Category Archives: Agents

Advice for New NFL Agents: Shane Costa

11 Wednesday Jul 2018

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We’re about a week and change away from the 2018 NFLPA Exam for new agents in Washington, D.C. For the past month, we’ve been talking to some of the fastest-rising young agents in the business for a fresh take on what new contract advisors can do to achieve success.

Today we talk to Shane Costa of Buffalo, NY-based Pillar Sports. Shane comes from the team side, having worked for the Bills from a young age before pursuing his law license and moving back into the game. Like the other agents I’ve spoken to in this space over the past four weeks, Casey Muir and Greg ‘Tripp’ Linton, I could see Shane as a future GM, or as a mega-agent some day.

Here are Shane’s thoughts on what steps a young player rep can do to achieve lasting success.

  • “First thing I would say is, become an expert. It’s not enough to just have a passing knowledge of the CBA and the relevant rules and bylaws to pass the exam, but you really have to become an expert at it. Read the CBA, take notes, try to become an expert even before you have clients. You want to study it and become more knowledgeable to increase your chances of success. The more you know, the more you’re gonna be prepared to educate your player, and that’s gonna be apparent when you talk to players. If you don’t come from a football background, you really need to get a full grasp of the intricacies of the CBA. You’ll be better able to communicate that knowledge to your client so you can sign him. I’d also recommend you sign up for Inside the League. It’s so valuable when it comes to learning about the league and understanding the profession. It’s crucial to use that service.
  • “Second, communicating and setting expectations is critical to keeping and retaining your clients. In this job, you have to be an excellent communicator, not just with the client and his parents, but with teams, scouts, executives and media when necessary. You have to be able to understand and effectively communicate what you’re trying to extract or to provide. You’ve got to know when to talk to scouts and what you can ask, and that allows you to understand where your player fits. Once you understand that, you have to be able to create reasonable expectations. As an agent, you always want to be honest with hour client with where they stand with teams. You have to understand what teams think about your client, and that’s not always an easy thing to say when recruiting, but it’s so important. You can tell potential clients, ‘if you have a plan and do XYZ, there’s a good chance you get drafted.’ It allows you to build a plan with a player and also have him get his expectations straight. If you always communicate with teams effectively and with players effectively and set their expectations, you’ll have a much better grasp and understanding and relationship with your client.”
  • “My last point, and I think this is really important, is to balance your emotions. When you start out, you’re gonna have a lot of setbacks and good things happen, but in your first year, you’ll probably have more setbacks and rejection and players cut than players achieving success. You work so hard for them and become so attached to their outcome that it’s hard not to feel that. Don’t get too high or too low. Just be ready with a plan, and don’t get down on yourself, and at the same time, when you have success, enjoy it briefly but understand that there’s more work to be done.” 

 

Ask The Agents: Is Jameis Winston Headed For A Big Second Deal?

05 Thursday Jul 2018

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About two years ago (June 2016), Colts QB Andrew Luck signed a six-year, $140 million contract in his first post-rookie deal. Three months ago, Kirk Cousins signed with the Vikings for three years and $84 million.

There’s another passer who’s nearing the end of his rookie deal: Jameis Winston, who was drafted No. 1 overall in 2015. You may have heard that he recently left his agency, and is a ‘free agent’ for contract purposes, even having his representatives call around in the last week, shopping for a new firm. But what kind of guarantee does a QB like Winston offer to a contract advisor? Does he have any shot at Luck or Cousins money?

We asked several agents this question, most of them with the kind of top firms that a player of Winston’s station would demand. Their answers indicate there’s interest in the Bucs signal-caller, and an expectation that there are dollars to be made, but very little certainty regarding his prospects.

Here are the responses we got when we asked, ‘do you think Jameis Winston gets a second deal, based on where he is now?’

