For the second part of War Story Wednesday, we continue our conversation with Howard Shatsky (@HowardShatsky), who has a unique perspective on sports representation given his almost three decades in the league. Today, Howard discusses a recent recruiting experience that has become all too common, plus discusses the way money has come to influence the industry in a negative way.

A few years ago I met with a player with a second- or third-round NFL grade and his father. Having spoken with his coaches and many of my NFL contacts, my conclusion was the player would be drafted in the sixth or seventh round, at best. The first thing the player’s father expressed to me was, “Just so you know, we want $15,000 up front from whomever we sign with.

“No disrespect to your 25 years of experience,” the father continued, “but I don’t think that matters. My son is going to be drafted in the second or third round based solely on his talent, and that has nothing to do with you.”

When I gave my assessment of where the player would be drafted, I was told, “You are crazy; all the other agents are telling us different.” He ended up signing with an agent who had very little experience, though he did give the young man the $15,000 he and his father were looking for. The player was not drafted, signed as a free agent, was released before training camp, picked up by another team and than released again. Thus, based on the initial upfront payment and various expenses, on that one player alone, the agent lost approximately $20,000.

I wish I could tell you this was unusual, but in this day and age, the vast majority of players make their agent decision based on how much money an agent is willing to spend to obtain them as a client. In my opinion, this is not a good thing for the industry. Back in the old days, if an agent had two or three first-round picks, that was a great year. The large firms in the industry now routinely sign up to eight first-round picks. Is that because that many players suddenly decided a big agency was what they needed? I don’t think so.

I am often asked how to get into the agent business, and over the years my answer to that question has changed. When I am asked that now, my answer is to have very rich parents, or someone that is willing to loan you a lot of money. One of the issues is, are agents getting value for the money they spend to sign players?

Whenever I am asked about that, I think about the fact that the best player I ever worked with was (former Giants DE) Michael Strahan, and somehow, despite the fact he did not work out with a personal trainer for the combine, he was still able to make the Hall of Fame! In my opinion, when players are selecting an agent, they should not only consider how much the agent is willing to spend on them, but the experience and commitment that person has to his clients.

Howard Shatsky started his career at the NFLPA and has been working with NFL players since 1989. Howard currently represents NFL players for his own firm, Professional Football Management, and represents coaches for the firm, Coaches, Inc. You can follow Howard on Twitter at @HowardShatsky.

Today, for War Story Wednesday, I turn the blog over to Howard Shatsky of Pro Football Management (@HowardShatsky), who’s been a successful NFL agent for decades. He’s represented a number of pro football luminaries including former Giants DE Michael Strahan, who has transcended football and is now as known in Hollywood circles as he is in football circles.

Howard has a unique perspective on things, having seen the representation side of the game go through several mutations. I asked him to discuss the transition to the modern age of athlete representation with me, and it resulted in this blog post, as well as the one we’ll publish tomorrow.

Today, Howard, discusses recruiting. Tomorrow, he talks more about anecdotes from his time in the game to illustrate his points.

Recently you may have read a post by Neil Stratton talking about the expenses an agent must incur in order to sign a prospective late-round draft choice. This post led to a discussion between Neil and I about how the industry has changed.

My first year representing NFL players was 1989 and that year I signed a second-round pick from Penn State. Although we had been speaking by telephone, the first time we actually met in person was at the Senior Bowl, and he did not end up signing with the firm I was working for until after the NFL Combine. I signed a few other players and did not have my first conversation with any of them until sometime around December.

The recruiting aspect of the industry has changed dramatically since that time. The majority of recruiting now takes place the summer prior to the player’s senior season. By the end of the season most college players have already narrowed down their list of potential agents, if they have not already decided on who they will sign with. Many players even sign within a few hours of their last college game.

There is a very simple reason for this: personal trainers and combine prep. When I first started representing players, agents did not pay for personal trainers. Players worked out at their respective schools with their strength coaches. The only expense involved in signing a draft choice was occasionally giving the player a few hundred dollars to pay for gas and groceries. My, how the game has changed.

