Does an agent really matter?

08 Tuesday Jul 2014

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I was being interviewed by the Texas Tribune’s Terri Langford for this story in late June, and in the course of our conversation, she asked a question that I often hear: “What difference does all of this make? Does an agent really matter?” That question has been turning over in my mind for weeks now. I think I finally have an answer, so let’s s leave the topic of training fees today to discuss it.

I have to admit that when Terri asked me this question, I stumbled a bit. I should have had a ready answer, because the very question gets at the legitimacy of the entire sports representation industry. I don’t take the question personally; after all, I’m no agent, have never been an agent, and have no plans to be one. Still, many of my closest friends in the business are the most established contract advisors in the business, and others are trying to get there.

I guess the thing that irks me most is that whenever someone in the business — often a coach, a school official or a compliance professional — asks that question, their real agenda is to dismiss agents, though that wasn’t Terri’s intention.  So, next time I get this question, I’ll have an answer in two parts.

Here’s the first part. Let’s say you were accused of murder. Your life is on the line, and obviously, you need a lawyer. How would you go about finding one? Would you just settle for whoever the court appointed for you? Would you Google ‘defense lawyer’ and then just take the first guy that popped up in your browser? Would you just call a buddy who’d had legal trouble and take whoever he recommended? Of course not. You’d gather as much information as you possibly could, get educated on the charges you face, and try to find the most experienced and successful attorney you could afford.

Finding the right agent is very comparable for a young man aspiring to play in the NFL. The only difference is that his professional life, not his actual life, is what’s on the line. When a coach, school official, or other person forbids any contact between agents and players or their parents, he’s essentially taking away that research process.

Here’s the second part. The Colts signed a tight end named Erik Swoope as an undrafted free agent this spring. Ever heard of him? Unless you are a fan of Miami (Fla.) basketball, probably not. However, I bet you’ve heard of Saints TE Jimmy Graham. Their stories are similar: played hoops for the ‘Canes, had limited football experience (no football experience, in Swoope’s case), and wanted to give tight end a try. They also have one other thing in common: their agent, CAA’s Jimmy Sexton. Now, if Swoope wasn’t a Sexton client, maybe he’d have gotten a shot with an NFL team. But having a powerful agent going to bat for you, and having that agent tell his NFL contacts that he’s got a guy who reminds him of another of his ultra-successful clients, is more than a little advantageous.

These reasons may seem intuitive, but I’ve never had them at the ready when I got the ‘what are agents for’ question. Now I do, and so do you.

War Story Wednesday tomorrow. We’ll have something good. Check us out then.

 

 

NFL Agent ABCs (re: training fees)

07 Monday Jul 2014

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The escalating costs of training draft prospects, along with even the lowest-ratest players’ expectations of training, has made the business of being an NFL agent an expensive proposition. There are a few ways of handling this without writing big checks.

The first way is to refuse to pay for training. There’s one big agent from the Midwest who represents several head coaches at big FBS schools, and he continually gets his coaching clients to (a) recommend him for representation and (b) encourage the players to train at the school, not at a combine prep facility. This works very well for the agent, but 99 percent of agents don’t have that kind of a coaching clientele. For the rest of the business, having a ‘no training’ strategy pretty much relegates an agent to the lowest of the lowest-rated clients, the longest of the long shots. Constantly going to bat for such players can be trying and can kill your credibility with the scouts and team officials.

A second way to deal with this is to offer to pay a set fee. You can call this a ‘stipend’ or a ‘signing bonus’ or an ‘allotment’ or whatever you want to call it. Your client can then apply it to his training, or to a place to live, or to nutrition, or whatever. What you often find in the business is that players take the cost of training for granted, and give their contract advisors very little credit for covering this. What they really want is something in their pockets. If you go this route, you’ve fixed your costs while also asking the player to take part in managing finances. Like the first strategy, this one is going to limit the prospects you can sign, but it’s also going to keep you from blowing through an unlimited wad of cash.

A third approach is to offer to split the training with the player’s family. This can be an awkward conversation, but if a player is truly looking for good representation and not just a free ride through the spring, it can work. More and more, parents are starting to get involved in the costs of training, but it can be hard to figure out what families have such resources. In this case, you’ll probably need to have a good trainer at the ready who’s nearby the player’s family so the living expenses can be reduced.

