Category Archives: NIL

More Notes on the Transfer Portal from the Experts

28 Thursday Mar 2024

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This week, I got a chance to sit down with the transfer portal team at a mid-major school. Over an hour-long conversation, the half-dozen members of the personnel department had some interesting things to say. Here are a few highlights.

  • There is no ceiling for offensive tackles in the portal. If they’re healthy and have starting experience, there is almost no limit to what schools will pay. This is probably the one recurring theme.
  • Facilities are important, but less important than they were in the pre-NIL days. It will be interesting if schools stop beefing up their locker rooms and field houses and start pouring it into player compensation. “There are fewer kids asking if there’s a barbershop and a waterfall in the locker room,” is how one official put it.
  • Also, players still care about things like food. You better be doling it out if you don’t have mountains of NIL cash. I’ve heard of one West Coast school that feeds all its athletes — from gymnasts to football players — in one cafeteria. Once the food runs out, it runs out, and it doesn’t matter if someone on the rowing team went back for seconds while football practice ran long.
  • One other thing — if you’re at a mid-major and can’t match others’ offers, you better have pretty liberal admissions policies. 
  • There are still no NFLPA-licensed contract advisors — or even non-certified ones — cornering the market. The DPPS and GMs I speak to say they are still not seeing the same faces every time. Reps are also not (yet) common on official visits. This is a tremendous area of opportunity for an NFL agency. 
  • If you’re at a school in Florida or Texas, you have a tremendous advantage, even if you’re not at a P5 school. Players who leave and don’t get what they wanted usually want to return home.
  • Coaches are getting more aggressive about contacting players at other schools. That’s especially true if they have a prior relationship, i.e., the coach leaves one school for another one, then starts trying to lure the kid at his old school to his new school. That’s becoming more common. The problem is, if a school tried to make a fuss about this, the player’s not normally going to go against his coach.
  • Here’s a fun fact. Texas Roadhouse is headquartered in Louisville, Ky. I know this because the Cardinals aggressively court their corporate sponsors, which is one reason they have a well-stocked NIL budget. The school offers naming rights to the film room, the weight room, everything. For almost 20 years, Cards fans have been able to purchase bottles of Maker’s Mark with the Louisville logo. There’s even a Texas Roadhouse Student Center at Louisville; I’ve also heard the chairs in the meeting room have the TR logo.

If this topic interests you, make sure you check out last week’s edition of the Friday Wrap, in which I talked to 10 college personnel directors to get their respective takes on the abuses of the transfer portal. It’s here. To register for future editions of the Wrap, click here.

 

More Updates, Tidbits on the NCAA Transfer Portal

15 Friday Mar 2024

Posted by in NFL draft, NIL

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At Inside the League, we’ve been focusing a lot of our attention on the college football transfer portal. We had a widely attended symposium at the NFL Combine and we discussed it in the Scouting the League podcast with guest Oscar Monnier (former portal boss at five P5 schools) last month. It’s one of the hottest topics in the player representation industry, but it’s still mostly a mystery, at least among the bigger agencies.

It’s got me thinking about the fundamentals of the transfer portal, starting with how, exactly, it all works. As near as I can tell, there’s a process.

  • Player enters the portal.
  • A director or member of the personnel staff, knowing which position(s) the school is targeting, does a preliminary evaluation of the player.
  • The personnel staffer submits his evaluation and any game film he can round up to the relevant position coach, who then makes a determination on whether to pursue him. This normally takes less than 24 hours.
  • The team decides if the player is worthy of an offer. If the offer is made, a visit is scheduled. 
  • At some point, the coaches huddle with the collective (if the school has one) to determine how much money, if any, can be offered.
  • Once the player accepts an invitation to visit and shows up on campus, his height and weight are recorded. At the end of the visit, a formal offer is made, often by the head coach, personally. 
  • The player is not official with the school until he is enrolled and attends class, by my understanding. 

This led me to more questions. For example, we’ve got a portal window opening in April. It’s a shorter one (only two weeks), but will still be a popular one, I’m sure. How will it work, given that there will only be a few short weeks of school left and no chance for transfers to actually enroll? 

