Category Archives: Agents

The End

18 Monday May 2015

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I’m often accused of being too blunt, too cold, too hard in this space. Well, here I go again, I guess. Today I want to talk about the 2015 NFL draft class, and I’m speaking more of all draft candidates rather than just the ones that have been chosen.

If you are a player who was draft-eligible the first weekend of May, I’m sure it was absolutely crushing if you were not selected. It’s the sudden gravity of the situation and the realization that there will be no miracles. Well, today is really the day that marks the official end of NFL dreams for members of the ’15 draft class.

How come? All but six NFL teams had their rookie mini-camps the weekend following the draft, followed by the 49ers, Chargers, Redskins, Saints, Titans and Chiefs, who worked out their new players this past weekend. At these rookie mini-camps, teams welcomed mainly draftees, undrafted free agents and tryout players.

The difference between undrafted free agents and tryout players is poorly understood, but it’s really pretty simple. While teams can only draft or sign 90 players, they can bring in as many tryout players as they want. Some teams brought in 20 or 30, though for the most part these tryout guys are strictly bag-holders, guys to take the reps so the draftees don’t get too tired. One scout I spoke to called them ‘cheap labor.’ These guys are in camp, yes, but their odds are quite long. They do make rosters sometimes, though it’s not very common. But hey, at least they got to wear an NFL helmet for a weekend.

At least 1,000 players who signed with agents didn’t even make it to a tryout. This has meaning because I’ve seen dozens of pictures of players signing SRAs, their parents beaming proudly behind them. Sometimes they turn it into an event and have cookouts built around signing with an agent. Bottom line, they feel that SRA makes them NFL prospects. Not true. Many of these folks don’t make that realization until this weekend, when camps are closed and they understand no one’s calling.

Of course, many agents get the boot around this time. This is often because the player can’t come to grips with this reality. But it’s no less true.

Let me give one last disclaimer: there are always players that are passed over in the draft and even in undrafted free agency that wind up spending at least some time on an NFL roster. Still, if you just completed your last year of college football and still haven’t heard the phone ring, I encourage you to start thinking in terms of your life’s work.

A Closer Look at the ’15 Draft Class

14 Thursday May 2015

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We just finished examining the entire 2015 draft class, and we’re starting a breakdown of the players who were eligible to be selected two weekends ago. I find it a lot more illuminating to look at every single player who was hoping to hear his name called that week, rather than strictly the ones the media was touting. It just gives you a clearer, bigger picture of the entire draft. Here are a few thoughts.

  • We identified 1,989 players who signed with agents this year. We arrived at that number by taking the 2060 players the NFLPA listed as being draft-eligible and signed to a standard representation agreement, then eliminating all the repeat listings, veterans sorted in with draft prospects, misspellings that created incorrect listings, etc.
  • Also, I would estimate that the actual number of players who signed such deals is at least five percent, and maybe 10 percent, higher than 1,989. We had to go through and add 105 names to the list that had been omitted, and this was based solely on the tryout and UDFA players we know were part of this draft class. At any rate, almost 2,000 players is a big number when you consider that most teams only have around 100-150 on their boards as draftable.
  • Counting the number of players signed to undrafted free agent deals, as well as those invited in for tryouts, is notoriously hard because (a) some teams like to hide this from the media and (b) there are still six teams that will hold camp this weekend and don’t yet have their rosters and invitations set.
  • With that said, we’ve counted 489 tryout players and another 437 signed as undrafted free agents. The number will be slightly higher by the time the six teams wrap things up this weekend, and we hope to gather those names to add to our totals. Still, statistically speaking, only about five percent of those invitees will actually be offered contracts. Of those who are offered contracts, only about eight percent (one in 12) will actually make it to the 53 or a practice squad.
  • Figure that every one of these players that made it to a tryout, as well as those who signed as undrafted free agents, went into the draft as at least a solid bet to go in the seventh round. Having spoken to agents this spring, the cost of doing business for a player with a draftable grade is about $10,000 per player (counting training, food, lodging, etc.). That means that agents spent, all told, about $1 million training players that have, at best, an eight percent chance of making even a practice squad.
  • And for those that don’t know, the NFL doesn’t allow contract advisors to bill players on practice squads, so those fees are eaten, as well, unless the kid gets elevated onto the 53.
  • Of course, more than half the players that signed standard representation agreements didn’t even make it to a tryout, and we all know many of those players got paid training, as well. So determining the amount of money that went up in smoke at the end of the draft is really pure guesswork. I’d estimate that number to reach at least $1.3 million to $1.4 million.

