One of the themes of this blog is that as difficult as it is to earn a toehold in the football business, it’s harder to leave it. The one thing I always say is that most people leave the football world feet first. They never walk away. They leave after a divorce, or a bankruptcy, or litigation, and they often still wish they didn’t have to, even if they failed miserably.

Case in point. A few years ago, a young man from the Southeast got certified, and for the two years he was in the game, he was full-throttle all the way. He quit his job and spent the money he had saved (plus a lot more) pursuing players and really trying to make it in the game. He wound up selling assets he had simply so he could afford training for long-shot players, and he made several bad investments because he trusted the wrong people to help him. There were many times that he called me after making these investments, and after a long sigh, I’d scold him (gently), wondering why he didn’t learn last time.

Eventually, he did learn. He became intensely soured on the game, and his passion turned to hatred. He even began to send me links to books about the savagery of the game and how it fed many societal problems. Still, when a couple of the people he came in contact with showed up on tonight’s episode of The Agent, I texted him. I figured he’d remember me, but I figured the fire wouldn’t be there anymore, and I thought he’d shrug off my text, politely demurring.

I was way wrong. At the mention of the names on the show, my friend’s first question was, “What have they done? Are they using my name for anything?” Once I assured him this wasn’t the case, my friend started with the descriptions. “An honest nice guy” who “genuinely wants to help kids make it” was his assessment of one of them, but he called the other one “a crook, a thief” who “attempted to sell me access to the Clemson locker room.” My friend also called him a “complete a______e” who “tried to physically intimidate me at a lunch and I almost pulled out a knife. . . in fact, I think I explicitly stated that if you try to intimidate me again, I was going to pull out my knife.”

My friend then excused himself. “Got a lunch date. Kinda lost, ttyl,” he texted me, and I figured that was it. “Good luck!” I texted him back.

But a couple minutes later, my friend was back, sending multiple lengthy texts. Though he praised one of the people I’d asked him about, he accused the other of peddling influence and other highly questionable activities. Finally, he closed with, “Gotta run, hope ur doing well also.”

But soon he was back again with another paragraph. I didn’t engage him, knowing he had to go. But it became clear to me that he still hadn’t lost the passion.

It’s a cliche, but it’s true: the harder you fight for something, the harder it is to surrender. It’s clear my friend still had plenty of fight in him. If you decide to make a serious run at this business, you’re going to find it a habit that’s hard to break.

Don’t forget to follow me on Twitter if you don’t already. I’ll be providing a running commentary during tonight’s show (10E/9C), and we’ve got some good stuff ready to roll. Catch you tonight.

One of my longtime clients has become a real friend, and we talk/email/text often. He’s an agent, and we often talk about issues in the business. The other day, he posted an email he received recently (he omitted the name and all references to the person who sent it). I think it illustrates how some people have no idea how truly skilled and talented an NFL player is.

Here’s the email he received:

“My name is (withheld). I am a (major university) graduate who did not play football. I tried to be on the team but was not eligible. And now I am trying to get back into football. I am 5’8″ and 185 lbs athletic. Growing up I always wanted to be an athlete but I was never knew how to be one because it’s secretive. I’m looking for a second chance, the NFL gives second chances please let me know if possible.”

Let me start by saying I admire this young man, for a couple reasons. No. 1, rather than bragging to his buddies that he could have played NFL football, he’s actually taken the next step. I also respect the fact that he doesn’t fill his email with a lot of bluster about how he’s 6’0″ and 200 pounds with a 4.4 40. With all of this said, how could anyone ever think that he has an NFL resume based on his failure to ever play football, even if it’s “because it’s secretive?” What’s more, why would a person who’s never played football and doesn’t have outstanding size/speed think he deserves a “second chance?”

My friend’s response was blunt. Too blunt? I don’t think so. While I respect this young man’s interest in pursuing his dreams, there are wild, impossible dreams and realistic ones, and any plans of playing in the NFL are in the former group. Here’s how my friend responded:

“No, it’s not possible. At all. Football isn’t a sport you can excel in unless you have played in your whole life. This is why the Olympic sprinters who have tried to play in the NFL could never make it. Even the world’s best athletes can’t make the transition without years of experience. Usain Bolt has 0 chance at making the NFL.”

You can argue about whether an athlete with world-class speed could some day make the transition to the NFL. Either way, the bottom line is that the NFL is not a place to launch your football career, and it’s unreasonable to think that someone’s not in the NFL simply because he’s slid under the radar his entire life.

The young man didn’t send back a hateful or snarky email. Instead, he remained confident of his skills:

“Thanks you will see me in an NFL uniform one day. Google search Nate Ebner and Jarryd Hane.”

I admire this young man’s resolve, but I’m hopeful that someday he comes to understand that only a very select few people can play in the National Football League.