I posed the question to an expert on the process, and his response was: “Spring transfers take summer classes 99% of the time, so that triggers it being finalized. It’s also the worst possible time to transfer, which is a big deterrent on its own, not to mention there’s no portal window for undergrads at that time.”

After a week of speaking to portal specialists at schools big and small, here are a couple more notes and takeaways:

  • More progressive schools are using flashy graphics — yes, similar to the ones splashed all over social media when a player gets an offer — to recruit portal players. The only difference is, the schools pass these along via text rather than social media. Like it or not, communicating in this manner is the way to attract today’s top prospects.
  • One school has 16 volunteers committed to doing nothing but evaluating players once they hit the portal or preparing their board with players they anticipate entering the portal.
  • Some schools with big war chests but limited personnel departments simply wait until players get multiple offers, then make their own. 
  • We had several other interesting tidbits in Tuesday’s Rep Rumblings report, including the ratio of dollars spent on retention vs. acquisition for one school, the going rate for a middling QB prospect, how schools of varying size prepare for the portal and more. 

As always, we’ll be chopping it up on the portal and other football business matters in today’s Friday Wrap, which comes out at 7:30 p.m. ET. Register for it here.

 

 

2024 NFL Combine Week: A Few Highlights

01 Friday Mar 2024

Posted by in ITL, Media, NFL draft, NIL, Scouts

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The NFL Combine is a major event for the entire football community and represents probably the biggest week of the year for us at ITL. Here are a few highlights and observations from the week.

  • There were so many highlights of our 15th annual event (the 2024 USI Insurance Services ITL Combine Seminar Presented by The Tatnuck Group) at the Indiana Convention Center, but two stick out to me. One was very selfish: Lions GM Brad Holmes, who accepted the Best Draft Award for Detroit, cited Inside the League for its commitment to the scouting industry, especially crediting the Friday Wrap for its focus on the community. That was really, really humbling, and unexpected.
  • Also humbling was the reaction of Broncos Senior Midwest Scout Scott DiStefano, who accepted the C.O. Brocato Memorial Award for lifetime service in NFL scouting. Scott had to pause to gather himself a couple time during his remarks. It’s awesome to recognize people in front of their peers. Equally awesome: Broncos GM George Paton and virtually the entire Broncos scouting staff showed up to cheer Scott on.
  • Another highlight was spending a little time with the co-winners of the Pro Liaison of the Year Award, N.C. State’s D.D. Hoggard and Illinois’ Jay Kaiser. Both of them are humble men who are deserving of their acclaim. D.D. flew in on his own dime to accept the award in person, which was a “wow” moment for me when he could easily have appeared via video. 
  • By the way, my partner in the presentation of the Eugene E. Parker Award for service to the agent industry, Peter Schaffer of Authentic Athletix, announced that he’s creating an online hall of fame for player representation Wednesday night. At this time, it’s not a brick-and-mortar place, but will live online. I will contribute to Peter’s efforts, and we’ve already got our first member chosen (to go along with the previous four winners of the award). We’ll have further communications about it soon. It’s a great idea and I’m pretty excited about it.
  • Also of interest: our award winners are starting to get social media graphics made about them. Check out this one that Duke University made for David Feeley, who won the Strength Coach of the Year Award as voted on by active NFL scouts. 
  • We also had our second annual NIL-oriented event Thursday. It was a pretty fast 90 minutes with guest speaker Oscar Monnier, who ran the transfer portal at Northwestern, Stanford, Oregon, Duke and Texas A&M. He spoke for an hour about his experiences and recommendations for exploiting this new part of the industry. We had about 80 guests, most of them from top NFL agencies and interested in learning how to get the most out of the portal process. What impressed me the most, however, is how 10-12 people lined up to talk to Oscar after his session, and none of them had questions about what he discussed. They all wanted to explore working with him. Oscar arrived to town a free agent, but there’s a good chance he won’t leave as one. I think the transfer portal is a space that has not been recognized for its potential in player representation, but I think it’s getting there. 
  • One scout I spoke to went on and on about how impressive Ohio State WO Marvin Harrison Jr. was in interviews. His comments came as part of a discussion on how so many players are coached by their agents in interviews. It’s unknown if Harrison has undergone interview prep, but it sounds like his natural personality made it pretty academic if he did. 

