Category Archives: ITL

WSW: Right Way, Wrong Way

25 Wednesday Feb 2015

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For today’s War Story Wednesday, I want to take you back to something that happened to me last Thursday, less than a week ago.

You hear all the time that in football — as in life — success is built on relationships. You don’t want to burn bridges, and you don’t want to screw people over. You want them to know that they are valued, and that you are worthy of their trust, no matter how big they are in the game. I’d hope people would treat me the same way, which takes me to what happened last week, when we held our sixth annual ITL Seminar in Indianapolis.

We’ve been fortunate to grow in size every year, and this year was our biggest event yet with around 120 people there. I know, that doesn’t sound like a lot of people, but it’s big enough that if you play your cards right, you can ‘hide’ in such a group pretty easily.

Our annual seminar is open only to ITL clients, and I make that perfectly clear, both on the site and in the various newsletter editions I send out to agents and financial planners in the game. I do this because I’m trying to spur business, of course, but also to avoid uncomfortable situations at the door. I don’t want to tell anyone that they can’t attend, though, of course, there are always one or two exceptions.

One ‘good’ exception this year was New York-based agent J.R. Rickert, who’s with Authentic Athletix. Though J.R. isn’t an ITL client per se, we’ve always enjoyed a positive relationship, and his partners have always been clients. For that reason, when he asked if he could join us Thursday, I was happy to welcome him. It’s not something he’s ever attended before, and I was happy to share some goodwill. Of course, there were others who weren’t so fair-minded. There are three examples that come to mind.

One was a group of three people who showed up. They were loosely linked to a combine prep service that has been a long-time client, so when they showed up at the event, I let them in at the request of the trainer. I was a bit frustrated that one invitation had turned into three, but I felt it was the right thing to do to let them in. Of course, I told them that it was normally for members only, and requested that they sign up this week. We’ll see if they follow through on that.

Another was a single, first-year agent. He knows all about ITL and knew the event was clients-only, but I could tell he was trying to play dumb when I confronted him at the door. I asked him to sign up this week — and to his credit, he offered to pay cash on the spot for a month’s subscription, which I declined — and so far, he has not. I made sure to greet him when I saw him later in the week in an effort to show good faith and take the high road, but I’m not going to hold my breath waiting on him to make good on his promise. I don’t think anything’s on the way.

The third person was a financial planner based in the Northeast. For the second straight year, he ducked into my event despite not being a member. He’s clearly trying to get around becoming a client as he likes to show up right before the start, when there’s a long line of people clamoring to get in and things are a bit more rushed. This year, he waited for me to leave the registration table before he made his move, but I saw his name on the admission list, so I know he was there. Next year, I will make a point of confronting him.

It’s not that I’m into confrontation, but there are a couple of reasons I take this stuff seriously. No. 1, this has become a client appreciation night, and I’m not appreciative that he — or anyone else who’s not a client — is taking advantage of that. No. 2, these events are not free, and it’s frustrating that someone would not want to pay his fair share. But the third reason is that I resent the lack of respect these folks have, not just for me, but for the others in the room.

The football world is a small one. As you rise through the ranks and build relationships, make sure not to blatantly disregard civility and fairness. One way or another, it will come back to haunt you. I don’t hold grudges, but I also won’t let these three groups take advantage of me, or anyone I know, ever again.

Three Lessons from Phil

20 Friday Feb 2015

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So last night was our sixth annual ITL Seminar, which we always hold the Thursday night of the NFL Combine. Last night’s featured speaker was Phil Emery, formerly the GM of the Bears. He spoke to the 125 or so ITL clients who made it out to the Indiana Convention Center as part of our annual event. It was very well-received, and we got lots of positive feedback.

As part of his presentation, I gave him 10 questions I always get from young agents and financial planners as well as people hoping to make it in the football business. The first question was, what’s the best way to secure a scouting internship with an NFL team? His answer was lengthy and detailed, and we hope to have it in its entirety on the site within a couple weeks. But there were three takeaways I got just from listening to him, so I thought I’d pass them along here.

1. Don’t say you hope to be the team’s GM: Phil said, as a GM, it was a bit insulting for a young man coming into the game to be thinking in terms of such a lofty position. I think he sees it as presumptuous for someone who hasn’t even achieved a place on the team to be thinking of running the team. He said he wants a young person who is adamant about mastering skills, one by one, that will build a resume over time. So be measured if you’re asked about your goals.

