As regular readers of this blog already know, I’ll be joining sports business icon Leigh Steinberg tonight on his new Yahoo! Sports radio show ‘Behind Closed Doors’ (shameless plug: I’ll be on from 8:30-9 p.m. CST). It got me thinking about Leigh’s career, and perseverance, and to some degree, mine too.

When I was in my early 20s, ESPN’s SportsCenter was in its prime. These were the days of Craig Kilborn, Dan Patrick, Keith Olbermann, Chris Berman, etc. I couldn’t imagine a sports career that could top being on SportsCenter. That was a major goal. But today, I can’t imagine being on SportsCenter, and I don’t know anyone who even watches it anymore. It’s become trite, and anyway, all the highlights you want to see have either (a) been broadcast or (b) are readily available online somewhere. The model has changed completely.

In a similar vein, Leigh’s career has changed completely. Obviously, he’s known for a lot of things. He was one of the fathers of modern sports representation, if not the father of it, and he was the inspiration/model behind the movie Jerry Maguire. The number of legendary quarterbacks he’s represented is endless, from Steve Bartkowski and Warren Moon to Troy Aikman and Ben Roethlisberger. However, after a highly publicized lawsuit and some personal struggles, he fell from atop the sports representation business, and over the last decade, people around the business started referring to Leigh in the past tense.

Now here’s the interesting part: as Leigh showed when he helped Bartkowski land a mega-deal in the 70s, he’s adept at identifying trends and leveraging the market. He’s still an agent — client Garrett Gilbert, a QB from SMU, was drafted in the sixth round by the Rams this spring — but I think Leigh recognizes that the Dodge City environment that made a creative mind such a license for success 40 years ago is not in evidence today. As the agent business has saturated and competition has risen to great heights, he’s leveraging online radio, social media and more traditional methods (he’s authored several books, including one published this year) to tap into what I call the sports education market. It’s the one populated by hard-core football enthusiasts as well as the endless number of students pursuing sport management degrees in universities across the country.

Leigh is uniquely positioned to tap this market. Not only has he represented several members of the Hall of Fame and served in several roles related to sports and entertainment, but he’s indirectly played a role in the birth of several major agencies, including Irvine, Calif.-based Athletes First; Rep 1 Sports, also based in Irvine; and even Chapel Hill, N.C.-based Vanguard Sports Group, which was just launched by Joby Branion. Joby was one of the three agents who left Leigh in 2002 to launch Athletes First, and he’s a top agent in his own right today.

I think the takeaway from Leigh’s career is that the opportunity that everyone else is pursuing is not always the best one. When players were not yet using agents, or barely using them, Leigh found a way to enter that market and make it a success. When others flocked to it, he found another way to capitalize. Keep this in mind as you launch your career. There’s more than one road to success.

One of the things that I’ve found to be true in the football world is that it’s a ‘quid pro quo’ world. Who benefits most from a relationship? It’s a question you must constantly ask yourself as you gain contacts and build your network. Is this a specifically football-related issue? Maybe not. But let me tell a story about how it’s been illustrated in my career.

When I ran the 2008 Hula Bowl, I had one agent who was constantly calling me and advocating for a certain player. He just wouldn’t stop. I mean, no matter how many times I told him it wasn’t going to happen, this agent kept on calling me back, up to the eleventh hour, trying to shoehorn him into my game. Keep in mind that I already had one of his clients in the game, but he thought I owed him another one. Well, sorry. No dice. We’ve had only infrequent contact over the years though we both definitely know each other.

So earlier this year, he confronted me about something I’d written last fall. He was polite about it, and it didn’t turn into anything heated, but he was clearly angry, though subdued. I couldn’t help but laugh when he brought it up, and I wondered at the time what made things so funny. I’ve thought about it since, and finally come up with the answer.

This agent thought he had done me a real favor by sending me one of his players, and felt he’d been wronged when I didn’t take the other one. Quid pro quo. When I further wrote something that he found negative on the site — which is part of my job, and something that always creates tension in my relationship with various agents — he felt like I’d further let him down. On the other hand, I felt like he owed me. I’d gotten one of his clients into my game even though he’d never thought enough of me to become an ITL client (though I’m sure he’s used unauthorized passwords to access the site), and I took offense at that. So maybe that was my quid pro quo moment, too.