For a complete rundown of all the winners and more highlights from the week, make sure to check out the Friday Wrap, which comes out this evening. Register for it here. 

 

 

Meet the Sponsors of Our 2024 Combine Events

16 Friday Feb 2024

Posted by in Agents, NIL, Scouts

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We’re less than two weeks away from the two biggest days of the year for Inside the League. They are Wednesday and Thursday, Feb. 28-29, when we’ll hold our annual seminar and symposium, respectively, in Indianapolis. For all the details, click here. 

However, those dates would not even be possible if not for our partners in these events. We’re excited to work with three companies — USI Insurance Services, The Tatnuck Group, and Vestible — as we celebrate and educate the industry in less than two weeks. 

All three companies are doing exciting things in the football community that have distinct appeal to different facets of the business. I wanted to introduce them today.

USI Insurance Services

USI, which serves as our title sponsor Wednesday, is a national insurance brokerage and consulting firm. The company has approximately 200 local offices connected across the U.S., as well as a leading market position in all core businesses. The USI White Plains office has been serving the local community since 1928.

The company features more than 500 professionals with an average tenure of 25 years and specialists across a broad range of industries, as well as dedicated personal risk management and solutions from the collaborative effort of 200-plus personal risk specialists nationwide. Regional offices are located in Mount Laurel, NJ; New York, NY; Toms River, NJ; Uniondale, NY; Florham Park, NJ; and White Plains, NY. The White Plains office, alone, includes more than 50 insurance professionals specializing in healthcare, personal risk management, construction, real estate, surety and distribution and manufacturing.
 
The USI One Network offers dedicated technical experts connected nationally and embedded in local offices, with over 6,000 professionals nationwide to build integrated client-centered account teams.
 

USI recommends a holistic approach to personal risk management, including an annual review for changes and adjustment to coverages. USI’s representatives provide a summary of coverage while continuously monitoring risk exposure changes in a client’s profile and lifestyle. They also conduct annual pre-renewal reviews to identify areas for coverage changes and recommend specific terms or condition changes to client policies based on review results. 

Check out USI in more detail here.

The Tatnuck Group

Through pre-draft interviewing and consulting, The Tatnuck Group, the presenting sponsor for Wednesday’s ITL Seminar, helps dozens of NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA, NASCAR and La Liga Soccer teams select better performers and better people. Since 2019, NFL clubs have partnered with Tatnuck to interview prospects at the Senior Bowl, Combine, and post-combine via zoom. Tatnuck focuses on assessing character, cultural fit, leadership capacity, and the ability to handle the stressors and rigors of being a pro. 

In the 2023 draft, The Tatnuck Group interviewed over 200 prospects for NFL clients, including every player selected in the first round and 60 of the first 63 picks. The team at Tatnuck consists of AJ Scola, the former personnel director of the Atlanta Braves, and Ryan Maid, the former operational psychologist for Naval Special Warfare. For more information, visit The Tatnuck Group’s website.

Versible

Vestible, the title sponsor for Thursday’s ITL Symposium, is an investment platform allowing professional and college athletes to sell equity in their careers directly to their fans in a federally regulated marketplace. In exchange for an upfront sum from their investors, athletes on the platform pay investors a 1% distribution of their on-field income during their professional career.  
 
As the athletes increase their income on the field, the amount distributed to shareholders increases alongside them. This has created a completely new market for select athletes to unlock revenue streams that have never been available to them before. 
 
Founded by former professional and D1 college athletes Parker Graham and Yves Batoba, Vestible empowers athletes to take control of their brands and allows fans to unlock the next level of fandom. For more information, visit vestible.co. 
 