We’ve been gathering feedback from agents large and small ever since last night’s first episode of ‘The Agent’ on the Esquire Network. Here, (mostly) unedited, is their feedback:

• “I’ve watched Jerry Maguire, Arliss, Ballers, even Ari Gold on Entourage. All different styles of depicting “agent representation”. Showing the exciting Hollywood version of the fast paced glamorous lifestyle of being a sports agent or someone in the agent representation business. But thanks to the endorsement of friend Neil Stratton who runs Insidetheleague.com I just watched “The Agent” on Esquire. I’m not saying that I’m at the same pitch as the 4 agents in the docuseries. But most of the experiences, emotions, trials and tribulations of being an agent I can personally relate too. It’s not so glamorous of a life as Hollywood portrays. We are not all snakes out to just make the big score so we can party on a Yacht. Most of us NFL agents are just blue collar types, trying to make a dent in a business that is cutthroat. Most of us have other 9-5 jobs to pay the bills. But we still are agents 24-7. We mainly do it because we simply love sports and making a difference in players lives. If you want to know what it’s truly like being a sports agent, I dare you to watch “The Agent” on Esquire. So far it’s by far the best “representation” of the representation business.”
• “First and foremost, they did a great job of making this first episode feel like a documentary series and not a reality show. I know that’s what they were going for, and they did an outstanding job of accomplishing this. They also did a great job of giving all 4 agents their ‘moment in the sun’. It’s tough to do sometimes, but I thought that every one of them was able to be spotlighted for an extended period of time and, essentially, tell their story (or at least the beginning of it, considering it was only the first episode). It was the first episode, but Jeff’s ‘story’ was definitely the most boring. Hopefully they pick him up some! Ed is great – love watching him. Peter is cool, too, although he is VERY business-like and extremely serious. Sunny is a character. I don’t know him, and have never met him, but he seems like a pretty genuine dude. Man…Tevin Coleman sure is a ball of energy and extremely out-going, huh? (Haha, I kid, I kid).”
• “Impressed with the show. Ed and Sunny seem like likeable guys. “I’m never wrong about the sleepers.” LOL. Man, I hate the locker room scene . . . where Ed meets Tevin’s dad. Ed did well with it.”
• “Very well done. I really liked Ed, seems like a good guy. I know Peter is a vet, liked how he showed concern for Halliday. Felt bad for Sunny regarding the mentor. I’m thinking he didn’t make the last-minute flight to meet the advisor. For some reason, Jeff G came off as the least likeable for some reason, it seems like he’s just in the business for the glitz and glamour. Loved how the show showed the realistic side of the business. Felt like Tevin Coleman was tuning out Ed in the meeting. All in all a great look at the business, excited to see next week’s episode!”
• “Loved it, Neil. I scribbled 3.5 pages of notes. I like all the agents and most of their approach but of course I really like Schaffer and gotta go with JG being from the south. I’ll bet Shah ends his recruitment of Trail and Ed doesn’t sign Coleman. You pretty much gotta be a crazy SOB to do our job. Each client is like another high maintenance girlfriend who has to be constantly kept happy or else a new Romeo is there promising they can fulfill their every need much better than their current sugar daddy.”
• “Good show that gives insight into the business and daily life of an agent. Peter and Ed seem like some really good, down-to-earth guys. Looking forward to seeing how the show progresses.”
• “I liked it so far. I don’t believe it’s really going to show how they really recruit, but it sounds good. . . But I think this is a great depiction of the clean side of the agent world because that’s all I expect to be exposed. I will watch the whole season. I just hope the four guys stay true the whole season. But I’m skeptical, I guess. . . I guess I am interested to see how much of the agent world makes it to the show, or if they keep up the common misconceptions. Like how you were tweeting common misconceptions last night – if they will shed light on those things to educate the viewers. Like show each guy pitch their recruits. They showed Sunny and some of Ed. I’m interested in seeing the level of transparency contrasted between the four agents. I don’t want it to be superficial, but I feel it will be. We’ll see. On a brighter note, I didn’t see them doing anything I do not do, so does that mean I know what I’m doing? And Ed is crazy for driving all those miles. Is he afraid to fly? No thanks.”
• “Everyone looks nicer than they actually are, I think for TV, but it was pretty accurate. Actually don’t like having the general public see everything we do and how to do it. The ‘dating’ and driving and dealing with family and relationships are very good takeaways that could help us good agents. ‘I hope he texts me. I hope he likes me. Will he give me his number?’ . . . Spending lots of time and money recruiting (they haven’t gotten to training yet) for guys that take illegal money and don’t sign with you anyway.”
• “I liked it. Thought it was good, but thought they should have gone more in depth in the preseason process of how they agent made a decision on who they were going to go after: the grades, scout insight, how they got in contact in the first place, etc. . . . The agency direction, marketing, brand management, etc.”
• “From what I saw, there were definitely some spot-on moments that show what an agents life is like i.e., lot of awkward meetings and introductions, an exorbitant amount of time waiting on players to meet, and always having someone else in the meetings or that they want you to talk (to). However, I wouldn’t want to be known as the TV agent. Will be interested to see how these guys do in the recruiting process next year.”

