Author Eugene Lee on the Agent Biz (Pt. 1)

18 Thursday Feb 2016

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On Wednesday, I introduced New York City-based contract advisor Eugene Lee of MKT Sports, a long-time friend and ITL client. Eugene, who was featured in a 30 for 30 documentary called The Dotted Line, also recently wrote a book about his experiences, and it’s very good.

I asked him a few questions about the book, and his responses are below.

Many agents’ friendships with college athletes prompt them to go into the agent world. You discuss your relationship with Hall of Famer Jerome Bettis while you both attended Notre Dame. Did this spur your desire to be an agent?

“It really wasn’t Jerome. At the time, he was just a friend. I didn’t get to thinking about being an agent until I was in law school, and got to be friends with football players later while playing pickup basketball with them, and I knew I could really help them. Back then, the industry had a real black eye, and agents were doing whatever it took to sign players. The relationships I developed on the basketball court at Notre Dame were pretty much what prompted me to get into this field, and my desire to stay around the game and compete and make a difference. As I’ve gotten older and there’s a bigger age gap, I feel that responsiblilty a lot more, and as far as being a mentor and a Christian, it’s equivalent to shining light where there’s darkness.”

In the book, you tell the story of your recruitment of Notre Dame’s Deveron Harper, and how when you finally met, it became apparent he had no idea you were Asian. Do you think he would have come to New York City if he’d known you weren’t black?

“Absolutely. Deveron was one of my first and favorite clients, and we had built up such a rapport over the phone over the first couple months that he just expected a black guy. He laughed when I wasn’t, but he’s as colorblind as I am. Absolutely (he would have come). It was just more of a funny time when it came as a complete surprise.”

In the book, you tell the story of one recruiting trip almost foiled because you found yourself covered in Wendy’s chili. How did your love for it develop?

(Chuckles) “I will say that I hadn’t had Wendy’s chili for 20 years (before that story took place), but I can tell you exactly where the love developed. I was at a Panthers game in Dec. 2009, and we had a couple Panthers as clients, and I’ve always prided myself on eating healthy and clean. We were at the game, and there were not many healthy options at the concession stands at the stadiums, but at Ericsson Stadium, they did have Wendy’s chili. So my associate, Dennis, said, ‘hey, get some chili, it’s the healthiest thing available,’ so I said, let me give it a shot. I had some, and it was great, so it became my staple on the road when I wanted to eat healthy. That was the case until about a year ago when my brother-in-law told me, ‘yeah, there’s this article about what they actually put into Wendy’s chili,’ and after that, I’ll never eat Wendy’s chili again (chuckles). So my love of Wendy’s chili has gone by the wayside.”

How do you determine which trips to take your wife on? Do you do this because you spend so little time with her during recruiting?

“Absolutely. I’m on the road quite a bit, and (my) wife really has to make sacrifices, and I’m very appreciative of that. She is the big determinant of what trips she takes. Warm city, fun city, she’s coming. A couple years ago, we went to Memphis. That was an easy sell. Great music, great food, and we went to Graceland. Or if we’re visiting friends in a city, she’ll go, but usually if there’s warm weather, it’s a fun city, there’s good culture, or a there’s a connection with people in the city, she’ll come on the trip.”

More from Eugene on Friday.

WSW: All-Star Sacrifices

17 Wednesday Feb 2016

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This week, we’ll be talking to New York City-based Eugene Lee of MBK Sports Management Group. Eugene was certified in the early ’00s and has been an Inside the League client almost since its inception in ’02. He’s also been a great friend all those years.

He’s a man of great integrity, great faith and hard work, and it’s been exciting to watch his rise in the business. In fact, a lot of people got a chance to watch part of that rise as he was the focus of documentarian Morgan Scurlock’s ESPN 30 for 30 presentation, The Dotted Line, in 2011.