 

Three Things I Noticed or Learned in Mobile

02 Friday Feb 2024

Posted by in Agents, NIL, Scouts

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It wasn’t that long ago that if you were a GM and you skipped the Senior Bowl, you had some serious FOMO and you might be accused of malpractice. That is no longer the case.

I personally saw only one in Mobile (SF’s John Lynch). After a quick survey of 7-8 people across the business that were there, the others on hand were (in no order) NYG’s Joe Schoen, Pittsburgh’s Omar Khan, Dallas’ Jerry Jones, Baltimore’s Eric DeCosta, Carolina’s Dan Morgan, New Orleans’ Mickey Loomis, Buffalo’s Brandon Beane, Jacksonville’s Trent Baalke, Indianapolis’ Chris Ballard, Houston’s Nick Caserio, Miami’s Chris Grier, Cleveland’s Andrew Berry, NYJ’s Joe Douglas, Arizona’s Monti Ossenfort, Chicago’s Ryan Poles, Green Bay’s Brian Gutekunst and Washington’s Adam Peters. These are not all confirmed — some were seen by only one person.

There could have been more that briefly popped in, and it’s harder to find them now that NFL personnel are segregated from everyone else at the stadium. Also, early-week weigh-ins used to give everyone a chance to see all the big names in one room, and weigh-ins aren’t held anymore. Still, GMs were a lot less visible, even if Senior Bowl Executive Director Jim Nagy said most were there, and I’m not calling Jim a liar.

There are reasons not to come, for sure, and as more people have found out about the Senior Bowl, I’m sure a lot of GMs just want to avoid the hassle and the job solicitations, especially when so much can be done from home. Still, it’s a big change to not see them anywhere and everywhere at the Senior Bowl, and kinda sad.

Here are a couple more things I learned about the ‘game behind the game’ in Mobile this week.

  • Jim invited 138 players this year, which is eight more than last year. It’s a concession to the injuries that always happen, no doubt, but also probably has to do with the number of players that beg out of the game after practicing all week. In the old days, it was commonplace to see scouts/executives roll in for padded practices, then head home Thursday night, skipping the game. I heard of two teams who were planning to keep their scouts in town through the game this year, however, and there may have been others. This might also be a concession to the number of QBs that are getting Day 1/Day 2 consideration (teams always want to get an in-person look to see how passers relate to their teammates during game conditions), or could be because the Shrine Bowl encroaches into Senior Bowl week so much these days. However, I hope it curbs the number of players who “opt out” of the actual game. By the way, I asked two former scouts, Rodrik David and James Kirkland, how opt-outs affected their evaluations of players, and their answers are in this week’s Scouting the League podcast.
  • You also used to see dozens of wealth managers around at the Senior Bowl, and to some degree, you still do, especially with Morgan Stanley a game sponsor and so many others trying to get an audience with a player. However, fewer players are using the week to vet financial advisors, and one such wealth manager said he thinks it’s because now that players are seeing six-figure incomes well before leaving college, they’re hiring people much earlier. They no longer wait until they’re on the verge of becoming pros. It makes a lot of sense, but it’s also a big change in the way players do business.

We’ll have more from the Senior Bowl, including Rodrik’s top performers this week, in the Friday Wrap. Register for it here.

Here’s Why the ’23 Draft Class Will Challenge New Agents

26 Thursday Oct 2023

Posted by in Agents, Getting started, NFL draft, NIL, Scouts

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Tonight is our third Zoom session aimed at helping “coach up” the 2023 NFL Agent Class. In our first session, we interviewed David Gregory of BullRush Sports, who was the only independent rookie agent to have a player drafted in 2023. We discussed that Zoom session in this post. In our second session, our guest was Houston Texans beat writer Aaron Wilson, who discussed the relationship between the media and the agent community. We discussed his session in this post. Tonight will be different, however.