  • “He hasn’t been very good so if he gets another deal it’s a Teddy Bridgewater-type deal as of today.”
  • “If he plays well this year he’ll definitely get paid, in my opinion. This issue was two years ago, not new news.”
  • “I think he’ll get paid. Needs to play better, settle his life down. Teams have to trust his people will be there with him. (There’s a) shortage of QBs. But he’ll have women’s groups after him so he needs to chill out and clean up image. I think it will blow over (but) poor play doesn’t help.”
  • “He gets one.”
  • “Great question. Depends on a whole lot.”
  • “It really is a roll of the dice with that kid.”
  • “Depends on how well he plays this year I think. Tampa isn’t letting him go, so If he stays out of trouble, I think he gets paid.”
  • “100%…It may not be a blockbuster, but if Geno Smith gets a second chance, he will.”
  • “He’s a QB. A former 1st-rounder. And has won. I would say absolutely, if he has the right people around him going forward. But he hasn’t started with anything off the field to solidify it.”
  • “Simple. If he plays well, yes, but structured to protect the the team (financially) if he screws up off the field/gets suspended/etc. If he doesn’t play well, then he will be shunned like (The Scarlet Letter’s) Hester Prynne. Good QB’s are not easy to find.  If he plays like one, he’ll get a deal.”
  • “He gets a second contract if he behaves. I’d say there’s a 60-40 chance he gets one, with 60 percent chance he does.” 

Advice for New NFL Agents: Greg ‘Tripp’ Linton

22 Friday Jun 2018

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Last week, I asked Casey Muir of Octagon Football to give me three points for new agents, three big things the people taking the NFLPA exam next month need to know in their first year as a contract advisor. If you missed it, stop and read it now. It was full of good advice and things you probably didn’t learn in sport management class.

It was so good that I decided to make it a series. This week, I asked Greg Linton of HOF Player Representatives to do the same thing. I’m always being asked by major firms to give me 5-10 names of young, rising agents who represent the next wave, and Greg is always one that I recommend (Casey used to be one, as well, in his pre-Octagon days). That made Greg a natural for advice.

Here’s what Greg, known as ‘Tripp’ to his friends, told me.

  • “First thing I tell new agents, and they often don’t understand what I’m saying, is that you have to learn the things you don’t know that you don’t know. For instance, a lot of people say, I live in Texas, so I have all these schools where I can recruit, but they don’t know that at Texas and Texas A&M, the coaches there may be advising their top players to sign with their own agents. (Players at) certain schools are going to do certain things based on who their head coaches are. A lot of (new agents) go after guys and go bankrupt because (the schools or coaches) aren’t honest. They need to talk to people like (Inside the League), other agents willing to give them help, and things like that. It just saves you time and money.
  • “Second thing, I don’t spend other people’s money and I don’t spend money that I don’t have. A lot of guys will get investors and get loans, and they think a guy is gonna go in the third round, and then he goes undrafted. Now (the agent’s) in debt, and their investors are like, ‘you told me we’d make this money and now we aren’t,’ and (the investors) pull out. (Many agents) who had investors are now out of the business. I guess that’s where my economics background comes in. I’m not overspending. My bachelor’s is in economics, with a dual major in finance and marketing, and I have my MBA. That’s an issue. Everything we do at (HOF Player Representatives), I’m the one that’s saying ‘no’ when it doesn’t make sense financially. Most people will pay to sign a draft pick and think they’re gonna keep the guy and make big money, and it does not work that way. Don’t assume that A is going to lead to B. Don’t assume you sign a player and he’s drafted in third round, so it means you’re gonna get the (tackle) next year who’s a first- or second-rounder. (Agents) overspend and get guys because they think they’re gonna get the guy from next year. That doesn’t work either.
  • “Other thing I would say is, I did a four-year study on the draft grades (provided by the two combines, BLESTO and National Football Scouting), but outside of the top 100-150 guys, those grades don’t mean anything. People swear by them, but I’m to the point now where I let (other) people do it. I guess I could say trust your eye, but most agents don’t know football. You have to take into account medicals and workouts, and those are the kinds of things you don’t have in June.

“That’s a start. Those are the three things that would help, in my opinion.”

If you want more advice on the business, and what agents say some important Year 1 lessons are, make sure you’re reading our Friday Wrap. It comes out Friday evenings every week, it’s free, it’s read by thousands of people in the NFL business community, and you can register for it here.

