationships won’t go for naught as often in the age of the de facto 1.5 percent agent fee. At least, I hope so. There are a lot of good agents out there working hard and who deserve to be rewarded for their efforts.

 

 

Exploring the Patriots’ Draft Philosophy

25 Thursday Aug 2016

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On the advice of a friend who’s a former scout, I’m reading War Room by Michael Holley. The book details the development of the Patriots’ evaluation methods and how the New England scouting tree produced GMs in Atlanta (Thomas Dimitroff) and Kansas City (Scott Pioli). Though normally I hate football books (and especially football movies), this book has a lot of good info and makes a lot of good points.

The book quotes Bill Belichick as citing knowledge of what other teams are going to do as invaluable in how he selects players.

“It’s such a process, and part of it is knowing what the league thinks,” he says. “We have players on our board and we look up there and say, ‘We’re probably higher on this player than any other team in the league.’ You see mock drafts out there and the player is not mentioned in the first round. In any of them. Scouts talk, and you kind of get a feel that no one else sees the player quite like we do. On the flip side, there are guys that we might take, say, in the third round and we know someone’s going to take him in the first. So, again, it comes back to homework.”

To me, that’s a real revelation. So many scouts and administrators take pride in how much they don’t talk to scouts from other teams, and how their evaluations are their own and no one else’s (indeed, then-Patriots scout Lionel Vital makes almost that exact point later in the book), but Belichick freely admits that he keeps up on what others think and uses that info. It got me thinking — do other teams feel the same way? Knowing the prospects in the draft is critical, but how important is knowing your own team’s weaknesses, and even more importantly, how key is it to know what others think about the draft?

I reached out to a few friends on the road and got various responses. One scout said it’s 50 percent knowing the prospects, and 50 percent “blind luck.” I thought that was an admirable (and honest) response. He cited the fact that Tom Brady was a sixth-rounder in 2000, but the guy who “stood on the table” to get him drafted, Bobby Grier, was run off by the team shortly after that draft. Grier recently retired from the Texans.

“The key is proper fall evaluation not spring numbers,” my friend added.

Another scout said, though he didn’t break it down by percentages, that he puts far more on the prospects themselves than his own team’s weaknesses or what other teams might be thinking. He added that he feels teams most often miss on players when they draft for need rather than quality. That’s a sentiment I’m starting to hear regularly from area scouts, and very insightful, I think.

A third scout broke it down as 70 percent the talent in the draft, 15 percent his own team’s weaknesses, and 15 percent what others think about the players.

I guess this is just another illustration of how the Patriots do things in non-traditional ways.

 

BPS’ Pete Bommarito on the New 1.5 Rate

19 Friday Aug 2016

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We wrap up our series talking to trainers about the proposed SRA change with Pete Bommarito of Bommarito Performance Systems. Pete’s two facilities, in Davie and North Miami, Fla., draw dozens of top NFL prospects each winter/spring but also dozens of top MLB and NBA players. You won’t find a better speed trainer in the business than Pete, and his facilities are growing and adding more veterans each offseason.

From here, I’ll let Pete and ITL’s Mark Skol take over.

“It’s hard for me to say (how the new SRA will affect things) because I’m not an agent. This is more of a question for an agent. But I don’t see it affecting much because you would still think that a lot of agents will continue to justify and charge the 3 percent.

“We’ve always been a company that has overspent overhead. That’s our business model. We could save money with our overhead, we just choose not to. We are a firm believer in residual business and we are upfront with agents about that. Our price is our price and our overhead is high. We spend a lot of money on things like medical, nutrition, football coaching and staffing. We spend a lot of money. Our overhead is very high. So we don’t really anticipate us making a huge profit margin on draft guys.

“Our model is our veterans program. Our veterans program is significant and we really build that through pre-draft training. We can’t see ourselves doing anything different even if our overhead stays where it is and our overall revenue goes down a bit because agents are paying us less. We are not going to change our model. Our model works and we get so much residual business among draft prep players coming back as veterans that I don’t ever want to interrupt with the service we provide. We probably have the biggest and fastest-growing veteran program in the country. I firmly believe it’s because we take care of them so well in the pre-draft training. It’s about making overall athletes quicker, relieving pain fast and regenerating quickly. I can’t see myself doing anything different.

 

“I don’t see it as a new rate. The agents can still charge three percent. It seems to me it’s the same. In past years, agents still had to charge 3 percent and justify why. I really don’t see it changing anything. They are still charging 3 percent and justifying why. A lot of agents I talk to are happy to justify why they are going to charge 3 percent and have no problem laying out their services and everything they do and why they deserve to get paid. It’s very similar to how I handle a veteran. We have a certain price structure for NFL veterans and we have no problem justifying it to them on why we charge what we charge and what services they are going to get.”

Fit Speed’s Matt Gates on the New 1.5 SRA

17 Wednesday Aug 2016

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Today, we continue our conversation with others in the industry that must grapple with the effect of the newly modified Standard Representation Agreement (SRA) by talking to Matt Gates of Fit Speed Athletic Performance.

I wanted Matt’s opinion because he’s a guy whose brand is growing (Fit Speed recently added a Chicago location to its Weston, Fla.-based central location). Just a few years ago, I had never heard of Fit Speed, but Matt’s facility has been attracting bigger and bigger names the last 2-3 years, and now the service has become a recognized brand in the game with top agencies and players. The needle is pointing way up. So how does this change things? I’ll turn it over to ITL’s Mark Skol and Matt.

“The fee reduction is only going to affect the training business if facilities can’t find a way to adapt. I’ve already begun discussing creative ways to work with my agents on lower-round or free agent-type prospects. There’s always a way to work around any issue.  Bottom line is agents aren’t going to sign fewer kids as a whole — individual agents may, but others will pick up the slack — and kids are still going to want/need training, so the combine prep business isn’t going anywhere. Obviously, the 1.5 percent is a complete slap in the face for NFL agents, especially when NBA and MLB agents are capped at 4-5 percent. No question it’s going to affect the smaller agencies and new agents in the game more than the big boys. The sales pitch to the kids is going to have to change a bit, just as mine will have to change to the agents, but just like any business, if you can build in a tremendous amount of value into your product, you’ll be fine in the long run.”

“Adapt or die. No facility can just think it’s business as usual. This is a big change for agents and trainers.  There will be changes to pricing structure and the layout of payment terms for agents that are signing a certain client at my facility this year.

“I don’t necessarily think it’s negative for existing facilities with a good reputation, but it does throw a kink into the way we’ve done the combine prep business for a long time.  Just like the fee reduction will affect new and smaller agencies, it will do the same for training facilities. This will make it a lot more difficult to break into the training world moving forward.”