For millions and millions of fans, tonight is a big night for watching TV, because HBO’s ‘Hard Knocks’ debuts for the ’15 season. As the show follows the Texans and chronicles J.J. Watt, Bill O’Brien and the team’s hunt for a starting quarterback, there will be plenty of fans glued to their sets.

But if you read this blog regularly, I’m telling you to DVR tonight’s episode of ‘Hard Knocks’ and watch ‘The Agent‘ instead. Here’s why:

• Readers of this blog are interested in the game behind the game. I think you’re going to see that in both shows, but ‘The Agent’ is solely focused on people who are ‘working without a net.’ In other words, an NFL team and its players are established, mainstream, powerful. On the other hand, the four principals in tonight’s show are out there taking chances, living ‘on the fly’ and facing tremendous consequences if they fail.
• If you’re a fan of ‘Hard Knocks,’ you’re probably not going to see anything new tonight. The characters will change and the logo on the side of the helmet will be different, but the template is pretty embedded. You’ll see the contrast between the first-rounders and the undrafted players fighting for reps; the superstars and how they live, off the field; and eventually, the injuries, cuts, promotions and other things that are the essence of training camp. With ‘The Agent,’ there is no template. You’ll see everything from another angle.
• If you watch ‘The Agent,’ you’ll get to know the players before they’re stars, and that’s pretty exciting. In just tonight’s episode, four highly touted members of the 2015 draft class are introduced, including Falcons second-round RB Tevin Coleman (73 overall). In the coming weeks, you’ll get to know Raiders DE Mario Edwards (drafted in the second round last spring), Ravens OLB Za’Darius Smith (fourth round) and several other players, some of whom signed with the four agents featured, and some who didn’t.
• I expect quite a bit of conversation on social media regarding ‘The Agent,’ and I think it will be educational and thought-provoking. We’ll be part of that conversation. I think that’s important. My gut feeling is that the tenor of the conversation on Twitter regarding ‘Hard Knocks’ tonight will be mostly from hard-core Texans fans. While that’s fun and can be entertaining, it’s different from those who are trying to ‘move the football’ (sorry) in their own professional lives.

I think if you watch ‘The Agent’ tonight, you’re going to learn something about the game, and about the business of the game, that you wouldn’t otherwise know. I hope you’ll join me in tuning in tonight.

You won’t see Amani Martin on the Esquire Network’s ‘The Agent,’ which kicks off at 10E/9C tomorrow night, but his shadow will loom over most everything you see. Not only did he do most of the filming, but he was one of the driving forces behind bringing the show to air.

He comes by his interest in the show naturally. Amani is a big sports fan, having been born just down the street from Yankee Stadium (“I’m not too happy about Toronto’s recent roster additions,” he said). He’s a dedicated Yanks and Giants enthusiast, but also an athlete himself: he played competitive tennis in college at a small school in Connecticut. Of course, there’s also the five Emmys won for his work on HBO’s ‘Real Sports’ and a documentary about the Brooklyn Dodgers, ‘The Ghosts of Flatbush,’ that aired on the network in ’08.

On the eve of Amani’s latest project, we spoke about what’s ahead for the Show. Here are his thoughts.

On how the show was born: “A lot of the shows I was interested in came from working at HBO at ‘Real Sports.’ We would go to an athlete’s home and I would always be aware of how important money was in that athlete’s life, and in a way that was often negative. . . I would see how they would interact with their entourage and their family, and how money was a positive and a negative, so I developed a concept called ‘The Contract.’ The show would follow players for a year to see how money affected their lives. In talking about it, a friend recommended I talk to Ed (Wasielewski). . . . The more I talked to him, the more I got interested in his life. . .  He’s struggling, but he’s a full-time agent and he’s very good, but it’s a struggle. . . That’s how the conversation with Ed started, and soon, we said, ‘let’s figure out how to make this into a series with a different focus,’ and let’s center around Ed.'”

On finding a network: “I followed Ed for six months, either me and a camera or me with a small crew, and I’d shoot him in his office or on the road, going to games and meeting athletes, and we used that and put together a sizzle reel. It’s a pretty essential piece of selling a show, because networks want to know, what are the characters like? Are they telegenic enough? Are they charismatic enough? If they don’t hold someone’s attention for five minutes, they won’t hold it for a whole show. We took it to about a dozen networks, and it covered the trials and tribulations of a real agent. Many networks wanted to see the reel, and we got really good feedback from it, but it had to fit their format and their demographic. There were certain networks I wasn’t interested in, because it didn’t need to be augmented by gimmicks. Long story short, Esquire got involved, and they felt it fit their demographic.”

