Category Archives: Agents

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.

Opportunities

17 Tuesday Mar 2015

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From time to time, I see big events that appeal to the sports law crowd. Conferences, meetings, panels, seminars. They draw a lot of students and often have impressive speakers, by any standard. They’re a place to start if you’re looking at a career in football. But know the weaknesses of such gatherings.

There are a lot of people who regularly speak at these events that aren’t going to give you a lot of practical guidance. Oh, you’ll get ethics, and you’ll get people raging against the machine (the NFL, the NCAA, or whatever the perceived monolithic exploiter of the day is), and that’s all well and good, but are you getting practical guidance? Are you getting the answers to your questions? Are you in a setting where you feel confident seeking guidance on a specific area of the job search? Do you get closer to knowing what you really want to be?

Here’s one example. Every year at the combine, a company that is a semi-rival of ITL holds a big event for their clients. They bring in several people holding NFL jobs in evaluation, and they bring in a handful of agents and others from across the industry, and it’s a very impressive, star-studded list. For a day, all of those clients get to feel like big shots, hear war stories, tell their friends about who they’re rubbing elbows with, and maybe take a few cool selfies. But do they really directly benefit from this? The organization has lots of members, but I haven’t seen a record of success that indicates they’re giving any real value beyond entertainment.

I’m not discounting networking. That’s important, especially at an early stage of your career, and you’ll find no shortage of places to go if you want to wear an official-looking nametag, shake lots of hands, and sit in rooms with people with lots of Twitter followers. However, there is no substitute for actually working in the business.

As you attend these events, make sure you’re aggressive, direct, and mission-focused. You want to come away with leads, especially if you’re attending an event in the next 2-3 weeks. Make sure your goal is to go in without an opportunity, but to come away with one. If you are mostly sure there won’t be such opportunities at an event, maybe your time is best spent somewhere else.

Know Your Audience

16 Monday Mar 2015

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As this is ‘application season’ if you’re seeking a position with an NFL team or a football agency, I thought I’d give a couple more thoughts on how to best position yourself for the internship of a lifetime.

This weekend I was speaking to an NFL scout who’s been a longtime friend. I had asked him to speak to a young man I know who’s seeking to work as a scouting assistant this summer or next fall (I work with several young people of this status), and in the course of our conversation, this young man’s name came up.

Unsolicited, my friend told me the young man would probably not fit in with his organization. The student’s mistake had been that, in his zeal to sound intelligent and organized, he had come across as too refined and ‘executive-level’ for the tastes of my friend. Maybe because of the way he had spoken, the scout saw him as a person who would not be as willing to do the ‘dirty work’ of scouts, such as entering phone numbers into a database, calling agents to get contact information, picking up interviewees from the airport as well as returning them to the airport, and all the kinds of player engagement duties and basic information-gathering that are less than glamorous.

This is unfortunate, because I know he read the young man wrong. He may be refined, but he’s in no way too good for such duties. In fact, I think he’d relish them, but it doesn’t matter now. He hadn’t come across as enough of a ‘regular guy’ for my scouting friend. And because of that, he’d sealed his fate.

On the other hand, his style of communication would work perfectly for an agency. There, the people interviewing him might have a legal background or at least the kind of high-level professional manner that would expect a certain polish. And as it turns out, this young man did, in fact, land a place with a high-level firm that handles top athletes across several sports. He’ll be with them this summer.

I guess the moral of the story is to know your audience. By a wide margin, scouting assistants and interns are hired by scouts themselves who are a bit more down-to-earth. They are used to hanging around the locker room, talking to ‘little people,’ and maybe even have coaching backgrounds. They’re used to getting sweaty and dirty and they talk like it. On the other hand, appealing to an agency might take a smoother approach. They’ll want to see that you can handle life around a boardroom, a courtroom, or the like.

This is just something to keep in mind as you position yourself for career enhancement this summer. Best of luck in your search.

The Changing Mind of an NFL player

02 Monday Mar 2015

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You’ve heard me say in this space before that players hold all the cards in the agent-client relationship. That’s one reason why this is such a crazy business, and why things are so volatile for contract advisors. I came across a real-life illustration of this last week.

In December of 2013, a first-year-certified agent contacted me to tell me it looked like he had his first client, and he was in an all-star game, to boot. I shared his excitement and congratulated him, but as we went forward with the conversation, it became clear my friend had only received a commitment, and not a signed Standard Representation Agreement (SRA). That’s something else entirely. His would-be client was getting ready to go to an all-star game, a place that would be crawling with agents. Early in the week, agents would be able to access my list of players without representation and cherry-pick the best prospects. I explained all of this to him, and urged him to get a signed SRA as soon as possible.

Well, just as I had feared, disaster struck. The young man went to his game, got recruited by an experienced agent (a good guy who’s also an ITL client) and signed with him. Along the way, he gave his ‘first agent’ some cockamamie story about getting pressured by game organizers to give an agent’s name, and because he hadn’t technically signed an SRA with the first guy, he felt he had to pick representation at the game.