Touching A Nerve in the NFL Agent Community

15 Friday Jun 2018

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NFL contract advisors are pretty independent-minded, and it’s not easy to get all 830 of them to agree on anything. However, we found out this week that the NFLPA managed to do just that when, for the first time ever, it asked agents to pass a 25-question ‘continuing education’ exam this month.

In three seminars held at the combine, in New Orleans, and in Baltimore this spring, respectively, agents expressed their frustration toward NFLPA officials. Specifically, they were upset that the players association was asking its dues-paying members to pass a test that could determine their hard-earned professional standing in a high-visibility profession. Some even threatened lawsuits.

Agents complained that the content they’d be tested on was undefined; that failure to pass the first time could jeopardize clients cut in September; and that the NFLPA hadn’t even told them how many of the 25 questions they must answer correctly to pass. Still, the NFLPA held the line, and contract advisors submitted their answers to the web-based exam by midnight on Tuesday of this week. And though they complied, it didn’t mean participants were happy about it. But just how unhappy were they? We decided to find out.

On Thursday, we sent out a brief, four-question survey to all 830 contract advisors. In it, we asked the following:

  • Having attended one of the three NFLPA seminars this year, how would you describe the Players Association’s explanation of and reasoning for the continuing education exam?
  • Having taken the continuing education exam, which best describes it?
  • How would you characterize taking a test without knowing how many answers you must get right to pass?
  • In the event, remote as it is, you are told you didn’t pass the exam, what do you plan to do?

We gave 3-4 options on each question, trying our best to avoid leading the responses and working to be even-handed. It was something we hoped would at least earn the attention of a pretty critical segment of the NFL business population. Given that it’s summer, there was no fanfare, and our window was pretty tight (we sent it out before noon CT on Thursday and asked for responses before 11 p.m. CT), we’d hoped to get about 30 responses.

We got a lot more than that, with more than 10 percent of the agent class (95) responding despite work schedules, summer vacations and spam filters. We also solicited comments, and we got plenty of those, too. Some were quite fiery.

We’ll have a complete breakdown of the responses today in the Friday Wrap. Most of our respondents were united in their answers to each of the questions, with a clear majority selecting one option on three of the four questions. Based on the feedback from our highly un-scientific poll, agents are angry; they question the NFLPA’s motives; and they are uncertain about what the future holds.

Make sure to get the full rundown on the results by checking out today’s Friday Wrap, which will be out at 6:30 p.m. CT. You can register for it here.

Octagon’s Casey Muir on How to Achieve NFL Agent Success

12 Tuesday Jun 2018

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Earlier this week, Philadelphia-based Casey Muir of Octagon Football texted me this: “Btw, if you ever need an agent to give advice to new agents on Succeed in Football, just lmk.” If this was just a throwaway line that he expected me to forget, big mistake. I immediately commissioned a blog post from him on how to succeed in football as an independent contract advisor.

There are few people more qualified to write this. Casey is with Octagon now, but he wasn’t always with a big firm. I remember the early years with Casey. He became an ITL client in his first year as a contract advisor, and there are so many stories of his long-ago trials that I can remember.

Now we can laugh about them. In an incredibly short period (he was certified in 2012), he’s gone from eager but youthful to seasoned and respected. I’ve recommended him to multiple big-name firms in the past 3-4 years before, ironically, he finally did land with an established agency with no help from me. In his first year as Director of Football at Octagon, the firm got back into the first round (UCLA OT Kolton Miller went 1/15 to the Raiders) for the first time since 2014, and had four draftees. The firm had just one draftee, a third-rounder, in 2017.

This time of year, with so many aspiring contract advisors prepping for next month’s NFLPA exam in Washington, D.C. – many of them using our study guide and/or practice test – I thought it would be a great time to get some sage advice from a person who’s made it where they hope to be. With that said, I’ll turn it over to Casey.

_____________________________________________________________________

So, you want to succeed in football as a NFL agent? Get ready for an uphill battle.

Like the overwhelming majority of new agents, I wasn’t fortunate enough to start my career at a major agency. I think most people enter this business simply because it seems like a fun way to make a living and they jump right in, with zero contacts, no clue what it really takes and, worst of all, no plan.