2. You can’t work for free anymore, no matter how badly you want to: Phil said the government has gotten involved here, and for tax reasons, it’s almost impossible to have interns around that aren’t getting (a) pay or (b) college credit. Now, if you get college credit, there’s an excellent chance you’re not getting paid. But without college in the mix, it’s pretty tough. So, free work is one less thing scouting hopefuls have to offer.

3. Don’t hope to make a late-life career change: Phil said teams he’s worked for get letters all the time from highly successful people who are ready to throw away their life’s work (stock analyst, medical professional, whatever) to become scouting interns. Literally. He’s seen lengthy, detailed letters from people who claim their passion has always been football, and that they are ready to start over. Phil said that if it were really their passion, they wouldn’t have waited until mid-life to pursue it. As tough as that is to hear, I think there’s something to that. We all have only so much time, and scouting careers aren’t built over night.

These are just a few of the gems we got last night. We’ll have more for you when we get the film up. We promise to put selected passages on YouTube and, hopefully, the entire presentation on our site. We’ll keep you posted.

 

Reinventing the Wheel

22 Thursday Jan 2015

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In this space, I hope I encourage readers to think of creating their own success, not trying to duplicate the success of others. Here’s an illustration of a group that may be falling into the latter category.

This week, I spoke to a man who’s launching an alternative football league. He’s likeable and personable, and I respect him for what he’s trying to do, which is build a business model that is not only profitable, but that also rewards fans who want football year-round along with players who fall through the NFL cracks. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. In fact, it’s laudable. But let’s look at the record.

About five months ago, the FXFL was in all-out media mode, doing radio, print and TV in an effort to sell the idea that a second outdoor football league could work. The league won a few fans that are well-placed in football circles, and it seemed like an idea whose time had come. I went to bat for the league with my clients, many of whom called me, asking if they should send players to the league. How viable was the idea, they asked? Would players actually get paid? I was cautiously optimistic. Whenever they called, I’d recommend the league, but also warn that the fail rate for these ventures is extraordinarily high.

Sure enough, after the early excitement of the league wore off, things began to darken. Stadiums were empty, publicity was mostly absent, and players began to complain of not getting paid. In the last couple months, I’ve fielded numerous calls from agents with players who left a job, an apartment, a girlfriend, or all three to take a chance on the FXFL, only to be rewarded with missed paychecks. I’m confident, or at least hopeful, everything will be resolved; FXFL Commish Brian Woods is a stand-up guy and we’ve forged a pretty good relationship. Still, the financial equation was never an easy one, and I wish I could say I never saw this coming.

The FXFL was not a victim of mismanagement or squandered opportunity. In the 13 years I’ve run ITL, others who’ve failed include, in no special order, the XFL, UFL, USFL2, AAFL and others who had varying measures of ‘success’ before fading into the night. Even the Arena League, which is relatively speaking a phenomenal success, took a year off to re-cut its deal with the players and reset its financial foundation. These leagues almost always go down, and go down hard. I hope the same fate doesn’t await this latest project.

So here’s my point. If you want to be an agent, or a scout, or a team owner, or whatever, I encourage you to study the profession really, really well. Know everything you can about it. Personally nterview everyone you can, read books, talk to people you trust, and learn all it’s possible to learn. And if you come to realize it’s a bridge too far, see if you can find another way to accomplish a similar goal.

That’s what I did. I’ve considered all of those professions, but came to realize none were viable, so I forged my own direction. I’m not holding myself out as some kind of unqualified success story, but I’m happy to have carved out a small niche in the business. You can do it, too. Just be flexible and don’t feel like charging through a brick wall is, necessarily, the answer.

For your consideration

30 Tuesday Dec 2014

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We’ve used this space in the last couple weeks to feature some selected players that aren’t getting the attention from agents that perhaps they deserve. Due to the response from these posts, we’ve gotten more players asking to be featured, so here are a few more.

I should mention that we don’t feature everyone that contacts us. These are players, we feel, that at least have a chance of making it to a camp next summer.