I’m just getting started on these numbers. There’s still a lot of polishing that will go into them, and we’ll divide them up by position, school size, and a number of other factors next week over at Inside the League. This has been a wildly popular breakdown when I’ve done it in the past.

At any rate, I’ve provided today’s analysis just to give a little perspective, a peak behind the curtain. I think it provides a snapshot of the draft class and the odds players face in making the league.

WSW: Blame Game

06 Wednesday May 2015

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When a young man’s dreams come crashing down abruptly, as they did for hundreds of young men this weekend, things can get crazy. Here’s one of the craziest examples of this that I’ve seen in years.

Shortly after the season was completed, probably in November, I got an email from a draft hopeful for ’15. He played an unglamorous position at a small school, but he was eager and I liked his attitude, even though I feared he was a bit of a self-promoter and maybe a little unrealistic about the challenges he faced. He wanted me to feature him in this space and help him along the path to the draft. I told him I do this for lots of young men and that I run a for-profit venture, and offered to help if he’d come aboard briefly. No surprise, I never heard from him again.

It was maybe a month later that I got a text from one of my agent clients, an incredibly hard-working and driven new contract advisor who’s been in the game a short while. This young agent wears his emotions on his sleeve and lives and dies every day for his clients. He will not be denied, and takes on a lot of long shots in an effort to get ahead. I cautioned him that his time was/is valuable, and his efforts promoting this young man might not lead anywhere. Still, my friend pressed on, pitching him to a scouting expert who is a mutual friend.

The scout told my friend about what I had told him — that his NFL chances were exceptionally long and that it was probably not worth his time to work with him. My friend wouldn’t hear it, and instead sent him to a special trainer that worked on his flexibility and movement in addition to the usual combine prep. Days before the draft, my friend was really encourage and hopeful of his client’s chances, as most agents are. I shared his enthusiasm, and even started to believe that this young man might beat the odds. Apparently, his family and friends were absolutely certain that he would.

Then the draft came and went with no calls. Saturday night came and went with no calls. This did not go over well with the player’s family, and so the phone calls started to my friend. Over and over, different members of the young man’s family called. They blamed the agent for his predicament. They told him he had ruined the young man’s chances of going to the NFL. They called other people, trying to get them to tout the young man in an attempt to embarrass my friend, who was only guilty of believing in an against-the-odds player. On Saturday night, I told my friend to fire the player. This was hard to do, because it would leave the young man high and dry, but it would also formally end my friend’s chances of reclaiming his several-thousand-dollar investment in him.

My friend got a phone call at 6 a.m. on Sunday morning. It was the player’s brother “waking him up” so he could start calling teams and cajoling them into taking the player. At that point, I became more adamant that my friend fire this young man. As of today, the young man still has no job, but as far as I know, my friend still represents him.

The player got some interest from well-meaning but less-than-credible websites and he did several interviews and got some attention, and he accomplished a few things in workouts that got him acclaim. But none of this was going to overcome his shortcomings on the field.

If you’re aspiring to represent players in this league, understand that what happened to my friend isn’t entirely a fluke. Someone has to take the blame when a player’s dreams don’t come true. Most often, it’s the agent. That’s why I encourage you not to take on hopeless cases, expecting gratitude. More often than not, you won’t get it anyway. Find the best player you can, but don’t take on reclamation projects and don’t take on hopeless cases. In the end, it’s only going to create heartache, probably before and definitely after the draft.