Now, players want to sign with an agent very close to the end of the season so they can fly to a training facility and start working out for the combine. Most prospective top-round picks want to train at a known facility. The expense for this alone can be in the neighborhood of $25,000. This does not include monthly cash stipends, workout gear, food, rental cars and numerous other things players expect an agent to now pay for. Trainers are well aware that in order to sign these players, an agent has to pay for a trainer, so be prepared to pay a lot more than the going rate for an athletic trainer. In most recruit meetings, the first question I am asked is, what are you going to pay for? Even players who have free agent NFL grades expect an agent to pay for their trainer. If you are able to sign a top-round pick, plan on budgeting a minimum of $50,000.

Howard Shatsky started his career at the NFLPA and has been working with NFL players since 1989. Howard currently represents NFL players for his own firm Professional Football Management and Coaches for the firm Coaches, Inc. You can follow Howard on Twitter at @HowardShatsky.

On Monday, I got a question from a young agent who’s dedicated and hard-working. In the course of conducting his due diligence on the scouts he needs to know during the ’15 draft process, he asked me if Arizona — a state where a couple of his clients went to school — is considered a Southwest or West Coast area for the purposes of NFL teams.

I get this question all the time, and unfortunately, there’s no ‘answer’ to the question. Some teams consider Arizona West Coast, some consider it Southwest. Some teams don’t break the nation down by regions, but just assign small clumps of states to different scouts. I know one West Coast scout who doesn’t even live in the region he’s in; he’s on the East Coast.

This is one reason scouting and evaluation are so hard to measure. One thing I’ve learned over the years is that different teams not only do things differently, but they couldn’t care less how others do it. There’s one NFC team that has consistently struggled on draft day for at least the last decade-and-a-half, but continues with essentially the same personnel and the same methodology.

Part of this self-fulfilling prophecy is because no one has developed a consistent metric for evaluating scouts. Maybe it’s because no one wants to be held to an objective measure when it’s time to make changes in the scouting lineup. Maybe it’s because it’s so hard to truly evaluate the job a scout does. Maybe because it’s rare for just one scout to truly ‘discover’ a player, when most teams will send 3-4 pairs of eyes to evaluate everyone on their draft boards. Maybe it’s because scouting departments change philosophies so often, valuing character the most one year, athletic ability the next, size the following year, or even certain schools and regions at times. It’s really pretty murky.

It all goes back to one of the themes of this blog. If you think someone out there has things ‘on lock,’ you’re wrong. NFL teams are made up of human beings, and they make mistakes and fall back on comfortable but flawed methods. Even in a business that is filled with smart, efficient, capable people, there is opportunity if you can identify weaknesses and figure out how to make them strengths. It’s one of the things that makes this game, and this business, fascinating.

After wrapping up a whirlwind trip through four towns and four bowls in four weeks, it’s good to be home, sleeping in my bed for a while before heading to Indy for the combine.

It’s always great to get out on the road and see ‘my peeps,’ but this year I used the time to pose a question to all my experienced agent clients, the ones that are consistently signing draftable players and have an active player list of 10-20. I felt this question would be perfect for this space as well as an interesting marker to review in the future.

The question: You’re signing a player who will be drafted, you’re certain, most likely in the seventh round. What do you offer him? What’s it gonna take?

The thought process behind this question was that most players who go into December looking like seventh-rounders wind up — after juniors declare/combine/pro day/etc. — as good, solid camp guys after the draft. So what I was really asking was, what does it cost just to get a guy into camp on the 90-man roster? What’s the financial ‘floor’ if you want to get a player signed and into camp?