Eugene recently wrote a book about his experiences as an agent, My Brother’s Keeper: Above and Beyond The Dotted Line with the NFL’s Most Ethical Agent (more on that title later). It’s really good, and gives readers a real inside look at what the business is like for an independent agent without a million-dollar expense account. Eugene has to carefully pick his potential clients, trying to find high-character young men who can also play a little, while trying to keep costs in line. Meanwhile, he’s also got an off-the-field life which includes his wife, who’s an actress and singer. It’s a true high-wire act, and his book includes dozens of stories of his successes but also, to his credit, tales which make him the butt of the joke. Like Eugene, it’s very authentic and real, and it’s a fun read that I highly recommend, especially if you are considering life as an NFLPA contract advisor. You can check it out on Amazon here.

I’ve interviewed him about the book, and I’ll have that interview in this space over the next two days, but first, a story that, I think, shows a little about Eugene’s dedication to his clients (and that didn’t make the book).

It was January of 2008, and about 48 hours before players arrived for the ’08 Hula Bowl. At the time, the Hula Bowl was the No. 3 all-star game (after the Senior Bowl and Shrine Game), and an invitation was pretty highly valued. After all, the game offered not only a platform for getting evaluated by NFL scouts, but it was played in Honolulu, not a bad place to spend a week in January.

Like dozens of other agents I knew, Eugene had been reaching out to me regarding a player he represented. It was Stillman cornerback Brian Witherspoon, a player scouts told me had incredible straight-line speed (Witherspoon actually made a run at an Olympic berth as a sprinter after his NFL career ended) but who had a small-school pedigree and who was still a little raw as a pure cover corner. Eugene knew ‘Spoon’ needed that game, and an invitation to the Senior Bowl and Shrine Game were a long shot.

Unfortunately, I was all out of spots for defensive backs. What’s more, I had spent my entire travel budget when I got a call, less than 48 hours before he was scheduled to arrive, that Washburn cornerback Cary Williams (now with the Redskins) had sprained his ankle during combine prep and couldn’t make the game.

As I hung up the phone, I didn’t know what to do. Well, I knew what I wanted to do, which was to call Eugene (for some reason I’ve always called him by his initials, E.T.), but I didn’t know how to do that. Eugene had been begging and pleading with me for weeks to get Witherspoon into the game, but I simply had no room. Now I did, but I had no budget to get him there. Would Eugene pick up that flight? I could only imagine what it would cost.

Now, I know dozens of agents who would have told me to get lost. Yes, getting a kid into an all-star game is a big deal, but asking an agent to pay for his travel back then was pretty much a slap in the face. Never mind that we were talking about a ticket that would cost at least a grand, and probably more. But hey, I needed a cornerback badly, and maybe, just maybe, Eugene would send him.

I remember calling him from the offices we had set up at the Marriott Ihilani in Ko Olina, the team hotel. I think I called him in the afternoon, Island time, which was probably late-evening in NYC. I didn’t really know how to make the conversation ‘pretty,’ so I just came out with it: if Eugene could get Witherspoon to Honolulu in a day-and-a-half, he could be in our game. Of course, that would mean that (a) Eugene would have to arrange for Witherspoon to get there, (b) he’d have to find Witherspoon’s pads and get them there, and (c) Eugene would no doubt want to join us at the game so he could talk up the kid’s prospects with the NFL scouts in attendance.

As I recall, Eugene took the call well, but asked to think about it. Even then, I couldn’t give him a break — I had to know ASAP if I had a corner or not, and I didn’t know where I’d find one. Soon, however, he called and confirmed that he’d find a way to get Spoon on a plane.

We never talked about how much that flight cost, or how he came up with a helmet and shoulder pads, or any other of the particulars. But it impressed me then, and impresses me now, that Eugene was willing to take all that on to get his client to the game. As it happened, Brian had a great week, which didn’t get him drafted, but did get him signed as an undrafted free agent, and he beat the odds by sticking in the league for four years. There’s no doubt in my mind that doesn’t happen if Eugene doesn’t get him to Hawaii on a few hours’ notice.

Check in tomorrow as we talk to Eugene about his book and his career to date.