There are no guarantees, but I think they have possibilities. I should also note that I’m not ‘brokering’ these players. I’m just passing them along to agents who might have interest. If you’re an ITL client and you have genuine interest in these players, I’m happy to provide their contact info, no strings attached.

Derek Akunne, ILB, North Texas: I’m a little confused on why Derek hasn’t gotten more interest from agents so far. He led Conference USA in tackles this season (108) and led the Eagles in tackles for loss (8.5). That’s good production. He lists at 6-0, so he’s not as tall as teams would like their linebackers to be these days – if he lists at 6-0, he’s probably closer to 5-11 at best – but you can’t argue with what he’s done on the field. And no, he didn’t exactly play at a football factory, but as a member of an FBS team, you know he’s going to have a pro day that gets covered by scouts. That’s not always a given when it comes to players that went to D2, D3 or even Division I-AA (FCS) schools.

Blake Renaud, ILB, Boise St.: Unlike Akunne, Renaud has plenty of size (6-2, 255). He also has a nice pedigree, having played HS ball at powerhouse De La Salle in Concord, Calif., before moving on to BSU. Inside linebackers are seen as unsexy by the NFL, and tend to go late in the draft, if at all. Still, every team uses them, and Renaud’s got a solid shot at making it to an NFL camp if he can stay healthy. The key is that he’s a kamikaze on special teams, and that’s the kind of thing that makes a player valuable.

Zack Patt, DE, Rice: Here’s another player off an FBS bowl-winning team that is squarely under the radar, but maybe shouldn’t be. He has a couple knocks. One, he’s quite undersized for his position, and he’s going to have to consider playing outside linebacker on the next level. There will be valid questions on whether or not he can move in space and drop and cover. He’s also had problems getting into the lineup; he didn’t start until his senior season, and he missed several games with injury. However, when he was on the field, he was a true impact player, notching an eye-popping five sacks in one game (against Florida International) this season.

Nico Carlson, OG, Rice: A 37-game starter at Rice, Nico is the kind of guy who scouts love because his best football is ahead of him. He arrived at Rice as a defensive lineman, but switched to OL his sophomore year and became an immediate starter. This gives him the ‘attitude’ and nastiness of a defensive player with an offensive lineman’s focus, smarts and fire. A second-team All-CUSA pick, he’s a legit 6-3/290 and is willing to live at home and train, so despite all his pluses, he won’t cost too much to represent. And he’s smart and personable.

War Story Friday: Flight to Nowhere

19 Friday Dec 2014

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These days at ITL, we’re re trafficking a lot of information about the postseason all-star games that are a key to getting ‘discovered’ by NFL scouts. I get a lot of calls about agents and/or players getting ‘screwed’ by all-star games that claim a player is not good enough to play in a game, or that they’re full at the player’s position. Well, sometimes it’s the player (or his agent) that does the screwing.

Here’s a good illustration. When I ran the 2008 Hula Bowl, we were the No. 3 game, but we had challenges (as I’ve recounted in the past) related to getting players to commit. These challenges were related to our place on the schedule (players arrived during bowl season) as well as the fact that getting to Hawaii is no easy task. That’s why I was really excited when we got a commitment from a Big Ten linebacker who figured to go in the fifth or sixth round.

As I recall, I had been in regular contact with the school’s head coach, working with him in an attempt to get 3-4 of his players into the game. I already knew the drill; he would encourage a couple of his late-rounders to participate in the Hula Bowl if I would take 1-2 of his ‘program’ guys, i.e., players who had no realistic shot of even going to an NFL camp, but who had been loyal soldiers for the coach.

Unfortunately, the coach was having the same conversations with his own agent, and had worked out a similar deal with him. This agent was an old-school guy, and never one to be an ITL client. Therefore, I had no relationship with him, and he had no interest in my lobbying or evangelizing for my game. It was clear he was going to try to get the linebacker into a ‘real’ game, and the Hula Bowl did not qualify.

Still, I didn’t know that when I was trying to schedule the player’s travel the week before the school’s bowl game. Like many colleges, the town where he had gone to school was quite remote, and we’d have to fly him out of Chicago. Though the head coach had been quite enthusiastic about him playing, I didn’t get the same vibe.

“I gotta fly out of my college town,” he insisted, and wouldn’t budge.

