As you know, the people who took the 2021 NFL Agent Exam in August got their results this week. It was an emotional time, for a lot of reasons, as some people got the news that they’d been waiting years to hear, while others found out they’d have to wait another year (or in some cases, five) to realize their dreams.

I wanted to get a feel for how test-takers felt about not just the test, but the industry, so I asked hundreds of them to take part in a brief survey this week. No surprise that most of those who responded (about 70 percent) passed the exam. Here are the questions and answers that I found interesting.

Whether or not you passed or failed, did the results surprise you?: After spending the week hearing from would-be agents shocked that they failed, I was surprised that the majority (55%) answered, ‘no.’ A little more than a fifth (22 %) said, ‘yes.’ I think this had to do with so many people who did well taking the survey.

What was your take on the exam?: Again, the survey answers didn’t match up with  my one-on-one conversations this week. There really wasn’t much separating the top three responses: pretty straightforward/not especially difficult (38.6%); tough but fair (31.6%); and tough and confusing (28.1). I heard quite often this week that some of the topics on the exam weren’t in the pre-exam seminar, but the response, ‘the subjects tested weren’t what I expected’ got only 1.8% of the responses.  

the next two questions dealt with our exam prep materials, and I was happy with the feedback. On the question, how helpful were ITL’s study materials, about half (46.6%) called them a “true difference-maker” and the other half (48.3%) said they were “more helpful than not.” Only about five percent total said they either “neither helped or hurt” or “minimal or no help.” On the question, which one of our study materials was most helpful, most (51.7%) said our study guide, edging out our practice exams (46.6%). 

Where the responses were more in line with what I expected was in the two NIL questions.

Whether or not you passed, how do you feel about the name, image and likeness era?:  The majority (50.9%) said “it’s definitely going to be impactful in the area of football representation,” while “it will be impactful to some players and schools, but not across the board” garnered 43.9%. Next, we asked the question, how prepared are you to operate in the NIL field? About a third (36.2%) said “I feel very confident I can make money with NIL outside of traditional player representation,” while almost half (46.5%) said, “not sure, but I see NIL as a real opportunity and a potential advantage, and I would like to learn more.” I agree.

We’ll talk more about the exam and the reaction to it in the Friday Wrap. Make sure to register for it here.

As you may know, Ric Serritella hosts a daily show on the business of the game called The State of Football on Sports Illustrated’s Twitch channel. Well, except for July. He took this month off, which gave my friend Bo Marchionte and myself a chance to co-host this week.

We had an incredible lineup of guest this week and they each had incredible contributions. Here are some of the highlights from the first three days of this week’s shows.

MONDAY

NEC Assistant Commissioner Ralph Ventre on the lack of national leadership on NIL: “I’m not a huge fan, on a personal level, of a huge central government, but in this case I actually think the federal government could do us all a favor if they passed some kind of national legislation for NIL.” 

Evan Brennan of UA Sports on parents’ expectations regarding NIL and how lucrative it could be. “It probably coalesces with how many agents are talking to them. The more agents that are blowing them up and making giant promises, the more ridiculous they get, but if they haven’t been (popular with agents), they’re actually quite reasonable.”

Nick Underhill of New Orleans Football on an offseason change one of the Saints’ QBs made: “For Taysom’s part, he thinks (his tendency to hold the football too long) was something mechanical with his feet. He didn’t have his feet pointed the right way, and then it would take an extra hitch to get set up to throw the ball, once he saw it, so that’s what he’s been working on this offseason.” 

TUESDAY

Vanguard Sports Group’s Eugene Lee on the firm’s cautious approach to NIL generally and to their first NIL client, Texas A&M’s Jalen Wydermyer, specifically: “We’re being very cognizant not to give away long-term leverage on deals. We’re being very careful not to dilute a player’s brand. We don’t want players to be billboards.” 

Former NFL offensive lineman and prospective NFL agent Jeremiah Sirles on why people who played his position are different (in a good way): “As a former offensive lineman, we’re all kinda similar. I’ve said it for a long time: you can pick up an offensive lineman from pretty much any team and plug them into an o-line room and they’re probably going to, eventually, like, within the first five days, fit in.” 

Former NFL executive Blake Beddingfield on NFL vaccination protocols: “I know of people who can’t take vaccines because it harms them physically. The NFL needs to be able to hear that and take each individual situation on its own merit. . . You’re separating the players and the league even more than it has to be.”