 

Post-Symposium Thoughts

15 Monday Feb 2016

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As you know, I was part of a sports panel at Chapman Law in Orange, Calif., last week. If you’re interested in watching our panel in its entirety, it’s already been posted online. I’d encourage you to check it out.

Here are a few observations and thoughts.

  • Early on, we discuss success in the business. Every year, there’s some out-of-nowhere agent who signs several players that the bigger firms sought. Often, that agent gets media attention and maybe even praise from other contract advisors, but on draft day, where do his players wind up? Sometimes there’s a happy ending for the players, but at what cost? Often, these new agencies win because they throw buckets of money at their clients. We never get to see their balance sheets, however, and that’s where you really find out who won and lost.
  • At one point, one of the panelists decries agents who claim they can get players into the NFL Combine or the Senior Bowl. I agree on half of that statement; no agent can get a player into the combine. On the other hand, there were a dozen players who competed in Mobile this year that are not going to Indianapolis. I’d be very surprised if an agent’s strong lobbying wasn’t part of the reason one or all of them were in the game. In fact, I know for a fact that one of them (Northwestern State WO Ed Eagan) made it strictly because his agent, New Orleans-based Jason Cavignac, pushed hard enough to get Eagan an actual workout with the game’s organizers, which led to his assignment to the game when another receiver got hurt. That’s good agent work.
  • One of the agents on the panel, Select Sports Group’s Erik Burkhardt, very famously rid himself of a troubled client, former Browns QB Johnny Manziel, the week before the panel. Many of us on the panel expected a question from the audience about Erik’s decision; God knows I’ve had several agents who’ve reached out to me with words critical of Erik. Had anyone asked, however, I would have defended him. I’m confident Erik did what he could. What’s more, he hung around longer than the marketing people that surrounded Manziel did. Manziel’s father has gotten a lot of press for claiming Johnny wouldn’t see 24 if he didn’t get the right help. Well, Mr. Manziel, Johnny’s social media shows that you were out there with him, getting tattoos and partying it up when he was on top. Where were you then?

There are other panels that are online from the full-day event, but I think the panel I participated on is probably the one with the most appeal to folks considering making football their profession. Don’t forget to check it out.

 

 

Thoughts Approaching A Symposium

10 Wednesday Feb 2016

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On Friday, I’ll be part of a panel at the Fowler School of Law Sports & Entertainment Symposium at Chapman University in Southern California. It’s a big deal, and if you’re in town, I hope you can make it out (and if you do, I hope you grab me and say hi). Here are a few thoughts as I approach this week’s event.

  • It’s a little intimidating to be sharing the dais with five agents from four major firms. I don’t mean to sound immodest when I say I study the player-agent recruiting game probably more closely than any non-agent in the business. However, I’ll admit that’s a little different from being in the room with a draft prospect plus his parents, or his girlfriend, or his ‘business manager,’ or his former coach, or anyone else who has influence over him. It’s also different from going toe to toe with an NFL GM.
  • I’m always a little out of sorts when it comes to addressing sport management students and/or law students with a sports interest. On one hand, I want to be insightful and genuine, and want to stimulate learning and interest in the business, but I also don’t want to get too focused on the finer points of the agent industry and lose them entirely. I also have a habit of, at times, focusing on the challenges rather than the rewards. If our credo at ITL is really going to be ‘succeeding in football,’ I have to give young people the ammo to do that, or at least not extinguish the flame before it’s even lit.
  • I’m kind of on the fence about how I curry favor with the NFL Network’s Rand Getlin, who’s moderating the event. I mean, we’re buddies, but he’s gotta be provocative to stir interest, right? How do I know he’s not going to ask me a question that I respond to with ‘um’ or ‘huh’ or ‘may I be excused?’ Maybe a bribe is in order. But how much? I know Rand is a car guy. Perhaps I dangle the keys to some fancy wheels. Maybe that’s too over the top.
  • With every trip I’m taking this year, I’ve set a goal of trying to solidify one relationship and create (at least) one relationship. I want to do this in very intentional ways. For example, I’m having dinner with a relatively new client, Tim Johnson of the accounting firm JLK Rosenberger. Ironically, I met him at the last event where I spoke, the 2015 Sports Financial Advisors Association’s Conference in Scottsdale, Ariz., last November. Hopefully, this trip will be equally as productive.