At any rate, I got behind on my agent termination lists this fall and got caught up last week. In the process of doing so, I noticed that the player had already switched from his first agent. That’s not altogether unusual; once a player makes an NFL team, he’s often taken under the wing of a veteran, and one of the first things the vet does is introduce him to his agent. However, it was quite unusual to see that, the following month, he changed again, to a third agent. That made three formal agent agreements (plus a ‘commitment’ to the first agent) in the space of 12 months. That’s pretty wild.

I can’t say this is usual — in fact, it’s quite unusual — but there’s certainly nothing barring him from changing representation every month of his NFL career. Of course, his first agent is still getting paid on the deal the young man signed when he entered the league, but as long as there are agents out there willing to ‘work’ for him without getting paid until his next deal, he can keep firing and signing, firing and signing.

That’s one of the unusual aspects of the NFL, but one you need to understand if you’re weighing becoming a contract advisor.

Young and old agents

27 Friday Feb 2015

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Here’s an observation from my time at the combine last week that may be funny to no one but me. There’s a quick way to distinguish young (i.e., inexperienced) agents from seasoned, experienced ones: what they talk about when they bump into me at a hotel, in a hallway, outside the agent seminar, or whatever.

If an agent is seasoned, at some point, he’ll ask me (or I’ll ask him) how long I’m in Indianapolis (or Mobile, or St. Petersburg, or whatever). If the agent is less seasoned, he’ll pretty much slip into ‘sell’ mode at some point. Let me explain.

More seasoned agents have good clients. They know that some will be drafted and some not, and where they’ll generally fall on draft day. They know the expenses of things, they know best- and worse-case scenarios ahead, and pretty much know the landscape. For that reason, when I bump into them, there’s really not much to say after we cover family, weather, details of their flight in, etc.

I mean, almost all my clients are my friends, and that includes hundreds of agents, many of them some of the bigger contract advisors in the business. We have genuine regard for each other, but it’s almost passe’ to talk about player issues. So we make small talk, which inevitably leads us down the path to an awkward silence, at which point, one of us asks, ‘so how long are you here?’

It’s like pulling the ripcord on a conversation. It’s like reaching for the oxygen mask in a fire. You know it buys you an extra couple seconds while you wait for the elevator, or a client arrives in the lobby, or whatever. It’s not that you don’t want to talk. It’s just that time is limited and you’re not going to go into any kind of in-depth conversation, so rather than launch down a path that could lead to a five-minute dialogue, you try to keep it light. So you ask the inevitable question, unless you’re a new agent.

If you’re a new agent, pretty much any time is a good time to give a point-by-point rendering of your clients’ strong suits. Hey, I understand. It’s exciting to talk about clients, especially when you’re in your first year, and their possibilities. Still, the thing is, I’m not the guy that needs to hear this. I’m neutral in all of this. I’m like a ref. I’m Switzerland. I’m rooting for all my clients, but I have no power over getting them drafted, or signed as UDFAs, or whatever. So I mostly smile and nod when they start in about their players’ 40 times, or how they got jobbed by their coaches, or what a great kid they are, or whatever. I mean, I share their enthusiasm. It’s just that it can lead to long, awkward visits to ‘smile and nod’ land.

I totally (TOTALLY) don’t mean to sound dismissive when I write this. That passion that young agents have is what keeps them going during the challenging times in this business, and those times are many. I want them to be upbeat, and they deserve to be. That’s why I’m always happy to hear them recount their clients’ strengths. It’s just funny to see the metamorphosis as they mature in the business.

Regrets

26 Thursday Feb 2015

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Just got off the phone with a former NFLPA-licensed agent. He got out of the business about three years ago after experiencing some initial success but ultimately realizing that he couldn’t keep up with the financial demands of the business. Here are three things I took from our conversation.

1. He misses the game dearly: My friend didn’t want to admit it, but I know he wishes he were still in. Even though the money associated with the game is daunting (he had several investors, and I doubt any of them got any return on their commitments), there’s just no high like saying you did the contract of an NFL player; that you identified that player as a future star, and he became one; and that you can walk among others in the business and know you are succeeding, if only for a little while (in his case). It’s a non-drug high that never really goes away, as long as you are ‘winning’ in the business. Of course, winning isn’t easy . . . .

2. His strategy was all wrong: My friend eventually got worn down by the chase for the next big prospect. He made choices that ultimately took him down a path out of football. The irony is that he got into the game just before combine training was becoming a major part of recruiting, and was able to sign a player who became a solid NFL starter. Eventually, that wasn’t enough, and he had to chase big names, maybe to satisfy his own ego. Had he tried to find other hidden gems, making a reasonable investment but not breaking the bank, maybe he could have sustained his success.

3. He’s looking for something to fill that void: My friend hasn’t walked away from sports entirely, and has tried his hand at a number of ventures. Some are related to representation, some to event coordination, but none football-related. I know that’s something he misses, no matter what he says. There’s just no other game like football for action, for theater, for all the things young men (and women, to some degree, but especially men) seek in life.

I know I’ve said this often, but if you aspire to make this game your career, know that it’s an addiction you’ll probably carry with you to your grave, whether you succeed or not. I hope you go for it, but if you do, go for it with all your heart, because this is not the kind of career that fits neatly into a drawer or a closet.