So what does it really take to succeed? I think it’s important to point out that everyone’s definition of success is different. My personal definition of success is always evolving and I am constantly pushing that bar higher and higher, so if I ever finally get there, I’ll let you know. For now, the best I can do is tell you what I’ve experienced and give you a few thoughts on what it may take you to achieve your definition of success in this business.

  • First, have a plan. My plan was always longevity. I’ve seen countless agents who started at the same time as me, and many who started after, leave the business because they made too many bad business decisions. My thought was always, ‘live to fight another day.’ In my mind, the longer you stay in this business, the more time you have to work on your craft and the greater chance you have of finally breaking through. With that in mind, never forget this is a business. There are only so many hours in the day and so much money in your bank account. You have to make sound business decisions on which players you spend time recruiting and which players you spend your training budget on. If you don’t truly believe a player has a legitimate shot at the next level, don’t waste significant time/money on the player just so you can “play” agent. Live to fight another day.
  • Second, remember that like most things in life, this business is ‘Relationship and Sales 101.’ How can you connect with each individual player? What can you do to differentiate yourself from every other agent a player meets with? Additional legal services? Marketing expertise? Tax services? Personal attention? Whatever it may be that helps you connect and sets you apart, figure it out, package it and drive that point home.
  • The best and final piece of advice I can give you is this: You have to want it. I mean really WANT it. The road to success in this business is a long and winding one, and it will not happen overnight. In the beginning, there will be an overwhelming amount of failure and rejection. So much so that you may begin to hear the word ‘no’ in your sleep. You also likely won’t make much money in this business for at least a few years. You will question yourself. Your family and friends will wonder aloud if you’re wasting your time. There will be plenty of times when you want to quit. Do you want it bad enough to fight through the rejection? Are you self-aware enough to learn from the many mistakes you will inevitably make? Do you want it bad enough to work a full-time job, while also spending full-time hours as an agent? Are you willing to put in the early mornings and late nights? Are you willing to give up weekend fun with friends and family? Do you want it bad enough to not quit, despite all the signs clearly pointing you toward the exit?

I can’t give you the exact roadmap to success because there isn’t one. Success in the agent business takes patience, passion, perseverance, mental toughness, self-confidence and a work ethic that won’t quit. Based on my experience, if you can handle everything I mentioned above, then you can find a way to make it. Above all else, always remember, recruit, recruit, recruit,  because when you aren’t, I am. Good luck.

Examining NFL Hiring and Firing Trends In Scouting

25 Friday May 2018

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There are still a few teams — the Saints, Patriots, Chargers and possibly Browns come to mind — that have openings in their respective scouting departments. At the same time, Memorial Day weekend signals the traditional end of hiring and firing season in NFL personnel departments.

With that in mind, we thought we’d take a look at the trends for 2018, and compare this year’s post-draft period to last year and previous seasons. All our information is culled from the Scouting Changes Grid we compile each season. This year’s grid is here. You can find all of the grids we’ve compiled since 2014 here.

  • With new full-time GMs in New York, Charlotte, Cleveland, Houston and Green Bay, it was expected that this would be an incredibly busy offseason. So far, not so. Last year, we tracked a whopping 170 moves — hirings and firings, promotions and reassignments — and 126 in 2016. To date, we’ve tracked 89 moves.
  • For a while, it looked like colleges would become the logical landing spot for ex-scouts, but we’ve only tracked two such hires (Tampa Bay’s Pat Perles to Kansas as an analyst and Atlanta’s Kevin Simon to Tennessee in a player development role) this offseason. Why? A new rule allowing a 10th coach on the field in college football is credited with pulling money away from the personnel side and into the coaching side.
  • It’s getting harder and harder to get back into the league. We counted 30 members of scouting and personnel who got let go between the end of the ’16 season and start of the ’17 season, most of them last spring. Of that 30, only 10 are back in football as of this week. And only eight of them are back in the NFL (former Chiefs exec Will Lewis and ex-Titans scout Tim Ruskell are now GMs in the Alliance of American Football).
  • Area scouts seem as disposable as ever, and maybe more so. Nine area scouts were let go after the ’17 draft. Only one — former Bills scout Shawn Heinlen, who was hired by the Eagles — is back in the league.
  • The reason is that teams seem to be elevating their own people. We counted 11 area scouts hired this spring (though they have various specific titles), and of the 11, five — about half — were in-house hires as either promotions or reassignments.
  • Staying in-house is actually part of a larger trend. Sixty people got hired to new jobs this spring. Of those 60, 24 didn’t have to change addresses. Again, almost half.
  • At the same time that it’s hard to get a second job in scouting, loyalty isn’t always valued, either. Of the 23 scouts and executives dumped this offseason, eight had never worked for another team.
  • Looking over the course of the last five years we’ve been tracking scouting changes, about 20 men get fired every year and don’t return. Those scouts vary in experience, time with team, and success of the team firing them. With about 250 jobs across the league in scouting and evaluation, that’s around 10 percent.