If you’re in Southern California and you’re interested in the business, try to make it out for the symposium. I promise you won’t be sorry.

 

2016 Recruiting Stories

09 Tuesday Feb 2016

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If there’s one thing I love, it’s stories from the recruiting trail. I think you do, too. Here are a few I’ve heard lately.

  • I referred an agent who’s gotten a slow start (due to health reasons) to a player who’s badly in need of representation. This young man’s pro day is early, and he’s been training at school in what seems to be a haphazard way, to put it kindly. I know this agent would be a good fit for the young man, who has potential despite a small-school pedigree. Unfortunately, he’s put his trust in a man of faith who, at best, is highly uneducated on the process, and at worst is exploiting his position for personal gain. After one conversation with this pastor, my friend emailed me that he was asked, “what we’re really asking is what does (the kid) get for signing with you?” Unfortunately, more and more, that’s all the recruiting process has come to — what you put in the kid’s hand. “That’s what infuriated me,” my friend emailed me. “He is being misinformed in such a way that may wreck his chance to get a look. Too bad.” Too bad, indeed.
  • I was told yesterday that some players wrapping up their final year of eligibility (seniors as well as those entering the draft early) are now pocketing their residential scholarship stipends, then asking agents to pick up their back rent. In some cases, they’re asking potential agents to clear out their back rent, plus pay in advance for the next 4-5 months, even though they’ll be spending most of that time at a combine prep facility. In some cases, that’s a five-figure ask.
  • One kid had $10,000 in credit card debts that he wanted wiped away. This was not a first-round talent, just a late-rounder or maybe even a camp guy. This is in addition to major combine prep and all the other trappings of the draft process.
  • One player told an agent I know that he liked him, and that the agent hustled and worked hard, but the player had debts that he needed covered. Because that contract advisor wouldn’t cover those debts, the young man wanted to have two agents: one that would cover his debts, and the other who would actually do the agent work. No word on whether or not the ‘other agent’ would be cool with all the debts but only half the fees.
  • I’m told that a standard big-agency pitch to players with first-round grades includes (a) lifetime legal representation on all matters (barring an O.J.-style situation); (b) first-class flights for the whole (immediate) family for every game, home and away, in the ’16 season; (c) a guaranteed job in TV or music (but not the film industry) in retirement; and (d) covering the costs of the player’s father moving with him to the place where he trains for the combine. All of this is in addition to a weekly stipend, a signing bonus or marketing guarantee (but not a loan), and possibly reduced fees.

 

Part 2 with Agent (And More) Austin Atkinson

05 Friday Feb 2016

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Today is Part 2 of our guest entry from Austin Atkinson, an NFLPA contract advisor who’s served in personnel roles with the Charleston, S.C.-based Medal of Honor Bowl (’14-’15) and the Tropic Bowl (’16). I feel he’s got a unique perspective in how to build a strong presence in the game. Today, he talks about some of the unexpected drama he faced working with scouts and agents to build an all-star roster.

“Literally within the first 60 days of me taking the job in Charleston, I was contacted by two individuals who were affiliated with two of the more established all-star games. The first emailed to say that he had heard that the other was calling a bunch of agents and saying that I was planning on using my status as a personnel director to recruit players to my own agency. Days later, the second person emailed to say that he had heard that the first guy was actually calling around and saying that I was unscrupulous and that agents shouldn’t send their players to our game. At that point, I had no choice but to block out the outside noise and handle things my own way. It was obvious that neither one of those guys was going to play any sort of role in helping me establish myself as a personnel director anyway.