Tonight, we’ll have no guest, and I’ll be the one doing the speaking. We’ll talk about recruiting your first client; managing state registration costs; weighing registration with schools; the all-star invitation process; figuring out what kind of commitment to make to name, image and likeness (NIL) and more. We’ll also have a couple special guests. It’s going to be a jam-packed, highly informational night.

We’ll also discuss the special challenges faced by the 2023 agent class due to the market forces affecting the ’24 draft class, which are plentiful. Here’s my take on why this year’s rookie agents will have a higher bar to clear.

This is the year the NIL/transfer portal/Covid bonus year creates a very top-heavy class. One reason there’s no NFLPA Collegiate Bowl this year is due to the difficulties the game had in populating its rosters for the ’23 game. My friend Kalyn Kahler at The Athletic did an excellent story this spring on the amount of players who skipped the ’23 draft for NIL dollars. Most of those players have already expended their Covid bonus year, so they’ll be in this year’s draft pool. That’s among the reasons there are, legitimately, six or seven QBs in the discussion for Day 1, and there are equally talented players across the board who would normally be first-round shoo-ins who’ll be drafted later. That’s going to have a cascading effect on the later rounds. My guess is that the bigger firms will still roll the dice on the would-be Day 2 types that wind up getting drafted in the fifth and sixth rounds, gambling that they’ll still have productive NFL careers. Maybe they won’t — maybe they’ll say a sixth-rounder is a long shot, regardless of the year. Time will tell, but my guess is that the major and mid-major firms will get their fill, as usual.

This was a bigger agent class than in recent years. We counted 163 new agents this year. That’s about 60 percent larger than the normal agent class over the last 2-3 years. That means a lot more competition for the usual 7th/UDFA prospects that rookie contract advisors normally battle for. 

FBS schools have robbed many FCS-and-lower schools of talent. The liberalization of the transfer rule means big schools are more often recruiting for new talent from mid-majors and sub-FBS schools. This means the talent a new agent might have been able to find at a smaller local school isn’t going to be there anymore. It’s also important to note that once a player attends an FBS school, there’s a certain expectation for pre-draft training and other amenities, regardless of his merits as an NFL prospect.

Scouts are being asked to evaluate more players than ever before. Because there’s been such a migration of talent to the big schools, NFL scouts are being asked to evaluate more players than ever. When a scout arrives at a school, typically, the pro liaison gives him a list of 8-10 players to evaluate. More and more, they’re being given lists of 20-25 prospects. The upshot of this is that there will be fewer “diamonds in the rough” that got overlooked in this draft class. This is important to note. And again, even if you’re signing a guy who only a rotational player, if he played at a Big Ten or SEC or ACC school, he’s not going to be a cheap signing. That’s just the way it is.

The all-star game schedule has been reduced. We’ve already seen the previous No. 3 game, the NFLPA Collegiate Bowl, go away. We’ll also see format changes for the two games just below it (the Collegiate Gridiron Showcase and Tropical Bowl) that were forced by new, restrictive NFL policies. This means fewer players will have a platform to impress NFL evaluators.

If discussion of these matters interests you, and you’d like to join us, it’s not too late. Just register for ITL, and I’ll share the Zoom link. If not, but you’d like to stay abreast of what’s going on in the agent community, make sure to sign up for our weekly newsletter, the Friday Wrap.

A Maybe-Alarming Look at Where NIL Is Taking College Football

28 Thursday Sep 2023

Posted by in Agents, NIL, Uncategorized

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I have to spend most of my summer focused on NFL scouting movement and NFL Agent Exam prep, so I tend to get a little behind in the fast-moving football business world. For that reason, this time of year, I’m trying to get caught up. 