I tried and tried to convince him to fly out of a bigger airport, but he wouldn’t. So I went back to my scouting contacts to get a better handle on his pro prospects; each was adamant that he was a late draftee. So I eventually relented and booked him out of a tiny airport local to his college town. The price of the ticket exceeded $1,000, which was probably 3-4 percent of our entire travel budget.

That’s why I was furious when his agent called about a week later, just days before the player was scheduled to arrive, and told us he wouldn’t be coming. He didn’t have a reason why, but it didn’t matter, because no reason would have been good enough. Now I had to replace the player, finding a flight just days before our players were set to arrive, and spend money on top of the $1,000 I’d already spent. But here’s the kicker: there was no way I could get the money back or the ticket back once his name was on it.

In other words, not only had I been royally gamed by this young man, but I’d just handed him a $1,000 travel voucher. And there was nothing I could do about it.

He wound up skipping the all-star process altogether, and missed out on an attempt to solidify his standing in the ’08 draft. Perhaps as a result, he fell completely out of the draft, and had a brief cup of coffee in the league before his pro gridiron career ended.

I hate to take any pleasure in a player’s misfortune, but I have to admit it was hard not to smile when the last pick was announced that spring and his hadn’t been called. Meanwhile, I’ve never spoken to his agent since.

 

Frayed nerves

16 Tuesday Dec 2014

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This time of year is absolutely crazy for the people I work with. Here’s one illustration.

I have one client who’s literally been an ITL client since before he was an agent, sometime in the mid-’00s. We’ve come to be pretty good friends, and he’s one of my biggest supporters, regularly encouraging me and pitching me on ideas (many of them good ones) regarding my services. It’s been pretty rewarding to see his rise through the business, as he had his first top-100 pick last year, and feel like I’ve played some small role in it. I know we’re friends, one of my closer friends in the business, and will be for a long time.

All that said, twice in the last 4-5 years, this friend has lashed out at me in latter December, accusing me of helping ‘the enemy.’ He’s as competitive as they come, and it hurts him when he loses, and defeat causes him to ask ‘why?’ In his zeal to answer that question, he’s looked at me. Both times, the players he expressed frustration about were players I barely knew existed. One of them, I literally couldn’t even pronounce his name. Yet my friend was positive I had given someone else (maybe even the player himself) some kind of sensitive information that influenced the young man away from my friend.

I have to admit that I usually don’t react well, and get pretty dismissive out of my own frustration. Of course, it’s not true. I would be a fool to take sides in a business as wild and crazy as sports representation. I depend on all my clients to see me as neutral; if they don’t, ITL is dead in the water.

In a similar vein, I’ve had agents swear up and down that they’ll be signing a player as soon as his season is over, only to find out days later (sometimes even hours later) that they were wrong. That makes you crazy, too.

The point is, if you’re focused on being in this business, whether it’s player evaluation/scouting or player representation, prepare for your sanity to be tested. From about Dec. 1 until you get your client signed to an NFL deal the following summer, your life will be crazy and unsettled. But even at that, there’s no high like having success in football.

 

Work the Plan

09 Tuesday Dec 2014

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Yesterday, I guess I had too much time on my hands, so I reviewed my Twitter feed and found one of those endless lists that journalists put out this time of year because they’re easy, it’s the Christmas season, and they can churn them out in no time. This one recognized the top 100 or 20 or 50 or whatever people in the football business. No surprise, my name wasn’t among them.

For a minute, this frustrated me. I never measure myself by others’ success, because usually you’re comparing apples and oranges. Inside the League doesn’t fit neatly into any category. We’re not really media; though that’s the easiest label to put on us. We’re not scouting or recruiting, though lots of people put us in that group. We’re not a sports gossip site, though that’s another way we’ve been described. We’re more of a business-to-business consulting service, which is how I describe us. It’s hard to judge our success based on the number of Twitter followers we have, because our relationships are a lot more vertical than they are horizontal. I see us as less a mountain and more as an iceberg.

So here’s the point: don’t make the same mistake I did, even for a minute, by comparing your success to others’ success. All the time, you can see people in the football world getting credit for ‘winning’ when they really aren’t. You see this in the agent business when a lesser agency signs a top prospect, well over its station. Usually, it’s because the agent has paid a boatload in training, signing bonus and/or training, and more often than not, the player fires him well before he has a chance to make his money back. You’ll see another example of this on the last weekend in April when the media ‘grades’ the draft classes of all 32 teams. Those grades are at least three years early, and based on nothing more than the hype the same media has been creating for months.