Shifting Winds

01 Friday May 2015

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As the NFL Network’s broadcast kicks off and I sit here among unpacked bags, exhausted from a return trip home but excited for what lies ahead over the next three days, I’m in a bit of a reflective mood.

Today, my reflection turns to how quickly things can turn, especially when it comes to an NFL player’s value. I think there’s value in weighing the way things have turned out, especially for people considering making the NFL their profession. First, a story about this year’s draft.

Tuesday night, my wife and I were fortunate enough to be invited to a get-together in Chicago hosted by the Sports and Entertainment Division of Morgan Stanley. It was wonderful, casual yet upscale, in a perfect setting at a classy bar at the Dana Hotel downtown. There were probably 300 people there, including people from all around the football industry: agents, financial planners, trainers, parents and relatives of players, and of course, players. It’s always fun to meet with players in a relaxed setting, especially when the hay is in the barn, so to speak, just days before the draft. Among the players there was LSU OT La’el Collins. But first, let’s flash back to earlier in the week.

On Sunday, I gotten a call from a source who’s very connected in Baton Rouge. He told me police were interested in talking to Collins regarding the murder of a young woman Saturday night. My source said Collins was the father, and hinted that it looked like a Rae Carruth situation. He urged me to investigate further.

That was a tough task for me. I have a small shop and a limited bandwidth, so I couldn’t put resources toward a wild goose chase through law enforcement and legal channels Monday and Tuesday, hoping for a scoop. While it looked like a juicy tip, and I couldn’t dismiss its veracity, it just wasn’t something I could act on. There was also one question I had: if a player wanted a former lover murdered, wouldn’t the killer make sure the baby didn’t survive?

Fast forward to Tuesday night. I didn’t get to speak to Collins, but I did exchange pleasantries with his agent, Deryk Gilmore of Priority Sports. It’d been a bumpy ride the past couple months for Gilmore and he looked relieved to be finishing up the lunacy of the annual draft hype-fest.

Less than two days later, the world of Collins, Gilmore, and everyone associated with them has been turned upside-down in a way no one could have foreseen as recently as a week ago. In a time when Aaron Hernandez’s conviction is still ringing in the ears of team officials, umerous reports indicate Collins has been removed from numerous draft boards.

Obviously, it will be a long time before all the facts of the case have been decided and all voices heard. However, Collins’ potential fall is perhaps the most meteoric of any player I can remember in a long time.

Keep the names of Collins and Johnny Manziel, another player whose fall from grace is measured in seconds, not years, in mind as you decide whether the fish bowl life of the NFL is for you.

WSW: Draft Day Disappointment

22 Wednesday Apr 2015

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Today, with the draft little more than a week away, I thought I’d tell a story about a young player whose father I worked with through last year’s draft process. It’s a bit of a cautionary tale for agents and parents alike.

The player went into his senior season as a solid end-of-draft/undrafted free agent at a mid-sized BCS school in the south. By the end of the year, he was about the same status, and he signed with an agent that was new but who had deep pockets. It looked like he had a fighting chance to at least go to camp and maybe even make the team.

Though he didn’t receive a combine invite, he took care of business at his pro day and set himself up to be a legitimate camp possibility. Unfortunately, I don’t think this was good enough for his agent, who had sunk a good amount of training money into several players that held undrafted free agent grades. The father, the player and the agent had a long talk going into the draft, and according to the father, the agent set a bottom number for the bonus he’d be willing to accept for the young man. I never got to find out from the father how much influence the player had had in that conversation.

When draft day came, the seven rounds predictably came and went, and the UFA process began in earnest. Unfortunately, there weren’t many suitors for the young defensive back. In fact, there was only one call that came in, and the agent fielded it. As the father told the story, the team was offering a $5,000 bonus, and that’s not what the agent had in mind, so he passed.