In all these strategies, you’ll need to find the right player to pursue this. Probably not one who’s being highly recruited, and one who has taken his studies rather seriously. We’ll talk more about finding players this week.

The SIF Interview: Marion Graves

04 Friday Jul 2014

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We were fortunate enough to have Marion Graves receive our first-ever newsletter aimed at parents of draft-eligible seniors last fall. With ‘agent days’ under way across the country and contract advisors reaching out aggressively to acquaint themselves with the top ’15 draft prospects, we thought today might be a good day to share her insights on the interview process, the help she got from her son’s school, and other topics.

Marion is the mother Redskins OT Morgan Moses, who was selected 3/66 out of the University of Virginia last spring. She has a unique perspective on things because (a) she was intimately involved in the vetting and education process — which we highly recommend for parents of potential draftees — and (b) her son essentially went through the vetting process twice as he strongly considered entering the NFL draft after his junior season with the Cavs.

When did you first start hearing from agents? “Well, this was our second time around, so we were a little more knowledgeable because Morgan had a chance to go to the NFL in his junior year, and we were approached then by a lot of different agents, and had our information together. We have a very strong family and that was a really good benefit for Morgan. A lot of us are very business-minded, and when we had a meeting we went collectively as a family. That made it a lot easier this time around, and we knew pretty much what we were looking for.”

How close did he come to coming out before his senior year? “He was very close. It was just days before his information had to be submitted to the draft that he decided to stay. We selected finalists, and of the group that we talked to his junior year, there were at least three of them that moved with us into his senior year. So we checked with the ones we were interested in, and charted it out and did our own diligence, and when we got to the final three, we prepared notes and talked to Morgan, and the majority of the conversations regarded information we had gathered for him. We saw at least 20-30 different agents that we actually met with (during the vetting process).”

Did any make offers or do anything that seemed untoward or illegal? “There were some that I felt were crossing the border or on the edge of the border legally, and the way they handled themselves, we pretty much deiced we were not going to follow through with them. We didn’t get a lot of that from agents because I guess for me and for my family, it was all about what we needed for Morgan, and not my personal needs or anybody else’s personal needs. That’s one thing. I know many parents don’t exactly have a silver spoon in their mouth, but if they don’t (put the focus) on what (their son) really needs, they hurt the person they’re trying to represent.”

How helpful was UVa? “The school did a good job, but because we started this as juniors, we didn’t take advantage of all the information they made available to us. They had a meeting with everybody (seniors on the team) that was interested in moving forward (to the NFL), and it was not convenient to us so we didn’t go, but I did review their information and it was helpful. They really did a good job preparing us for the disability insurance (prior to Morgan’s senior season). Based on what I’ve heard from other parents, we got a lot more information than other schools. They were very helpful when determining the different types of disability policies (before his senior year). They didn’t point us in any direction in particular, but they informed us and forwarded mail to us, and any time we had questions, we just had to ask and the coaching staff gave us their opinions. They also pushed us to do our own due diligence. They didn’t want to sway us in one way or another, but they did want us to be informed.”

Advice: “As a family, sit down with the player and find out what they want. They’re excited and they’re moving to the next level, but they don’t have a full understanding of their needs. Get a full understanding of . . . what they think their needs are. Then also, go through the school. They’ve been with our child for four years, and they’re not going to sway him in the wrong direction.”

On the ITL newsletter for parents of draft-eligible seniors: “The information I saw in your newsletter was helpful. We had to understand what we wanted to do and what we needed to do before getting tied into a lot of other people who really wanted (to be paid) as well. It’s not just about the agents, but everything, from the financial planning aspect to business managers, and anyone who’s going to cover any needs for the player. When they’re coming at you, you have no money to manage (yet)! The good thing about it is that when you admonish us to do our due diligence (in the newsletter), it’s not just on the level of the agent.”

NFL Agent ABCs (Pt. 3)

03 Thursday Jul 2014

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So far, we’ve discussed the costs of registering with the NFLPA and the costs associated with recruiting. Today, let’s talk about training fees.