“Because of those two individuals, I actually drafted a letter and sent a copy to every single agent in the country via email (thanks, NFLPA directory!) and explained that they should have no concerns over my involvement with the game, and that any concerns could be addressed to me personally. Other than having to tactfully correct a few doubters on Twitter a few times, I never heard another concern from the agent community. I am happy to report that we actually had 38 players report to our game in Charleston that year that were unsigned or otherwise uncommitted to any particular agency. That kind of number is unheard of for a major all-star game, and is one of which I am particularly proud. I had hoped to make it clear to the scouting and agent community that I was going to give my best effort to find talent on my own, and not just ‘play favorites’ with any agencies.

“Now, that is not to say that I don’t value the input from my fellow agents. As many will attest, I’ve spent hours and hours on the phone with them during the last couple of years. Although I spend a lot of time traveling to games and attending practices before and during the college football season, the agents that I speak with that are scattered across the country serve as my eyes and ears on the ground. I am extremely grateful for their insight and I always try to give them an honest opinion or otherwise not ‘leave them hanging’ when they inquire about my interest in a certain player. I understand that this is a pressure-filled business, and I have personally been cussed out and threatened by a few agents during the last couple of draft cycles. But the vast majority are personable and respectful, and I enjoy hearing from them throughout the year.

“To wrap things up, I thought I would share something that happened last week in Mobile that kind of brings my experience full circle. There I was at Veet’s (a bar that’s a Senior Bowl ‘must’) and I was speaking to a CFL coach and a veteran NFL scout. The CFL coach was going on about how much he liked a certain ACC player, and said he hoped to sign him if he didn’t get picked up by an NFL team. I knew, and the NFL scout obviously knew, the particular medical history of this player and how that accounted for why he hadn’t received a single all-star game invite. The scout must have sensed that I had some information to share, so he gave me an ‘after you’ wave of the hand. I then proceeded to spout off to the coach this player’s entire medical history, and told him that despite being an all-conference, record-breaking player while in college, the player had virtually zero shot at passing an NFL physical. The coach was initially shocked by this revelation, and then repeatedly thanked me for sharing that key piece of information. It was definitely one of those moments where I realized that I had come a long way from being ‘just an agent’ just a few years ago.

“I hope to see many of you at the NFL Combine later this month in Indianapolis. Please introduce yourself if we haven’t met already. I’m already working on another all star game for the 2017 Draft cycle, and I hope to share that information with everyone soon. Good luck to all of the players and agents in this year’s Draft!”

Finding Your Own Personnel Path (Pt. 1)

04 Thursday Feb 2016

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I met Austin Atkinson more than three years ago sometime after he passed the NFLPA agent certification exam in 2012. An attorney in South Carolina, Austin was enthusiastic, smart and details-driven, like dozens of new contract advisors. He’d also made alliances with several people in the football business before he’d gotten certified, which is always wise.

It was through these alliances that Austin found himself helping out with the Medal of Honor Bowl, a college all-star game that ran for two seasons (2014-2015) and saw 20-plus players get drafted and hundreds go to NFL camps. The game is also the place where Patriots Super Bowl hero Malcolm Butler first caught the eye of scouts. Though it didn’t get the headlines of the bigger and more traditional games like the Senior Bowl and the Shrine Game, the game became known, in short order, for its abundance of sleepers and the hospitality organizers showed to NFL personnel.

This year, the MOH Bowl moved to a more traditional bowl format, leaving Austin without a personnel role. However, he was able to assume the same role with another game, the Tropic Bowl, which launched in January. Once again, the game quickly gained traction with scouts, and Austin earned praise for the roster he (largely) assembled for game owner/founder Michael Quartey.

Whenever you handle such a role, you get interesting insights on the business and get to see a side few see. It’s almost like real-life fantasy football on the college level. There’s nothing more rewarding than providing a draft hopeful with a platform for achieving his dream. With this in mind, I asked Austin to take the reins of SIF for a day and give readers a peek into his world.

I’ll let Austin take it from here.

 

 

 

“One of the biggest challenges I faced personally when entering the personnel world was fighting the perception that I was ‘just an agent’ and couldn’t possibly know that much about evaluating talent. After all, it was only a year earlier that I had been the guy on the other end of the phone lobbying other all-star game directors to invite my players to their game.