No other calls came in. For reasons I never learned, the agent wasn’t able to find the young man a tryout, either, perhaps because he was not in the metro area of any NFL team and not quite interesting enough to rate a plane ticket.

The father told me all of this about a month after the draft. The young man had waited four weeks after the draft, hoping that something would come in. I don’t know if this was at the agent’s urging, or if it was just the young man’s way of exhausting every NFL avenue. When his father called, he was composed, of course, but there was sadness and regret in his voice as he told me the young man was going to go ahead with his non-football life pursuits.

If you’re a young man or his parent reading this, make sure you tell your agent not to negotiate over a thousand dollars, or even a couple hundred dollars. If you’re an agent, make sure you don’t blow your client’s chances because you want to call a team’s bluff. If you’re an aspiring football professional, realize how tenuous a place on an NFL roster is.

 

A Different Standard

09 Thursday Apr 2015

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The NFL sends out a daily briefing to all teams every weekday, and it lists the transactions and minutiae that make up the day-to-day operations of the league. A lot of it is stuff you can read on your favorite website, but some of it is solely for the consumption of team officials.

One of the latter daily listings is for pro days for individual players. In many cases, these are obscure players from small schools. Usually, they are represented by contract advisors who are very new to the profession, and that have limited connections in the business and perhaps a limited understanding of just what most NFL teams are doing this month. There’s probably a good bit of desperation on the part of these players and their agents as they wonder if scouts will actually show up at these workouts. Most often, I don’t think teams send representatives. After all, it’s quite late to be gathering 40 times and rep totals.

At any rate, when I see these individual workouts for players, I wonder why they’re necessary. Why did this player not go to a bigger school’s pro day, or register for an NFL Regional Combine? If the player is from a bigger school, was he truly not healthy when his teammates worked out, or did he his 40 time would not be impressive time and he wanted to put off the inevitable?

I was at a pro day for an FCS school last month, and as I talked with an established agent I’ve known for a long time, we talked about his client, who was working out that day. Though his client was really the only player teams wanted to evaluate, the young man kept coming over to his agent and pointing out things that didn’t make this the perfect day. He was asked to run against a light wind twice. The conditions were a little damp. He was shortchanged on his times. He didn’t get the start he needed because his shoes were worn in the wrong places. There were dozens of similar excuses, and he wasn’t the only player that had these issues.

My friend was a little dismissive whenever his client would return with another complaint. Later, the agent explained that he was trying to get the BS out of the young man. He was trying to squeeze him a bit, to pressure him, to get him to ‘man up’ and realize that if he was truly an NFL player, he’d have to perform even when he didn’t get the benefit of every doubt. He didn’t have nearly as much margin for error as he thought he had.

Later, as I discussed a different player with one of the team’s coaches, he said that when the team faced smaller schools from out-of-the-way programs, this young man always showed up energized and looking to make a big splash, and often, he did just that. However, when the school played ‘up’ against impressive FBS schools, the young man had excuses for why he couldn’t perform that week: migraines, hamstring issues, whatever.

I know there’s a fine line to walk between being your best physically or just gutting through a difficult workout while you’re in pain or facing some strain or pull that taxes you. Sometimes, players penalize themselves when they ‘suck it up’ and hope that evaluators give them credit for playing through an injury. The point is, the truly elite players always find a way to excel, and the ones that are on the bubble find themselves on the outside looking in not because of circumstances, but because they needed every break to go their way just to make it into consideration for the league.

Let me give this disclaimer, as I often do in this space: I’m not here to rain on anyone’s parade. At the same time, if you’re a young NFL hopeful or a person who represents one, recognize that only the truly special talents make it onto the big stage. The NFL is for the great player, or at least the young man with the physical tools to be great. If you (or your client) aren’t one of those people, that doesn’t mean you’re not a very good athlete. It only means you’re part of the 99.9 percent that doesn’t quite measure up to the extraordinary standard that all NFL players meet.