So what happened early in 2014 had its seeds in that time in late ’07 and early ’08 when he was trying to get a player into the game and I was resisting. He felt he had done me a favor by putting one big-school client in my game, and was doing me another favor by letting one more of his clients play. I felt I was doing him a favor by allowing a player with an iffy draft status into my game; after all, that invitation included an all-expenses-paid week in Hawaii, where he’d be evaluated by scouts and given a chance to go from nowhere to somewhere, football-wise.

As you work your way up the football ladder, I hope you aren’t as small as I was earlier this year (and sometimes, admittedly, still can be at times). However, I also want you to realize that, in the football world, score-keeping takes place off the field and not just on it.

The deadline for agents to renew their registration with the NFLPA is Oct. 15. Meanwhile, agents who took the test this summer are have already been notified of their results, and they’re sending in their fees and acquiring liability insurance now.

This time of dreams starting and dreams ending got me thinking about who fails, and why? I think part of it is commitment, and it’s true whether you want to be a scout or an agent (two of the major groups I deal with). Let me begin with a brief story.

When new agents come into the league, I try to reach out to them. I get various reactions. Some understand that the league is a tough nut to crack, they have a lot to learn, and they eventually become clients. Some understand it’s a tough business, that they have a lot to learn, but don’t want to pay $25/month to hopefully learn more and increase their chances of succeeding. Some refuse to acknowledge that they’ll be anything less than an instant success. I don’t often stay in regular contact with them.

At any rate, I think there are three levels of commitment. The first level of commitment is represented by the person who actually goes for it. Rather than saying, ‘I’m going to be an agent some day,’ he actually pays his fee and takes the exam. I have a lot of respect for everyone who does this. The equivalent in the scouting industry would probably be people who major in sports management in college. It’s an affirmative step in the right direction.

The next level of commitment says, ‘I’m going to get certified, but I’m going to keep my costs minimal so if I fail, I’m not wrecked.’ I understand this level of commitment. These folks are usually the ones that take my call, but realize their chances of success are a long shot, and want to manage their risk. They concede that that initial $4000 or so is gone, and they’re a bit afraid to go any farther than that. Though I understand them, I wish I had reached them before they got certified so they’d know more about the level of financial investment required. Aspiring scouts in this group would probably be the ones that start a draft website. They take a step and put themselves out there, but they’re always guarding their perception by others, and rarely go outside their circle to really gain followers.

The next level of commitment is similar to the last. The people in this group realize they have a lot to learn, and their risk tolerance is minimal, but still they are willing to spend a bit more money — in the case of ITL, $29.95/mo — to really get the answers they need. Maybe you want to be a scout; the equivalent here would be the people who aggressively network, attend coaches clinics, seminars, out-of-town symposiums, and things like that to increase their odds of success. Either way, people in this group are willing to spend a little more money and a little more time to increase their odds of success.

The people in the final level of commitment basically take the lid off and go all out to win, knowing there are no guarantees. Some of them leave their day jobs (which I don’t recommend). This can be a dangerous group. For one, the agent business can be plenty pricey if you’re not careful, and spending bottomless sums on combine training, interview skills, and whatever doesn’t lock anything in. However, if you have the resources and you’re smart about it, you can be dangerous to the status quo. I guess the people pursuing scouting that would be in this group are those that start seeking NFL and college internships while they’re still in high school, never talk about anything else, make it clear to everyone they know that they have one dream, and put everything else (social lives, hobbies, career pursuits, etc.) on the back burner.

You can succeed if you are willing to do whatever it takes. Again, I’m not saying you will, but you can. It’s a real joy for someone like me when I can play a role in that.

About a week ago, the NFLPA began notifying new agents that they had passed the CBA exam they took in July in Washington, D.C. I’ve spoken to several agents who passed, and shared their excitement, which is deserved.

For those of my clients who just passed the test, we’re starting to work on their first year in the business, which can be tricky. We start by identifying a general recruiting area/strategy, discuss what’s ahead this fall, and the relationships agents should be starting to develop. Most, if not all, my clients are very receptive. However, it’s not always easy to make suggestions to newly minted agents, and these perhaps more hard-headed souls are the ones I want to speak to today.

In every walk of life, you learn from mistakes. The difference between making them in this business is that they’re usually very expensive to make. You’ll be solicited by an endless number of hucksters promising access to top draft prospects. Others will claim they are connected to top veterans who are nearing their second contract — i.e., their big-money deal, the time when they can really cash in — and that said players are open to new representation. This isn’t true, but you may be tempted to believe them, especially if you’re caught at a desperate moment. You wouldn’t believe the stories I’ve heard of established bankers, financial planners, attorneys and others getting duped by people in this business.