I always say that the business of football representation turns over about every 3-4 years. If there’s been one major change in the last half-decade, it’s combine prep. The specialized training that football prospects receive has gone from something that nobody did (15 years ago) to something that the biggest firms offered to players rated as certified first-rounders (10 years ago) to something that most draftable players got (five years ago) to something that every player that aspires to be drafted expects from his agent.

How much does training cost? For the truly established programs that have been training first-rounders for years and have proven track records, you’re looking at a total training cost that approaches $25,000-$30,000. That cost usually includes 6-8 weeks of training plus lodging, supplements and food designed to enhance muscle-building and take weight off (or put it on). Some facilities also offer options. For example, most top prospects will expect a car, so facilities might roll this into the price. Some prospects will want individual rooms rather than roommates. There are also out-of-pocket expenses like deep tissue massage or interview prep; some trainers roll this into the total price, and some make them options. The problem is, when one athlete sees his training brethren getting these perks, it’s hard for an agent to tell him he’s not inclined to pay for such add-ons. Of course, this doesn’t address the cost of flying the prospect home to see his girlfriend, or celebrate a parent’s birthday weekend, or any other special request an elite client might have.

As one might expect, this has had a major impact on the people seeking to represent young athletes. The cost of training has truly separated the men from the boys when it comes to agencies, with some flatly refusing to pay exorbitant training fees and some seeing them as the cost of doing business. It’s a major risk that comes with no guarantees. Probably every other year I get a new agent who subscribes who spent more than $20,000 on combine prep for a player who’s not on an NFL roster the week after the draft.

Often, an agent comes to the business completely oblivious about training fees and what they represent in the recruiting process. I guess the upside is that contract advisors with unlimited resources can often land late-round prospects with tip-top training offers. Of course, the odds of late-round draftees making it to a second contract are not good, so chances of recovering by assessing an annual three percent on the player’s contract are remote. Ineffective play, injuries, or abundance at a position might conspire to keep a player off a team’s roster, and unless he makes the active 53, he owes his agent nothing.

We’ll talk about how agents deal with exorbitant training fees in Monday’s edition.

In today’s newsletter, we’ve got a sample question for the NFLPA exam. Here’s the answer: (C) $885,000.00.

The explanation: First you must determine signing bonus proration, in this case $800K/4 years = $200K/yr. Then add that number to the first year paragraph 5 salary. $420K + $200K = $620K. Then apply the 25% Rule – multiply the $620K by 0.25 (25%) = $155K. That is the max yearly increase. Then just add the numbers for each year:

Year 1 – $420K
Year 2 – $420K + $155K = $575K
Year 3 – $575K + $155K = $730K
Year 4 – $730K + $155K = $885K

War Story Weds: Lone Star Law

02 Wednesday Jul 2014

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To illustrate our point about the importance of state registration for agents, I thought I’d make today’s WSW about a series of phone calls we got last spring.

We’re fortunate to work with plenty of new NFLPA contract advisors who reach out to us when they have questions. Around May or June of 2013, several panicked callers told us about registered letters they’d received from the office of the Secretary of State of Texas. Each recipient had (a) signed a player who finished his college football eligibility with a Texas school and (b) not registered as an athlete agent in Texas. They had been threatened with significant fines by the AG if they couldn’t prove registration, or if they couldn’t counter charges that they had signed a player from a Texas school.

In almost every case, it was a first- or second-year certified contract advisor who had had no intention of recruiting players from Texas schools. However, as happens every December/January, each had gotten inquiries from unsigned players who had sifted through the NFLPA’s published listing of certified agents and cold-called them. These callers, like so many would-be draft prospects hoping to earn the attention of NFL teams, saw signing with an agent as the best way to jump-start their pro football dreams. Rather than waiting to be courted by potential representatives, they were doing their own courting, and they wound up signed by agents trying to do them favors. These agents, who were acting altruistically, had no idea they were setting themselves up for a major fine.

Ultimately, probably a half-dozen agents called with similar stories. None had signed a draftee, and I think only one even signed a player who went to a rookie tryout camp (he ultimately signed briefly in Canada). Still, these agents were facing fines. What’s more, the way the statute is written, even if they had signed a player who had been out of college for several years, they were facing fines if it was the player’s first agent. In the eyes of the state, even if the young man had been out of college football for years, he was still an amateur until he signed an SRA (standard representation agreement).