“To overcome this, I made a decided effort to visit as many college campuses as I could to personally visit with coaches and pro liaisons. In year one, our personnel director,  Cal McCombs, and I visited something like 55 college football programs between the months of August and November. We were determined to make absolutely sure that they knew about our game, and that we were very interested in their players. During these trips, we would often run into NFL scouts or scouting directors who were there to check out the crop of senior prospects. In a few lucky instances, we would be allowed to head to the film room with the scouts before practice started.

“To be able to sit and dissect game film with a room full of NFL scouts was an education that is impossible to put a price tag on. Truth be told, I mostly just sat there quietly and absorbed every bit of information that they were willing to share. Whether it was finding faults with a certain defensive lineman, or expressing concerns over another player’s off-field issues, I made plenty of mental notes on the litany of things that a scout looks for when evaluating a prospect.

“The other major obstacle that I faced was being affiliated with a ‘new’ all-star game that didn’t have a long track record, or even a national television deal, when I first came on board. I chose to instead view these things as a positive, since we had not developed some of the bad habits that some of the more established games had developed over the years. Essentially, we had a clean slate to make a good impression on the scouting and agent community.”

Austin will be back Friday to wrap things up, discussing some of the issues he faced in his campaign to advance his game (and his personnel work) in the face of tremendous competition. Back tomorrow.

 

Nobody’s Perfect

01 Monday Feb 2016

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Like all kids, when I was young, I thought my idols were perfect. I thought they gotten to their respective places of prominence because they were simply better than everyone else. Not just athletically, but morally, too, and maybe even academically. Sure, no one bats 1.000 across the board, but people that had reached the top had done it solely on merit, I figured. Any mistakes they’d made along the way were pure happenstance.

Then I started hearing things like I heard last week from an ex-scout, who told a story of joining several other scouts one night after the draft wrapped up to run 40s on the stadium turf in the dead of a cold, windy night. Naturally, this activity had been prompted by several rounds of adult beverages, and ultimately ended with a high-level NFL executive tearing his hamstring.

I also heard that Major League Football, the latest alternative league vying to sell tickets to a suspicious public, drafted an NFL starter this year. And this league is run primarily by former NFL scouts, coaches and executives.

Meanwhile, today I got an email from a longtime subscriber who said he and his client had gotten very excited by a series of enthusiastic texts from an NFL team. Unfortunately, the texts came to a screeching halt when the team realized it was communicating with an underrated free agent teammate of the top-five pick they thought they were talking to. “That might go to show why they are always at the bottom of the league,” my friend said.

The point is that nobody’s perfect. From these stories, I hope you find encouragement. I hope these examples take a little pressure off of you. God knows I’m far from perfect, and I’ve been able to carve out a small toehold in the business. You can, too. Even if you’re not related to an NFL owner, and didn’t come from a Power Five school, and didn’t get straight-A’s in your sport management classes.

The people that run NFL teams, and that scout for them, and that coach them, and every other job associated with pro football, are just that: people. Work extra hard to make as many breaks as you can get, and when you get them, work until you’re blinded by blood, sweat and tears. But never believe that you aren’t good enough to make it, for any reason, because you are.

Determining Your Value

28 Thursday Jan 2016

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I was having a conversation with James Jefferson, a longtime friend who’s a former NFL scout as well as longtime NFL defensive back, last week. James will have a special role in preparing Clemson DC Mackensie Alexander for the combine and his pro day, and I helped arrange it through Inside the League. Anyway, we were commiserating about a few things related to the game, and he said something that really stuck with me.

“My girl is always telling me I don’t charge enough for what I do, that I don’t value myself the way I should, and that I’m worth more,” he said. “It’s hard to explain to her.”

Amen, I told him. I have the same conversation with my wife, I told him. Then we had a discussion about how hard it is to truly put a value on what we do in the game.