Work your plan. Talk to everyone you know about the path you want to take, then take it. Figure out what your budget is, what your goals are, and what your time frame is, and stick to it. Don’t stray when you see someone else enjoying fruits that you think you deserve. And if your intention is to be part of the next wave of football professionals and you need a little guidance, we’d love to help.

The Melting Ice Cube

08 Monday Dec 2014

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Last night, I had someone register for Inside the League, but who stopped short of completing the pay page and subscribing. I call these people ‘tire-kickers.’ They aren’t sure if they want to risk $29.95 to find out if ITL can help them. Fair enough. That’s one reason I started Succeed in Football.

By his name, I think he was a member of the 2014 draft class, though I’m not sure it’s the same person. We get once-highly touted players from previous draft classes that ‘tire-kick’ all the time, wondering if we can find them another shot at glory. People often confuse Inside the League with an agency, and when they find out we aren’t an agency, they ask us to give them referrals to an agency. This is one of the saddest parts of the football business, because there’s nothing we can do to help.

I’ve heard players from former draft classes described as melting ice cubes, and it’s a pretty apt description. If a player goes undrafted, that’s bad, but he still might sign an undrafted free agent deal. If he goes undrafted and unsigned, that’s bad, too, but maybe he can at least hang on if he gets a CFL deal, or at least an AFL deal. However, if he gets to June with no deal and no offers, the summer sun really starts to get hot.

I don’t want to turn this into another cliched ‘stay in school’ story, and no one needs to tell you that getting your degree is the most important thing you can do during your college days. Instead, I discuss this as a reminder that this is a business, and decisions are made for coldly logical reasons.

Here’s another illustration. I got an email from a new agent today, and he mentioned that he was overwhelmed this year with working two jobs. I presume he meant working his ‘day job’ and pressing ahead with his sports representation dream. Good for him. I’m glad he wasn’t foolish enough to put all his eggs in the ‘agent’ basket.

Very often, I’ve spoken to people who think being an agent can be an instant career choice for them, an escape from a boring life as a corporate lawyer or a mid-level banker or even a bartender. But it’s really important to understand that this pursuit — almost any pursuit, really — will take time, and because it takes time, it will take money to keep your head above water in the interim.

I remember when I first launched ITL, I considered leaving my ‘day job’ as a low-level copy editor at a major southern newspaper. I thought of my desire for security as an act of cowardice or a failure to truly believe in myself. I’m so glad today that I didn’t cast security to the wind. It took me a lot of tries to figure what would work for ITL and what wouldn’t, how to work smarter and not always just work harder.

If you’re pursuing a place in the world of football, make sure you realize two things. One, a little early success doesn’t guarantee you anything, and you can run out of resources (and time) quickly if you’re not careful. Two, it doesn’t make you a coward if you hedge your bets professionally. After all, it’s not that you don’t believe you’ll be successful; it just means you’re willing to accept that you might not be instantly successful.

Giving the People What They Want

05 Friday Dec 2014

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We focus mostly on the business of football in this space, but I don’t do enough to encourage aspiring grid professionals to find a corner of the industry to make their own. So today, I’m discussing a couple of things that happened Thursday that puzzle me.

These observations might help budding entrepreneurs. Or if you’ve got answers, and you understand what I clearly don’t, please let me know. Here we go.