On what he learned about being an agent: “A lot of people think you put on a nice suit and you’re a slick talker and you’re an agent. They have no idea how up and down the business is. You could do really well one year and then struggle the next two years. It’s a 24-7 customer service job. You’re always on the phone, always dealing with crises.”

On the difference between a show like ‘The Agent,’ which is a docu-series, and reality television: “A docu-series finds a fascinating story about a character, and it follows the character around and crafts a story. A reality show, really, what they’re doing is deciding what’s gonna happen beforehand, and then watch the characters interact somewhat authentically there. For example, the Kardashians are going to the beach, and then (the show) augments the drama and conflict. In our series, the agents overlap and know each other but they’re not in direct conflict, and even if they were in direct conflict, you wouldn’t be seeing them at the lunch table yelling at each other.”

Today, for War Story Wednesday, I wanted to pass along the response from Ed Wasielewski when I asked him if anything unexpected happened during the filming of the docu-series.

“There was one time that I let an important production staff member drive at the tail-end of a very long road trip back from Indiana. We were all sleep-deprived and he was trying to lend a hand with the driving. We were somewhere on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

“Normally, I like to drive myself unless it’s someone that I really know and trust, and this important production staffer was driving and he almost wrecked the vehicle when he dropped his Starbuck’s bottle. He reached below to grab it, eyes below the steering wheel, and we’re on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, and I was starting to think, “This could be my last trip.”

“I think I learned a valuable lesson that night: unless I’m driving or it’s someone I completely trust, no one else is ever driving on one of these long trips again. It was a pretty important production guy, and I couldn’t say more than, ‘could you pull over? I’d like to finish driving on this trip.’ I mean, I was texting with my staff member from the back seat: ‘What do we do here? Are you OK to drive?’ ‘Anything’s better than this’, he (texted back).

“There aren’t too many moments when you’re thinking, ‘Oh my goodness, this could be it,’ but this was one of them. We were all kind of sleep-deprived, but his driving left a lot to be desired.”

Stories from the road like this one will make up the series, The Agent, which kicks off in six days (Aug. 11, 10E/9C) on the Esquire Network. If you read this blog faithfully, you’re not going to want to miss it.

If you follow me on Twitter, you know the number of would-be NFLPA contract advisors was down a bit this year, off by maybe 50-75 candidates (based on the number of people taking the agent exam this year). I have a number of thoughts about this.

• The fact that the numbers are off a bit from the past 2-3 years isn’t a big deal. Recently, having about 300 in the room was pretty routine, but this was easy to explain. The new runner rule, which outlawed any contact between a prospect and an agent’s non-certified representative, prompted many agencies to certify any and all of its employees.
• Then again, it’s possible there are fewer people with a passion to work with players, for a couple reasons. One, it’s been a long, long time since ‘Jerry Maguire’ was in theaters. Of course, maybe ‘Ballers’ will reignite that spark. Two, I think the move to analytics has probably attracted a lot of people who might previously have seen agent certification as their surest route to fulfilling work.
• If more people really understood what was in store for them once they became full-time contract advisors, maybe fewer really would get certified. I mean, check this out. It’s a copy of the minutes from the last players association meeting, and it shows that the players are actually considering dropping the standard commission on contracts from three to two percent. If this happens, it will be nearly impossible for new agents to recover their expenses.
• The NFLPA is a very good thing for players in some ways. It has been a leader in demanding certification for agents, and ensuring that they actually know what they’re doing with regards to the Collective Bargaining Agreement. This is very important. On the other hand, the union regularly runs over the agents who are supposed to be advocating for the players. To wit: the NFLPA is assisting a top NFL player who’s trying to negotiate his own deal, and it very rarely intervenes when an agent tries to poach another agent’s clients.
• When there’s no justice and no reason to have a presumption of fair play, it’s pretty demoralizing. The upside for the union is that so few people know how this business really works. So many young, idealistic people get into this game thinking the players are the victims; it’s a narrative that’s advanced by the media and people around the game. What you find out quickly, however, is that most of the people on the ground floor of the business — the less-established agents, trainers and financial planners who are trying to earn a foothold in football — are actually pretty earnest and fair-minded. Not all of them, mind you, but most of the ones I’ve met.

This is one reason why I’m pretty enthusiastic about ‘The Agent,’ which kicks off in about a week and a half (Tuesday, Aug. 11, on the Esquire Network). It’s a chance to see contract advisors conducting business in jeans and collared shirts rather than three-piece suits or leather jackets. It’s a chance to see them operating alone and uncertain, instead of talking fast and with total confidence.

I hope, for better or worse, it’s a great learning tool for anyone interested in the business side of the game. I think it will be.