Here’s James, a guy whose life a lot of guys would give up a limb to have. Came out of a small school in deep South Texas, beating the odds (he had to go to the CFL before the NFL would have him), then enjoying a lengthy NFL career before becoming an NFL scout for several more years, then a college coach. Still, he struggles to put a price on the talents and experience he brings to the table.

I see it everywhere. I’m often approached by first-year agents who want to get hired by bigger firms. They’ve never signed a top-level player before, and in some cases haven’t signed anyone at all, yet they feel they can demand $80,000 with benefits because they work hard and hustle. When they come to me, it’s hard to explain that they’re off the mark.

To some degree, I have the same problem. What we provide through ITL is unique, and in some quarters, truly desired and valuable. But we have to be very careful with pricing for a couple reasons.

One, in this game, you deal with a lot of fragile egos. If you charge too much for a service, some folks in this business will take the ‘I don’t need you’ approach. We get that a lot.

On the other hand, for many others, this is a vanity profession. Charge too much, and they say, hey, this is a glorified hobby for me. I may not even be successful with it. I’m only spending so much.

If you’re aspiring to be in the world of football, I think this is important to understand. No matter how hard you work, no matter how loyal you’ll be, no matter how badly you want it, there are hundreds of people a lot like you. Don’t overplay your hand. I’ve been in this business almost 20 years, and I’m still fighting that battle every day.

Thinking (Big) Out Loud

22 Friday Jan 2016

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I’ve written pretty extensively about the College Gridiron Showcase held a week ago in Bedford, Texas, just outside Dallas. Its owners, Craig Redd and Jose Jefferson, took some chances and had big success, and I think the job they did will impact future all-star games.

Part of the week that helped sustain it financially was a workout on Monday that featured ‘street free agents,’ i.e., players who are no longer draft-eligible. The problem with such player is that the NFL forbids its college scouts from evaluating these players, which kind of defeats the purposes of their workouts. Unless a team sends its pro scouts to check out the action, there aren’t any NFL representatives to give players a chance. Most of the time, these players have been watched and evaluated multiple times, so pro scouts don’t see them as especially sexy.

However, big players are sexy. You can’t teach size. That’s why I’ve been thinking about an idea that might just attract NFL teams’ pro scouts to next year’s game.

Why not cast a wide net for ex-basketball players under 25 years old, then pitch them on the idea of trying football? Basketball players are the best pure athletes in college athletics, and they bring the kind of explosiveness and strength that the NFL is always seeking. What’s more, there’s a track record for such players. Jimmy Graham, Julius Peppers, Antonio Gates and Tony Gonzalez are all former hoops players that turned into stars on the gridiron. Even Steelers OT Alejandro Villanueva and Eagles OT Jason Peters, though not basketball players, are examples of big men who played other positions with varied success before finally plugging into the o-line and getting traction.

I’d been thinking about this idea for some time, but felt it wasn’t a powerful draw for a simple reason: basketball players not good enough for the NBA can still make good money overseas. Or, at least, I thought so. Last week, I had a long talk with Tyler Glass, who partners with his father to represent several NBA players when he’s not working with his NFL clients. Tyler told me two things that encouraged me. One, the international game is more fast-paced and doesn’t lend itself to players much above 6-foot-6, so the true giants aren’t especially valued in foreign lands. Two, most big men who do land contracts overseas aren’t making much more than $60,000-$70,000. That’s not bad pay for a few months’ work, but it pales in comparison to an NFL minimum salary of $435,000 for those who make a 53.

The NFL has a number of rules for the way all-star games can conduct workouts, and there may be several reasons why this idea would be untenable. However, what if it were? And what if we padded up 50-60 (or more) men 26 or under, and for a full day, timed them in the 40, ran them through pass-catching drills, weighed and measured them, and even did some modified pass-blocking drills? Wouldn’t it be beneficial to see if the next Graham or Peppers is out there, finished with his career on the hardwood and wondering what’s next?

It may be something worth looking at next year. Or am I crazy? Your thoughts on this idea would be appreciated in the comments section below.