The answer I got was full combine training for eight weeks plus a weekly stipend starting the day the player signs the SRA (standard representation agreement). A training package includes residence, of course, along with food (not McDonald’s — usually meals prepared specifically for the player by someone at his training facility or a third-party provider hired by the trainer) and usually a rental car. Training alone, provided the young man isn’t living at home and isn’t providing his own means and supplements, is probably $6,000-$7,000 if you use our turn-key training offer, maybe more depending on the location of the training and if it’s a big-name trainer. There are a number of variables here. All trainers offer a number of a la carte features (NFL interview training, deep tissue massage and position-specific training are all good examples) that can bump that number up considerably. Also keep in mind that training at a top-level, brand name facility is at least double this total.

The weekly stipend/per diem you’re looking at is anywhere from $200-$250 per week. The variable there is, when does it end? Some agents said the deal they work is that they pay the player through his pro day. Some go all the way to the draft. Some pay only through March.

So let’s do the math. If we take the midpoint on a comprehensive training package at a solid-but-not-big-name training facility, let’s say the total is $7,000. Then let’s say the player signs on Jan. 1, which isn’t unreasonable. We’ll take the high side on weekly stipend, just to make the math easy, and we’ll pay the player through the end of March. That means you’re looking at $10,000 for every player you sign, and again, that’s the floor.

Most mid-size agencies sign 3-5 players for the draft, hoping half of them stick or get drafted late. Let’s go high side on this. That means you’re probably spending in the neighborhood of $50,000 to get 1-3 players into camp with no guarantees.

The deadline for registering to be part of the 2015 NFLPA contract advisor class is about a week away. If you’re considering taking the CBA exam, consider these numbers this weekend.

These days, when I’m having one conversation after another with agents, combine trainers, parents, media members, some scouts, coaches and others around the game, I hear a lot of things. A lot of it is code, so I thought I’d pass along some of it here, partly because it amuses me, and partly because, if you’re going to be in the business, you need to know what it means.

Today’s lesson is on the statement: ‘We haven’t even spoken to that kid.’

A big part of what our Rep Rumblings reports is credible information on who’s signing with whom, who’s recruiting whom, who’s firing whom, who’s hiring whom, and other such buzz. Not all of it is proven, black-and-white, cut-and-dried stuff. That means I have to trust the sources that have shown themselves to be reliable after 10-plus years of doing this. Sometimes I’m wrong, I’ll admit, but most of the time, I’m right.

This time of year, especially, we are constantly rolling out info about players who are near signing with certain agents. Sometimes the info is hazy, and we can only report the progress of the vetting process, but sometimes we name the agency. That almost always earns us a phone call from the agency. Sometimes, they freely admit that they are talking to the kid, but deny that they are the favorite. Sometimes they admit they are the favorite, but they’re upset (based on our relationship) that we reported it. But sometimes, they categorically deny that they’ve even spoken to the kid. In fact, that’s exactly what they say: “We haven’t even spoken to the kid.”

In these instances, I’ve learned, it’s important to parse words. Last week, I posted sensitive info about an agency that I was told had the inside track on a mid-round talent in the ’15 draft. Sometime later that day, I got the inevitable call, with an agent (who’s become one of my better friends and is with one of the more honorable firms in the business) claiming there had been no communications with the player in question. I expressed my regret for information he claimed was misguided. I was to learn later, however, that no actual verbal communication did not mean no interest. To his credit, later the same agent expressed that he and his agency had tried to get in through the player’s coach, but had not actually spoken to the young man. What he had originally said was untrue is still untrue, and I had been wrong, but it was also true that I hadn’t been completely off-base.

Here’s another, better example. Probably four or five years ago, I got a tip from a reliable source that a major firm would sign a big-time player in draft that was still more than a year away. My source had been reliable and he was adamant, so I ran with the info. I got no response from the agency right away. However, a year later, shortly after the draft, one of the firm’s agents contacted me. “We never even talked to that kid until a couple of months ago,” he said. Well, maybe not, but obviously, someone had been talking to him. You don’t sign a highly touted player with a casual phone call a couple months before the draft.

You almost need a Rosetta Stone to interpret some of the things you hear in this business. More translations to come.