I wish I knew what to make of these numbers, but it’s hard to find trends, and our research and scope are still limited (five years and counting). At the end of the day, the only things to know are that it’s a volatile business; loyalty and personal relationships are critical; and once you get in, work as hard as you can not to get out.

Taking a Look at Who’s Signing Whom in the ’18 Draft Class

16 Friday Feb 2018

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For the most part, the end of January marks the end of the signing period for any draft class. At that point, all-star games are over, combine prep for most players is a month old, and with a few exceptions — in this year’s case, Louisville QB Lamar Jackson and Alabama PT J.K. Scott — everyone going to the combine has representation.

That’s why the list of players signed to SRAs through the end of January provides an interesting snapshot of the draft class as seen by agents and the industry at large. Though the number of signees should still swell by at least 50 percent over the next couple months, and though there are still signed players out there that haven’t popped on the NFLPA’s master list, for the most part, the players that will be signed have been signed.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at the draft class so far.

  • We counted 27 contract advisors this year with at least 10 signees in the ’18 draft class. They are Evan Brennan (29); Tyrone Barnes (27); James Krenis (25); Harold Lewis and Jimmy Sexton (tied at 18); James ‘Bus’ Cook (14); Derrick Fox and Andrew ‘Buddy’ Baker (each with 13); Ed Bailey (12) and Joel Segal (12 each); Jordan Byrd, Carter Chow, Rachel Dahlen, Craig Domann, Brian Levy, Brian Mackler, Justin Vititoe, Ed Wasielewski, Cameron Weiss and Don Yee, all with 11; and seven agents with 10 each: Patrick Collins, Pat Dye Jr., Todd France, Matthew Glose, David Rich, Justin VanFulpen and Robert Walker.
  • While every year a subset of the new agent class takes Year 1 off, hoping to get an early jump on the coming class, two of the names on the above list are rookie agents. Both Atascadero, Calif.-based Dahlen of Brand Sports Management and Buffalo, N.Y.-based Glose of Priority Athletes took a ‘damn the torpedoes’ approach as new contract advisors and signed a healthy-sized class.
  • Brennan and Krenis came out of nowhere to zoom to the top three through January. At the same time last year, each had six clients, while Barnes, last year’s leader, had 20.
  • Krenis is especially of note given his willingness to go over, around and through to sign a player. We counted seven different SRA arrangements for Krenis, including signing two clients by himself. He shares the SRA with Brennan on 23 of his 25 signees.
  • Rockville, Md.-based Scott Bergman had 14 last year through the end of January, and has been a regular leader in the client count over the past 3-4 years. This year, however, he has one signee as of the end of January.

It’s important to understand that simply signing a player doesn’t represent victory, and one could even argue that big classes are a significant negative. Very often, agents signing multiple players are simply trying to increase their odds of finding one who can make a roster. They often find that sizable draft classes are an albatross after the draft when totaling training costs and handling endless phone calls from undrafted and unsigned players asking, ‘what are you hearing?’

Still, taking inventory of SRAs signed, and who’s signing them, is one way to see how agents work, recruit and risk in the modern game.