To do that, I had a few conversations with three established members of the NIL and marketing world as it relates to pro and college football. What I wanted to gain was a better understanding of where college football is headed and how it will impact the pro football world. Here are six points they made:

  • The numbers that players are getting right now are not sustainable, and that goes, especially, for transfers. “I know some middle-level guys getting $20,000 per month,” said one source. “But that all depends on the school and when they came in. Transfers are getting crazy deals. It’s harder for the guys currently at schools. Some of the top offensive linemen in high school are getting close to 7-figure offers.” That’s starting to squeeze the collectives, most of whom have a 501(c)3 structure right now. We could see them go to more of an agency model so, rather than asking a big local business for a donation, they would instead solicit them for an advertising project of some kind. “Donor fatigue is real,” said one source. “Everyone I have spoken to at the colleges says there is no way they can keep raising $14 million every year to pay players.” 
  • That’s not to say collectives (or schools) will stop asking for donations. Right now, the numbers demanded by today’s star college player way outsize the value of a typical NIL deal. In other words, if a starting tackle wants $200,000 on an NIL deal, no business is gonna pay that for a couple tweets or an in-person appearance (“I think we are starting to see some of the small mom/pop NIL ‘agents’ go away . . .  as the kids learn the realities of the deals they are entering into,” added one source). That’s why there will still have to be some supplementation by donors or some kind of aggregation of advertisers to reach higher NIL thresholds. Those donors just won’t be able to write off their gifts on their taxes. Obviously, that’s a harder ask.
  • It probably doesn’t matter, anyway, because we’re starting to see schools become their own collectives, structuring themselves more as marketing agencies. This is why you saw Notre Dame hire an athletic director who came from NBC Sports. One expert I spoke to said we could see collectives disappear from the landscape within two years. “I don’t know how long (collectives) can/will last, and the landscape is changing,” said one of my sources. 
  • As these schools become populated with more and more advertising and marketing folks and fewer people with backgrounds in coaching and athletics, we’re going to see the money in the industry skyrocket. If you think the numbers are high now, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
  • This will require the federal government to get involved, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It will mean a more unified system of laws (no more 50 states and 50 laws) and, perhaps, a body with subpoena power that can actually enforce rules, unlike the NCAA, which is well-intentioned but, in all too many cases, toothless.
  • No matter what the NCAA or the bigger schools say for the record, they’re warming to the idea of revenue-sharing with players. That might come in the form of a $30,000 “stipend” for every member of the team plus a piece of uniform sales when a big-name  player’s jersey sells. That could come within 2-3 years. “They need to come up with money somewhere else,” said one source. “I think that will come in the form of (revenue sharing) with athletes on ticket sales, merchandise and media rights. I think there will be a trade made that will give the NCAA an anti-trust exemption in trade for the players getting a piece of the pie.”

So how does this affect NFL player representation, which is our main focus? That’s something we’ll look at later, perhaps next week, perhaps in this space. Stay tuned. In the meantime, make sure you’re signed up for our weekly newsletter, the Friday Wrap, which you can do here.

Ask the Scout: Can Docu-Series Help in Evaluation?

01 Friday Sep 2023

Posted by in Agents, NFL draft, NIL, Scouts, Uncategorized

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You won’t find a scout who doesn’t cite film as the foundation of his job. You gotta watch the tape to find out what a player offers. There are other ways to measure a prospect’s worth, of course, but it all goes back to film.

Of course, there are different kinds of film, and one kind we’re seeing more of is the kind you might find playing on ESPN, the NFL Network, HBO, or any number of networks that aim to bring behind-the-scenes action to fans eager for more exposure to the game they love. For example, the series “QB1: Beyond the Lights” featured such well-known passers as Justin Fields, Spencer Rattler and Jake Fromm long before they had reached the NFL (or are near reaching the NFL, as Rattler is). The next season offers two of this spring’s first-rounders in Bryce Young and Anthony Richardson. 

It doesn’t stop there. Netflix’s popular “Last Chance U” prominently featured two future draftees in Dakota Allen (7/251/2019, Rams) and Jermaine Johnson (1/26/2022, Jets). And lest you think this is some new phenomenon, back in the spring of 2005, the game show “Super Agent” aired on SpikeTV. It pitted nine agents against each other as they vied for USC DT Shaun Cody, who went 2/37 to the Lions in the 2005 draft. 