WEDNESDAY

Octagon Football’s Murphy McGuire on taking the NFLPA exam in 2015, when it got tremendously harder: “When I went in there, I was like, ‘this is a little more difficult than they said it was gonna be.’ Little did we know that they changed the format for that year and our pass rate was like . . . wasn’t that the lowest pass rate it’s ever been, because nobody knew it was coming? It was like 40 percent or something. It was crazy.”

Former NFL executive Randy Mueller on how he headed off Michael Thomas situations during his days as a GM: “It’s a vital part of being a GM and running a franchise . . .  One of my first meetings is always, when one season ends, I want to sit down with the medical people, first and foremost, and assess our whole roster and come up with pros and cons and come up with a plan for each guy because injuries are a giant factor with every player on your team, and they’re a giant factor with team-building, itself.”

Catapult Leadership’s Jason Montanez on the biggest mistake people make when interviewing for NFL, college, or any other job: “I think the most common mistake that people make is they don’t prepare enough. They don’t really get to know the job that they’re going for. I think you need to put in a substantial amount of research to get to know the job, to get to know who you’re interviewing with, who the hiring manager is, and really get a sense of what the job entails that you’re interviewing for.”

To check out the best of Thursday’s and Friday’s shows, check out the Friday Wrap, which comes out at 7:30 p.m. ET. Register for it here.

You might have caught me on Ric Serritella’s daily morning show, The State of Football (TSOF), on my regular Thursday morning segment (9:40 a.m. ET). If you enjoy them, or find them at all informative, you may be interested in watching all week starting Monday.

Next week, Inside the League takes over TSOF. I’ll host each show along with my co-host, Bo Marchionte of College2Pro.com. Bo is not only a talented journalist, a CFL scout (Winnipeg Blue Bombers) and a serial podcaster, but he’s also one of the funniest people I know, which is why I was really excited when he agreed to join me this week. 

We’ve brought together 15 awesome guests this week, and they will all bring something different to the table. Will the TSOF be a football show this week? Of course it will, but it’s not going to be your standard debate show about who’s the greatest QB of all, whether or not Aaron Rodgers will report to camp, or which team will win the Super Bowl this year.

Of course, we’ll talk about the game in a fun way.

• Former Titans executive Blake Beddingfield will talk about which teams he expects to be contenders for the Super Bowl, the rookies he expects to make the biggest impact, and the trends in the game that no one is discussing.
• Nick Underhill of NewOrleans.Football will talk about the Winston vs. Hill battle, how the Saints will juggle the various pending free agents in their secondary, whether OT Terron Armstead will be back in 2022 and other topics related to the Who Dats.
• Longtime NFL executive and three-time former GM Randy Mueller will also give his unique take on the game, similar to what he discusses in his blog.
• Neal McCready of RebelGrove.com will talk about what an SEC lineup with the two best teams from the Big 12 would look like and lots of other good stuff. 

Want to discuss agent life and the issues facing player representatives? Got you covered.

• Four of the NFLPA-licensed contract advisors that I respect the most in the business — Evan Brennan of UA Sports, Eugene Lee of Vanguard Sports Group, Murphy McGuire of Octagon Football and Aston Wilson of Agency1 Sports Group — will give their takes on how the transfer portal, Covid and NIL have affected their profession.
• In addition, guests this week include two former agents, wealth manager Noel Lamontagne, a former NFL offensive lineman and one of the smartest people I know in football; and Mike Sullivan, the winner of the 2021 Eugene Parker Award for distinguished service to the agent industry and a former “super agent” as well as NFL executive.
• We’ll also talk to aspiring agents Don Williams and Jeremiah Sirles (the former NFL lineman and current member of the Huskers broadcast team), who are taking the NFL agent exam in August. 

But there’s even more. Ole Miss GM Matt Lindsay, a former NFL scout, will talk about how college football offices are changing and where recruiting and personnel are going. And for good measure, on Wednesday, we’ll have Jason Montanez of Catapult Leadership. A former University of Buffalo fullback, he’ll give tips on how to interview and how to build a network that will help you get the job you want.

For the full day-by-day schedule with all time slots, check out last week’s Friday Wrap. Please join us! I’ll see you here at 9 a.m. ET Monday.