In addition, there are ways to ‘play the game’ that give you an infinitely better chance of success. There are people who it’s smart to partner with and build relationships with (like key people at all-star games, honest combine trainers, and ex-scouts who can give you an honest opinion on players’ potential), and plenty more that aren’t so well-intentioned. I know you feel it’s easy to sniff out the good guys from the bad guys, but it might be harder than you think.

So here’s the takeaway, and I hear this all the time from my first-year clients when we talk after their first draft: you don’t know what you don’t know. I realize you’ve been very successful in your professional life so far, and I’d never deny that. Still, there are so many relationships you need to develop, decisions you need to make, and questions that you need answers to that if you’re not careful, this can be a very frustrating year.

Need guidance? I’m here, and I’d be honored to work with you. But even if you choose not to work with ITL, handle this business with care, and be sure to think long and hard before you make any false moves. Next year at this time, you don’t want to be asking yourself, ‘what was I thinking?’

We’ll bounce around and touch on several different topics in today’s post.

• Those aspiring new contract advisors who took the NFLPA exam this summer in Washington, D.C., got their results back at the end of last week. Kudos to the NFLPA for turning the tests around so quickly. In the past, applicants took the test end of July, then waited until mid-October to find out if they made it. Last year, results were in the hands of test-takers by the end of September, and this year, they’ve been even more efficient.
• Often, the immediate euphoria that comes with finding out you passed is tempered quickly by two things: (a) the fact that the PA immediately asks for two big checks (a total of around $2,500 between dues and liability insurance) plus the realization that recruiting can only now begin.
• Of course, the frustration for those who didn’t make the cut is palpable. I spoke to one this morning; it’s hard to talk to people who can do nothing but wait to resume chasing their dreams. Those unlucky souls are in a holding pattern until the PA offers the test again next summer. The next step forward would be to schedule the one allowed retake during the same calendar year so applicants wouldn’t lose so much time.
• Here’s another underclassman to watch this season: Georgia OLB Leonard Floyd, who coaches say is headed to the NFL if he has a good season. Floyd may fly under the radar as a player considering leaving early given that he’s just a true sophomore at UGa. The fine print: he went to Hargrave Military Academy his first year out of high school, giving him the required three years to make the NFL leap.
• I’ll be a guest on Leigh Steinberg’s new show Monday nights on Yahoo! Sports Radio on Aug. 22 at 9:30 p.m. EST. Right now, I’m not sure what we’ll be discussing, but it will generally involve the finer points of the football business. If you have suggestions, please let me know (nstratton@insidetheleague.com). I hope you’ll tune in.
• In addition, if you’re around Houston, join me at Texas Southern University as I speak to the Thurgood Marshall School of Law’s Sports and Entertainment Law Association at Wednesday, Sept. 17, at noon CST. I’ll be providing an overview of several popular entry-level jobs in football and how to give yourself an edge in landing one. I hope you’ll join us if you’re in the area.

If you’re an agent, you’ve probably been fielding quite a few calls the last few days. You’ve probably heard a lot of stories, too, tales of woe designed to get you fired up about the chances of a player who could be the Kurt Warner of the FXFL.

This is part of the business. Typically, phones light up with cold-calling players in December and January, but there’s a new wave this year due to the upstart FXFL, which aims to be a developmental league for the NFL. That means every kid who got cut last weekend, along with virtually every other young man who aspired to be in the league the last 2-3 years, is running down the list of certified agents on the NFLPA website and making calls.

When most agents enter the business, they have very little understanding of what it means to have your name associated with arguably the hottest brand in professional sports. Agents are seen by players as the gatekeepers to the NFL, as well as the guys who are willing to drop lots of money to get a player into the league. These are both misconceptions, but try telling that to players who are looking for any kind of edge.

They also might not realize that their phone numbers are listed and easily accessible by anyone willing to register on the NFLPA website. It’s a free registration, and anyone with an email address can have at it. At least it’s not the CFL; up north, the CFLPA lists agents’ phone numbers AND email addresses. It just makes the flood of players seeking help even worse.

If they aren’t careful, many contract advisors fall for the stories players tell them, and might even go to bat with the FXFL trying to get a spot on a roster. In truly desperate times, that agent might even buy the kid a plane ticket to get him to the team. The smart ones, however, recognize that players ‘on the street’ right now are there for a reason (see Thursday’s post), and remain very circumspect about how they spend not just their money, but their time.