WSW: Travel trials

08 Wednesday Apr 2015

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Today, I was talking to an agent who’s had struggles satisfying a high-maintenance client during travels among teams. It reminded me of my own experience working with a high-maintenance client several years ago.

I had a friend in realty who was working with a Texans player living in Atlanta. She had set everything up so the player could come into town, hit several locations over two days, then fly back with minimal hassle. Of course, things rarely go as planned when you’re working with athletes used to having all their travel taken care of for them by their college and NFL teams.

My friend had worked hard to verify that they’d fly in early and we’d pick the young man up from the airport, then whisk him to several houses over two days, and put him back on a plane the following evening. Things got interesting when we got word from his financial planner who was with us in Houston that the player had missed his flight. That wasn’t entirely surprising. However, it was surprising when we showed up to pick him up and, though he insisted that he was in the pickup area, he was nowhere to be found. Oh, by the way, he wasn’t alone; turns out that, at his insistence, his financial planner had bought his ‘advisor,’ a street runner, a ticket as well.

So his realtor and I were at the airport planning to pick up one player, but it turns out, we were at the wrong airport (there are two in Houston) and needing to make room for two. OK. We’d roll with the punches. But it would take about 45 minutes to get to the other airport, which would mean the first half of the day was wiped out and the various house visits she’d planned would have to be completely altered.

The next 24 hours were like a comedy act. The next day, the realtor and I arrived to find his party had grown to a full processional, and his posse traveled in a convoy of vehicles behind us as we visited house after house. My friend and I went from realtor and host to caterer, entertainer, travel concierge and a handful of other duties associated with keeping several people happy.

It’s just a reminder that things rarely run exactly as planned, especially when you’re trying to keep a young man who’s rarely had to face the basic accountability that ‘regular people’ live with day to day. It’s something to prepare for as you consider a career in football.

Frustration and Foolishness

02 Thursday Apr 2015

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Right now, I’m working on expanding my message to new markets, and it’s funny to see how people whose agenda should be education try to marginalize it.

Here’s an illustration. In the space of two days, I’ve gotten emails from two people (one an agent, one a parent) describing how schools segregated contract advisors from the rest of the attendees at pro day. Virginia Tech and Coastal Carolina went to extraordinary lengths to keep agents from being able to watch and follow their clients, even though these clients no longer had any college eligibility!

To me, a college is talking out of both sides of its mouth when it commits to educating its players  and getting them to the next level, but limits the players’ representatives’ access to these auditions for NFL teams. Shouldn’t agents be the ones with unlimited access, while the parents and friends are restricted? This is upside-down, but I guess, then again, it’s not.

I mean, really, it’s punitive. It’s a school sending a message to contract advisors, I think. The message: you are radioactive and we will jump through every hoop to make sure you are kept at a distance. That’s childish, because it doesn’t affect a team’s big stars. It affects the players on the fringe, the ones that are scratching and clawing for any chance to make it.

Take a look at how many players have risen to NFL stardom after entering the league as undrafted free agents. They are numerous. Maybe they’d be even more numerous if schools took the attitude that we’re going to move heaven and earth to assist your agent, financial advisor, or other representative in his efforts to get you into the league. After all, the school’s going to take full credit during the recruiting process if they do make it.

Forgive the rant, but this is persistent and stupid. This time of year, I hear these stories all the time, and I wish there was something I could do about it. Maybe, slowly, someday I can.

Your Life’s Work

31 Tuesday Mar 2015

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Yesterday I was meeting with a gentleman in the financial industry. He’s super-wealthy and has been able to accomplish more than probably anyone I know when it comes to creating financial resources. I think that’s great and I have tremendous respect for that.

Given the choice, who wouldn’t want to be wealthy? And who knows? Maybe I’ll be wealthy one day, too. It would be a wonderful way to make a positive impact on the people I love and a whole lot more people, too.