This is all to say nothing of how name, image and likeness have changed the game for players like USC QB Caleb Williams, who’s appearing in Wendy’s commercials these days. It begs the question: is there value in mining these series for tips on what kind of players these prospects will be under the bright lights of the NFL? We asked some friends in scouting, and this is what they told us.

  • “I think you can glean some information from those docs and reality shows from a personality standpoint. I don’t know if you remember the QB1 documentary, it was a camp . . . do you remember the one with (South Carolina QB) Spencer Rattler? It really showed him as this bratty, cocky, demeaning (guy) when he was ripping on the other quarterbacks there, and he came across as a real jerk. You hear some of these schools talking about how he was on school visits, so I think there’s something you can get from those documentaries as far as personality.”
  • “I think it can be helpful. It does give you insight to the person that is being featured. . . You just need to make sure it is valid and not just a spin piece. It really can show you how a player interacts with teammates and other staff.”
  • “No questions these shows help get inside the true person. Just like the combine has always taped interviews, it is a window into the person’s thoughts and lives without actually having to be there. . . Reality shows catch them with their guard down.”
  • “Sure they are. If scouts are willing to do the extra work, there can be all kinds of background information – family and support system, influences, maturity, life skills, attitudes, motivations, work ethic, goals, etc.”
  • “You get a snapshot of the character of the young man and his family. A lot of times you can see who are needy parents and who are good parents. Family background tells you what these players are really playing for and how to coach/motivate them. Some parents are (pains in the ass) and some are cool. Our head coach always wants to meet the parents at pro days to feel them out. Important to learn who shapes these young men.”

Every aspiring NFL player needs to understand that scouts are always watching, and they have more to watch these days than ever. If you’re a draft prospect, or you’re close to one, do them a favor and remind them of this, especially if a camera is nearby.

For more discussion of the draft and player evaluation, make sure to check out our weekly newsletter, the Friday Wrap. Register for it here.

A Few Thoughts on Combine Week 2023

03 Friday Mar 2023

Posted by in Agents, NIL, Scouts

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It’s been a pretty busy few days in Indianapolis. Here are a few things that stuck with me.

  • Giants Executive Scout Jeremiah Davis won the C.O. Brocato Award at the 14th annual 2023 USI Insurance Holdings ITL Combine Seminar presented by American Tens. It was special for a lot of reasons, but especially so because, for the first time, we had a member of the winner’s family join us. Jeremiah’s daughter, Chloe, filmed her dad’s acceptance speech from that audience, and she seemed to be near tears as she did. I mean, it was pretty touching. It’s exciting to be part of something like that.
  • Jack Mills won our Eugene E. Parker Award for his years as a contract advisor. Two things stick out. One, he has been an agent for 55 years! If you follow the industry, that’s like 3-4 eras of representation he’s seen. Second, when Denver-based Peter Schaffer (who assists me in selecting the award winners) told him he’d won, he bought a plane ticket the next day. So that’s pretty cool. Again, very rewarding to honor good people.
  • In our BART List balloting — which determines, by vote of active scouts and executives, the top scouts in the game — we saw four repeat winners each in both conferences. In the NFC, Tariq Ahmad (49ers), Jeff Ireland (Saints), Tokunbo Abanikanda (Falcons) and Ted Monago (Rams) won for the second straight year. In the AFC, it was Ed Dodds (Colts), Terrance Gray (Bills), Matt Terpening (Colts) and Johnathon Stigall (Jets). 
  • Our first-ever Agents and Collectives (don’t call it NIL) Summit was a smashing success. There was a tremendous amount of candor and transparency; you couldn’t help but learn. Any time you assemble a lineup of experts, you hope they won’t talk “over” people and you hope they won’t hide the inner workings of the business. We had very positive outcomes on both counts this morning.
  • One last note — it was also a lot of fun talking to the future stars of the football industry who came to Indianapolis as part of the Lynn University sports management program. I got a chance to talk to the 13 folks here in town on the value of taking risks if you’re pursuing a career in sports. I shared a few war stories and, hopefully, didn’t bore them too much. Professor Sherry Andre’s students had some good questions, and they’re obviously passionate about the industry or they wouldn’t be here.