It’s now been two weeks since name, image and likeness (NIL) became something college athletes could benefit from financially. Though we don’t follow NIL in a comprehensive way, we do watch it pretty carefully as it relates to football. We’ve had notes about NIL signings in our Rep Rumblings reports, and we’ve got the deals, partnerships and endorsers for almost 200 plays in our NIL Grid, which we try to update multiple times weekly.

Here are a few initial thoughts.

• Agents are clearly using NIL as a gateway to recruiting top players long-term (Steinberg Sports, CAA, Rosenhaus Sports have all signed players to NIL deals). Kudos to the NFLPA for making it crystal clear that contract advisors can get involved in these deals; very often, the NFLPA chooses to stay out of the big issues, which does nothing to help make things clearer and easier to understand.
• Major sports entities (Barstool Sports, Outkick the Coverage, others) are trying to sign masses of unknown players on merch-only deals; local restaurants are doing the same, trading food for social media hits. It’s a fairly cost-effective way to get into the game without a major commitment while the market sorts itself out.
• Of course, it’s also worth noting that these relationships are not necessarily forever. About 10 percent of active NFL players fire their agents annually, so it’s logical to presume the same will take place on the NIL side. Right now, many of these players eagerly signed exclusive-rights deals with companies expecting a financial bonanza, but if that’s not in the cards, will they look elsewhere? It seems like a good bet.
• Schools’ boosters have clearly started using this a legal recruiting tool (Miami, Fla., and Oregon boosters, for instance, have made big moves to enhance their programs with the help of boosters).
• Also, schools are clearly already using NIL in recruiting (dozens of incoming high-schoolers are already on Cameo and other platforms).
• Major combine trainers are expressing concern that players will require concessions in costs if they market that the players are working out there. Putting players’ likenesses on social media has always been a major thrust of top training facilities. Nothing attracts tomorrow’s stars like today’s stars.

There have been three main eras dictated by two inflection points in the agent industry in the 20 years since ITL has been around. The eras, as I see it, were the Age of Big Negotiators; the Age of Big Recruiting; and whatever this one turns out to be.

The transition from the first to second era took place with the passage of the 2011 CBA, which dumped the big signing bonuses and led to big fee reductions and big training-plus packages, all as an inducement to sign players that would get to second deals. Now that we’re in the Era of NIL, I’m not smart enough to know where things are going, but I do feel smart enough to know the ground is moving quickly under everyone’s feet.

If these topics and this kind of analysis interests you, make sure you register for our weekly newsletter for the industry, the Friday Wrap. Do that here.

You might have already participated in the poll we posted on Twitter Wednesday comparing the jobs of NFL agent and NFL scout, and asking which one is tougher. You might even feel convicted on your choice. However — and especially if you chose the scout as having it tougher — you might consider what actual NFL evaluators say.

Here’s the question I posed several NFL scouts: All things considered, based on your experience, do you think scouts or agents have it better? Which job is harder and offers more uncertainty, in your opinion?

Here are their responses.

• “Agents do. They lack the ground work intel and the experience to appraise the value of the player, unless it is a big firm with large resources.”
• “Agents have it better these days. Scouts make less and have less input than they have had on who gets selected. More information-gatherers now. Scouts also have to deal with job security issues more then they did in the past because teams overpay directors and want cheap road scouts, and with the league rules of hiring minorities and getting draft pick compensation, this will further decrease veteran scouts. Independent agents will struggle to compete against bigger agencies, but have a chance if they can identify players and build relationships and create their own niche.”
• “I would say agents have it harder. Kids now want everything given to them and expect to have training, housing, etc., and then, in the middle of the process, can fire the agent if they aren’t happy.”
• “Good question. I think the agent business is more uncertain. Harder to get established in it. Have to get so much money up front to even get started. Once you’re established and get some players in the league, then I think scouting is probably harder. If that makes sense. Feel like there’s a lot of entry level scouting jobs. But to get started as an agent, you need to have a family connection or some sort of backing.  I feel for those young agents that are constantly trying to recruit players then get beat out late by the big firms.”
• “I would say scouts have it better. The recruiting agents have to do would be terrible I think. If you’re an agent that has some just average guys who knows if they even make rosters. At least scouts get guaranteed wages from salary.”
• “There is at least a path for new/young scouts to grow in the business. Getting into the agent game without being attached to a big firm is darn near impossible. Even long shot prospects are so entitled and so unrealistic about their ability that agents have to invest resources that will take until the player almost hits their 2nd contract for them to really turn a profit. That’s before you start talking about babysitting and dealing with the personalities.”  
• “I would say maybe agents now because as the game has evolved, it’s almost like, with everything slotted, is there really a necessity for agents the first go-round? . . . Then the nature of the game with agents, I could say, ‘I represent Neil Stratton,’ but you get one of these other agents, and they could steal you from me, you know what I mean? So from that standpoint, even when your work is done and you think you have your guys, you constantly have to be on top of that relationship to prevent another agent from stealing him.”