On the other hand, great wealth is not a priority for me. Maybe it’s because of my middle-class upbringing. Maybe it’s because I care far more about changing people’s lifestyles and attitudes. I guess I’ve always felt that money would take care of itself if I succeeded.

I don’t travel in the corridors of power that lead to true wealth. To do that, I would have had to map a very different path for my life. Maybe you did that at a young age, but my guess is that if you are reading this blog, simply making big money as quickly as possible is not your primary goal. Anyway, I hope that’s the case.

Here’s the thing. If you get into this business, whether on the scouting side or the agent side (the two paths I write most about), you’re going to have to be satisfied with the things I really value, the things that attracted me to the business. No. 1, it’s the game. Football is special to me. It offers the violence, aggression, passion, athleticism and other qualities that I want in my life. No. 2, and it’s a pretty close second, is camaraderie. The shared sacrifice, the blood and sweat of the game, is just something people in the business understand. There’s a shared respect.

What’s more, I’ve never seen the gaps in racial harmony in sports that I’ve seen in the rest of my life. If I roll through the names in my phone, it’s probably close to 50-50 black to white. I can’t speak for others, obviously, but I can’t think of one time my black friends (agents, coaches, scouts, players) treated me differently, talked to me differently, or otherwise treated me with kid gloves because we were different races. Can you find that in other businesses? Maybe, but I think sports comes as close to crossing that chasm as any other business does. It’s just a brotherhood.

No. 3 would have to be the direct impact you can have on lives. So many young men and their families have expressed deep appreciation for what I would consider little things I’ve provided — tips, advice, counsel, introductions, whatever. I’m fortunate enough to be able to make a living doing this, but it’s awfully rewarding to be able to help others in a substantial way.

So this is my point: if you’re going to go the distance in this business, great wealth may not come your way. Getting rich quick doesn’t usually happen in this business. Be ready to accept this, and value the good things that do come with it. At the same time, don’t apologize if you don’t value what the world may greatly value.

The End

30 Monday Mar 2015

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I get a lot of players and their parents who reach out to me this time of year. Many of them are seeking an agent who can help sell them to NFL teams. I tell them this week is a sort of ‘line of demarcation’ for NFL evaluation.

At this point, a draft-eligible player’s college career, all-star play and combine are long in the books. He may be working out for teams at his pro day this week, but most are done. That means there are no more opportunities to spark interest for scouts and NFL teams unless players are invited to do so. Now, some NFL teams hold their own local workouts for players who competed in high school or college in a team’s metro area, but the number of invitees is usually limited to 20-30 players, maximum.

This is why, even though I know they don’t want to hear this, I tell most players I speak to at the end of March that if they are NFL prospects, they will know it by now. They are getting calls from scouts, scheduling private workouts, getting invited in for visits, or at least getting some form of correspondence from people in personnel. If they are not, it may be time to move on.

If a player is willing to accept this and still wants to pursue his dreams, he probably needs to do something to spark new interest in his playing ability. Usually, this has to take place on the field. He has two main options. One is the Arena Football League, which started play this weekend. Arena teams are always looking for local players they can plug in when injuries strike, but they pretty much have to be local. AFL teams don’t have the budget to be able to bring in people from across the country for workouts.

The other outlet is the CFL. I generally discourage players from going to these cattle call-style open tryouts, especially before a player’s pro day, but if he has run the winter gauntlet with NFL teams and still not won anyone over, it may be time to see if there’s interest up north. Most of these workouts charge $100 (usually cash only), and there will be plenty of them all over the country in April. Most agents take a pretty dim view of these workouts because the chances of success are pretty minimal, and I’d agree with them. However, if a player makes it to the end of March without much interest from NFL teams, odds are long anyway.

Look, anything can happen, and the last thing I’d want to do is rain on a young man’s parade. At the same time, I think it’s important to be straight with people. As I always say, the NFL is not for the good, but the great, player. It’s rare for players to make it to college athletics, much less professional sports. Every young man doesn’t fit that profile, and there’s no shame in that. All you can do is give it your best shot.