  • Occasionally, my friend Darren Heitner of SportsAgentBlog.com will Tweet a brief item from one of my Rep Rumblings reports at Inside the League.  On Thursday, he Tweeted a note about Michigan WR Devin Funchess that I had on the site this week. That item is fairly typical of the type of thing we post on a daily basis this time of year, and when my cell beeped about the Tweet, I just kinda shrugged my shoulders. As I’m writing this, about 22 hours after he posted it, that one Tweet had been retweeted 66 times and Favorited 25 times. I’m at a loss on what gave that Tweet such impact. I mean, I get it: the kid’s a junior and projected as a first-rounder, but it can’t be a surprise that he’s considering leaving early from a program that’s had its struggles the last few years. Obviously, Michigan is one of the more storied programs in the nation, and plenty of Big Blue fans have had their knives out on Twitter in a misery-loves-company kind of way. But it still has me scratching my head. One way or another, this one item had an incredible amount of impact. What’s especially odd is that within the last hour, he tweeted a similar item about Mississippi St. LB Bernardrick McKinney, also a junior who could be a first-rounder if he comes out. Here’s an SEC player from a school that’s had a lot of success this season, and after the first 45 minutes, we have one RT and one favorite. To me, that’s odd.
  • I didn’t post Wednesday this week, so I pushed War Story Weds. to Thursday. My story yesterday involved the professional, fair-minded approach one of my long-time clients took in picking a prime ‘plum’ off the Hula Bowl ‘tree’ in 2007. Almost as soon as I posted it, I got a text from him and we messaged back and forth a bit. My immediate response to him was the shock I feel when a major agent that is already an ITL client contacts me about one of my blog posts here. These readers are already paying for an ITL membership to have the high-level football tools and information needed to perform in an ultra-competitive industry. I mean, if you’re reading this, my thoughts are that you’re someone who’s still learning about the business, which is why at times I discuss some pretty elementary topics. However, apparently, you’re joined in reading by some of the people who’ll be doing first-round contracts next summer. I guess the takeaway is that when you’re in a business as fast-moving and information-centric as sports representation, you better always be learning. If that means that at times you find yourself in a Football 101 classroom, so be it. I hope that’s a lesson the aspiring football professionals out there really take to heart. I know I agree, no matter the business.

War Story Thurs: Hula Frustration

04 Thursday Dec 2014

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Since I missed posting yesterday (sorry, it’s just a really, really busy time), and War Story Wednesday has become pretty popular, I decided to share a war story from my past today, even though it’s Thursday. Hopefully, today’s story illustrates not just the intense competition even off the field, but the way things can be handled when there’s controversy.

This one comes from my days running the 2008 Hula Bowl, which was then the No. 3 all-star contest. It turned out to be the last year the game was played, but at the time, it had a great name and substantial reputation. Still, it was just the No. 3 game. Then, as now, the Senior Bowl was No. 1 and the Shrine Game was No. 2. We were trying to change that, but couldn’t. For that reason, I knew going in that everyone that accepted an invite would leave immediately if they got a Senior Bowl or Shrine Game invite. But I couldn’t be bothered with that; I had a job to do and I did most of my own evaluation.

Back then, the practice of scheduling games by mid-major teams on Tuesdays and Wednesdays was still new, so unless you were looking for a game mid-week, you might not find it unless you happened to come across it while channel-surfing. That’s how I found a game featuring Eastern Michigan against another MAC opponent one night, and it’s how I ‘discovered’ DT Jason Jones. For whatever reason, Jones had not gone into his senior season as a highly touted prospect, and he was not on my radar screen. However, by the end of the game, he definitely was. From his interior line spot, he was disruptive the whole game, stacking up the run and getting consistent penetration on passing plays. He looked like the kind of kid with big ability but limited headlines that I could ‘sneak’ onto the Hula Bowl roster. And I did. As I recall, I reached out to him through Eastern Michigan’s pro liaison coach, and in short order we had his info sheet signed and returned.

Unfortunately, these agreements are not binding, so I had to sweat things out, wondering if he’d ever make it to Honolulu. Everything looked good until we got to December, at which point I got a call from Mike McCartney.

At the time, Mike was still a relatively new agent, but an up-and-comer, and he was with one of the bigger and more reputable firms in the business, Priority Sports in Chicago. We’ve always had a great relationship, and I admire the fact that his father, Bill, founded Promise Keepers, an international Christian organization devoted to making men better fathers and husbands. By the way, Bill McCartney also won a national championship as head coach of the Colorado Buffaloes in 1990.

When Mike called in early December, I figured the news wouldn’t be good, and it wasn’t. He had signed Jones, and Jones would be accepting an invitation to the Senior Bowl. I would have been a fool to make the case that he should also play in the Hula Bowl, and I didn’t, but Mike was very gracious in the way he’d handled it, which I appreciated. Today, Mike and I still have a really good relationship.

Someday, maybe next Wednesday, I’ll discuss the way things are more often handled with another story.