Of course, it wasn’t all one-sided. Some scouts felt their job is more challenging:

“Agents have it better. There’re both hard to get started. Agents have to shell out money to get started (but) scouts don’t make much and the opportunity for advancement has a lot to do with things out of your control. Agents control their own destiny based on how hard they hustle to get clients.”

What do you think? Make sure to make your voice heard on our Twitter feed and by participating in our poll. Coming Friday, agents tell us whose job they think is tougher. Don’t miss it; you can register for it here.

Wednesday night, about 20 people — some of them aspiring scouts, some of them active and former NFL scouts — gathered for a little more than an hour with former Bills GM Doug Whaley. The topic was team-building, both on and off the field. Doug discussed how he approached building the Bills’ roster after spending a decade with the Steelers, as well as how he went about populating and managing his team’s scouting department.

Here are three (of several) takeaways from Doug’s discussion.

• Steelers scouts/administrators are rarely approached by other teams despite their great success: Pittsburgh is a model franchise, yet Doug is one of the team’s few former executives who got a shot to run another team. “Everybody (in the league) believes none of them will leave, so no one gets approached . . . If you talked to (Steelers scouts and executives), you could ask them. They would entertain it. Do (the Steelers) pay? They’re not the top-paying club in the industry. Now, they treat you well, but I remember Mr. Rooney always saying, ‘we’re not the highest, we’re not the lowest, but we’re on the high side of fair.’ But again, you know, you’re going to win. They treat you right. But I’m telling you, nobody. And I talked to some of the scouts and was like, ‘what is it out there in the league that people don’t come and ask us?’ No one knocks on the door. The only other thing that I could say is maybe the owners are like, ‘hey, we respect the Rooneys so much that we won’t raid their staff.'” 
• You can’t force a first-round QB: Then-Bills GM Buddy Nix wanted to have the team’s franchise QB in place before retiring and handing the reins to Doug, which is why he reached for Florida State’s E.J. Manuel at No. 16 in 2013. “At the time, I was Assistant GM, and the GM there was Buddy Nix, and he had talked to me before about, ‘hey, before I get out of here, I’m going to make sure that we have a quarterback’ . . .  And unbeknownst to me after the draft, he was going to retire. So I gave you the backdrop of that to say this: don’t ever back yourself into a corner by saying, ‘I want to get a specific position,’ because then you overdraft, which leads to some mistakes. So, E.J. Manuel, that was (Nix’s) favorite quarterback out of that draft. He wanted to get him and he didn’t want to lose him. Now I know why. So he got him in the first round. He removed all doubt. If we would have drafted him in the third round — which that’s probably where he should have gone, maybe third or fourth round — he may have still been in the league today as a backup. But don’t back yourself in a corner or of overdraft because of need.”
• In the minds of some scouts and executives, center has eclipsed left tackle as the most important position on the offensive line: It’s due to today’s complex defenses and the center’s need to make the right line calls. “It was always offensive tackle, but the last two coaching searches, a lot of them switched to center, and it was because of the mental part of the game and (identifying) the (middle linebacker) and being able to make the line calls. And that’s so important now because of the intricacies of the defense. (Today’s coaches are) saying we need that center; it’s more important than the right or left tackle, which was interesting. . . I struggle with that, but I also understand where they’re coming from, especially if you have a young quarterback. If you can have that center take a lot of that mental part of the game off your young quarterback (you can) help him be able to function at a higher level with a lot less mental taxation on him.”

We’ll have another GM on next month to discuss the finer points of running a franchise. Stay tuned to our Twitter if that’s something you’d like to tune in for next time. In the meantime, if the business of football is your bag, make sure to sign up for our Friday Wrap.