For more on the 2018 signing class as well as everything else associated with the inside of the game, make sure to sign up for the Friday Wrap. It’s free, and read by nearly 100 members of the NFL scouting community each week, as well as dozens of agents and wealth managers who are wired into the game.

Notes from the All-Star Trail — Jan. 2018

12 Friday Jan 2018

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January is always a crazy time for me. On one hand, it’s the best time of the year because I get to get out and see all the people I text and email the other 11 months of the year. On the other, it’s incredibly busy, with so much information to gather and publish. And it’s tough being away from the family for almost the whole month.

Today, though, let’s focus on the positives. Here are a few thoughts gathered from conversations I’ve had through Week 1 of my annual Amuck in America tour.

  • On Tuesday, a couple of agents asked me if scouts would be sticking around until Wednesday, the third day of workouts at the College Gridiron Showcase in Addison, Texas. I knew why they were asking — their clients were looking to skip Wednesday’s workout, with the excuse that no NFL teams would be there. What’s frustrating is that though I’m super-proud of our game, we (the organizers of the game) are not at a point where we have a roster full of first-rounders. These kids need to play every chance they get, even if it impresses only a handful of people. When players immediately start asking if they can skip workouts, it makes me wonder if they love football. And if you’re not a Top 100 prospect, you really need to exude a love of football.
  • Today I had a long conversation with a financial advisor who, after years of pursuing NFL clients, gave it up this year. I called him to pick his brain about what makes it so hard to succeed in the game, and along the way, he shared something with me that I hadn’t thought of. There was a time, he said, when he’d discuss his NFLPA certification openly with his clients, but no more. Now he has to pick his spots because the cache is gone, and it’s all because of — you guessed it — the decision by so many players to kneel during the anthem. He works with plenty of retired and pre-retired professionals from an older generation, and while they accept the players’ actions intellectually, it’s difficult to stomach on an emotional level. That’s something I hadn’t thought of: that, to some degree, the NFL has become so toxic that it’s splashing on the non-football business of some people in the game. That’s not good.
  • Lately I’ve been mulling joining the Pro Football Writers of America. It doesn’t really benefit me, per se, and I don’t really think of myself as ‘media’ in the traditional sense, but I’ve been kicking it around. At any rate, it got me thinking — why isn’t there a professional organization for current, former and aspiring NFL scouts? Why isn’t there a body that rewards and honors scouts that excel, or helps gather information on the profession, or even helps show the ropes to those who want to work for NFL teams some day? It’s something I’ve been mulling for a while now. Think it’s a good idea? A dumb one? Would you be interested if I started such a society? Hit me up on Twitter (@InsideTheLeague) with your ideas.

The Rising Cost of Representing Players

22 Friday Dec 2017

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Sticker shock is probably the biggest issue facing the modern NFL agent, and that’s especially true of new contract advisors sorting out the financial expectations of their recruiting quarry. Even players barely on the draft radar have come to see training as an expectation, and the entitlement doesn’t end there.

We’ve done plenty of writing about the costs of the business in the past. About three years ago (January 2015), the number we came up with was $10,000 to represent a player who could be drafted in the seventh round, but who would likely wind up as a priority free agent. Of course, that’s three years ago in a business where the dollars spend quickly and desperate knows no bounds. On the other hand, if you’re in the market for a top-100 pick, the number is 3-4 times that, according to our conversation with a top player rep in November 2014.

Both costs have risen. This week, the answer we got back on the first question was that it’s closer to $30,000 for a player slated to be drafted in the latter rounds (“we set aside 20k for training, 1500 a month in per diem, then another 2k in random expenses,” said one agent who typically signs late-rounders and undrafted free agents but always eschews top-50 prospects). As for those in the Top 100, by the time signing bonus, per diem, training (including lodging and food), marketing guarantee and/or other costs, we can only guess.

Still, it’s not the upfront costs but the back-end costs we’ll be focusing on later today in our Friday Wrap. We asked 13 contract advisors this question: How much does your monetary investment in a player grow over the draft cycle? In other words, once training costs and other considerations are set upon signing, what percentage (if any) does that total grow with unplanned, ‘out of pocket’ costs?

Based on spending about $30,000 on a typical prospect, here were some of the responses.