It’s been a fun and productive week, but a pretty taxing one, too, with late nights and early mornings. It’s all part of getting out there and building your network, which is a critical part of growth and progress. If you didn’t make it this year, I hope you do next year.

We’ll have more on what took place here in non-Lucas Oil Stadium action in our newsletter, the Friday Wrap. You can register for it here.

What Kind of Package Does It Take To Sign a 2023 Draft Prospect?

06 Friday Jan 2023

Posted by in Agents, NFL draft, NIL

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A question I get quite often is, what does it take, in 2023, to land a draft pick? What kind of package cinches a signing?

Even though I have conversations with agents at every level every day this time of year, it’s a really hard question to ask. But I’m going to try to answer it here. First, let’s define the factors that influence the price.

  • Start with the player’s draft ranking. Obviously, this is super, super, super subjective, especially this early. Still, players and agents make educated guesses on this in December and January every year, and it’s an important part of the formula. I think the major dividing lines are the first five picks in the draft, the first 100 picks, and the next 50 or so. I would say the first five picks are in one tier, the next 95 (end of Day 2) are in another tier, and the players drafted by about the end of Round 4 are in the final tier. After that, it’s really hard to predict who gets all the modern accoutrements (monthly per diem, signing bonus, costly training, fee cut, etc.). But I think these three tiers are pretty much set in stone. Obviously, it’s also important to recognize that there’s a big difference between the top and bottom of each tier. The sixth pick in the draft gets a much bigger package than the last pick in the third round.
  • Next, does the player play offense or defense? That’s a key distinction. Offensive players get more than defensive players, generally.
  • Next, if he plays offense, is he a QB, running back or wide receiver? If you score touchdowns, you get a premium, if for no other reason than your marketing appeal.
  • What kind of program did the player come from? Obviously, a player from a top-five program sees himself differently from one from an FCS program. It doesn’t matter if the big-school player is a backup and the small-schooler is a solid regular. There’s a different level of entitlement. Also — bigger programs can offer bigger NIL packages. I’ve heard that, lately, smaller schools are hurriedly sending out money requests to boosters, trying to match the big offers being tendered to players entering the portal. By the way, it’s probably too late for those smaller schools.
  • How was the player rated coming out of high school? Once one of the high school ranking services places a four- or five-star label on a player, in his mind, the player never sees himself as less than that.
  • What kind of agency is trying to sign the player? Bigger firms with more clients and an established reputation will have to pay less, obviously.

So how do you price things? Let’s start from the bottom.

Early Day 3 picks (bottom of the third tier) are getting $3,000/per month and up, probably topping out around $10,000/month, January through April. They might get a signing bonus of around an extra month. Obviously, all training costs are covered, as well, adding another $20,000 to $30,000 to the price tag.

In the second tier, the floor for monthly per diem is probably $7,000 per month, with some kind of five-figure signing bonus. That signing bonus could come in the form of a marketing guarantee, which usually makes the number a good bit better. I would think most first-rounders are getting six-figure marketing guarantees, with at least a portion of that coming in cash upon signing the SRA. Also, first-rounders typically don’t pay more than one percent on their rookie contract. Typically, second-rounders pay two percent, and the rest pay three — if they get a sizable package. Agents who don’t offer all the financial bells and whistles normally have to cut their fees as a lure.

For the the top five picks, the top tier, you’re looking at seven-figure packages, especially for quarterbacks. I’ve heard of a million dollars as a signing bonus, usually structured as a marketing guarantee, plus a five-figure monthly per diem that could be as high as $50,000 per month. Also, the players rated in the top five are almost always paying no more than one point on their contract. Many are paying less than that. Some are paying zero.

Keep in mind that as recently as 20 years ago — not really that long ago — agencies didn’t even pay for training. Those days, of course, are long gone. These days (especially as schools offer hundreds of thousands of dollars to keep a player on campus), it’s anything goes. We may be way off on our numbers, but based on the conversations I’ve had, we’re in the ballpark.