  • “Depending on the level of player i plan on spending around 5 to 15k. It usually ends up around 10 to 20k at least.”
  • “I mean, it always happens. It can be as little as a $200 flight, or it can be thousands of dollars. When i budget for each guy i usually add at least $7,500 in “misc. costs.”  If i stay under, great…but it usually tips the other way.”
  • “Maybe 2-3k.”
  • “We’re pretty strict so maybe 5%.”
  • “Overall, we know that the promised expenses are probably about 90% of the expenses. Sometimes we need a few extra flights, rental car, or an additional loan, but the main expenses are known upon signing. And of course, we know our own expenses like all-star games, visiting client while training, etc. Very true. Plan is to keep things as clear as possible when they sign in order to avoid the issue later. Usually works but not always!”

For more responses, and a more rigorous look at the ‘out of pocket’ expenses associated with signing and representing budding NFL players, make sure to register for our Friday Wrap. It’s free, and chock-full of notes on the business of pro and college football. Register here.

Merry Christmas!

On NFLPA Exam Results, Our Practice Baseball Exam, a New Book and More

25 Friday Aug 2017

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While we prepare for Hurricane Harvey here in West Houston, here are a few thoughts to wrap the week.

  • The NFLPA sent out results from the 2017 contract advisor exam Thursday. For agents, there’s no better time than draft day when players get to realize their dreams. For me, ‘results day’ is my draft day, because I get to hear from so many newly minted contract advisors. So far, we’ve heard from about 15 people with good news (some of it on Twitter) and a couple with bad. Of course, that’s a fraction of the people who used our resources, but it’s a good sign. Exciting stuff.
  • Speaking of exams, our practice baseball agent exam is up and running. For those people planning to becoming MLBPA-certified, it’s worth a try. And this year, as we debug this thing, it’s FREE! What have you got to lose? All we ask is that you give us fair feedback on how our exam compared to the real one. The test will next be offered Wednesday in New York City.
  • The word ‘enigma’ is thrown around a lot, but the word was really invented with Al Davis in mind. That’s why a book about the former Raiders owner is something I’m really excited about. Al Davis: Behind the Raiders Shield is coming in September, and it’s already getting some positive buzz in major places. It’s co-written by a longtime friend, Jon Kingdon, who got washed out when Davis died and the new regime came in. Jon was Director of College Scouting under Davis, who was not your average owner who makes the big-picture decisions and leaves the details to others. I’m a firm believer that if you know history, you know the future. Reading about Davis, who was such a factor in the AFL merger as well as the key subsequent decisions in the life of the league, should be incredibly insightful.
  • One thing that we’re going to try to focus on more at Inside the League is developing trends, especially as it comes to new technology. With that in mind, I’ve asked my friend Ric Serritella of NFL Draft Bible to help find interesting items to pass along. Not only does Ric have a very thorough eye for talent (he helps assemble the rosters for the College Gridiron Showcase and puts out a widely respected draft guide every year), but he’s also a wizard of video production (he has filmed and produced the last two ITL Combine Seminars for our YouTube channel. In other words, he’s perfectly placed at the intersection of football and hi-tech. One thing he turned me onto this week is the new Los Angeles Sports & Entertainment Complex, which will be shared by the Chargers and Rams. Located in Inglewood, Calif., the $2.6M sports entertainment district is scheduled to open in 2020 and spreads over 298-acres (three and a half times the size of Disneyland). Fans will be able to see the action from just about anywhere; it will include 70,000 seats, will be open-air, and will feature an oval-shaped, dual-sided Oculus jumbotron that will stretch 120 yards. The compound will also house 2,500 modern residences, 300 hotel rooms, 890,000 square feet of retail space, 25 acres of public parks and a 6,000-seat performing arts venue. While naming rights have yet to be sold, 125 of the 260 luxury suites have been made available—they include all Chargers and Rams home games, in addition to the right of first refusal to all other events. The LA Sports and Entertainment Complex is scheduled to host Super Bowl LVI in February 2022 and the opening ceremonies of the 2028 Olympics. To view a virtual tour of what some are calling the eighth wonder of the world, click here.