So what’s the rest of the story? I referred all the agents who had called me to a sports attorney I know and he was able to smooth things out with the state.

There are two takeaways from this experience. One, understand that statutes are written most often by people who see athlete agents as threats, and don’t really understand the business. The people writing these laws don’t understand that the overwhelming majority of contract advisors get in the business to help young players, not to suck money out of them. Real enforcement of laws and investigation of the firms signing high-end players might make a difference in cleaning up the business, but ultimately, this doesn’t win anyone votes and may cost a state’s team its title hopes. So very little gets done.

Be that as it may, you have to make sure you know the laws in the states as you decide where to recruit. Especially in Texas. That’s the second takeaway. Fines are an added cost you don’t want to incur.

More on the costs of the business on Thursday.

The ABCs of being an NFL Agent (Pt. 2)

01 Tuesday Jul 2014

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On Tuesday, we dug in a bit on an overview of the job of NFL contract advisor. Today, we’ll talk a bit more about the finances of things, since they often come up when I talk to someone considering the business.

As we’ve already covered, your start-up costs, just for the purposes of registering with the NFLPA so you can take the exam, are about $5000, presuming you pass. Still, in a way, that’s just the start of expenses. Of course, there are a lot of variables that determine what your budget should be. The two biggest are recruiting and training.

Within recruiting, there are a couple of questions an agent has to ask himself. First, where will I recruit? If an agent seeks to recruit nationally — and I always encourage new contract advisors not to do this — he’s got lots of costs ahead. For example, to register in Texas, my home state, you’re looking at a $500 registration fee plus a $50,000 surety bond, which costs $1,000 and doesn’t translate to other states. More and more states are requiring such bonds on top of their registration fees. Texas is on the high end when it comes to costs, but still, there are plenty of states that have talented athletes (especially in the Southeast). If you want to do this legally and ethically, it will cost you. Let’s say you register in the 3-4 states closest to you. You’re probably looking at a couple thousand dollars, just to be safe.

Then there’s travel. If you participate in agent days at NCAA schools, you’ll spend a fair amount of time traveling to schools in the summer, and depending on where you live, each trip might represent a plane ride and a hotel stay (and maybe a rental car). As you move into the season, you may or may not have a lot of travel (depending on whether or not you want to attend games regularly), but as you move into November and December, you will most certainly be required to sit down at a kitchen table with parents and players to state your case. Depending on how many players you’re courting, that adds up, too. Let’s say you make it to the finals with five kids, and spend $500 per player, on average, on lodging and travel. That’s another $2500.

At this point, an agent is near spending $10,000, and he doesn’t even have a client on SRA yet. We’ll roll out the expenses of combine prep as we continue the discussion this week.

The ABCs of being an NFL agent

30 Monday Jun 2014

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In less than a month, about 250 men and women will arrive at the Four Seasons in Washington, D.C., to take the 2014 NFLPA agent exam. Since the business of being an agent seems to carry so much intrigue, I thought I’d shed a little light on the business this week. Let’s start with the registration process.

As of today, there are 814 registered NFLPA contract advisors. Step one for all of them was registering in January before taking the test the following July. Upon registration, your first fee ($2,500) is due. To register, you must have at least a postgraduate degree or seven years of experience negotiating contracts. Once the NFLPA approves your application, confirming that you have an advanced degree and that you don’t have any arrests, bankruptcies or other blips that might preclude registration, officials send a copy of the Collective Bargaining Agreement as well as other study materials.

Sometimes, it takes a while to get those source materials, especially if there’s anything that holds up the review process. If you’ve ever had any legal or financial trouble, the process could drag. I’ve heard of people not getting the go-ahead to take the exam until literally a week before the test is administered at the end of July. It can be very frustrating, especially if you aren’t an attorney or if you struggle with tests. Of course, that just adds to your costs, as buying flights just days before your departure can add hundreds of dollars to the cost.

Speaking of money, if you’re a person who’s really low on funds, consider waiting before you dive into the representation world. By the time you get the results of your exam, you will already be down $2,500, and no matter the results of your exam, it’s a good news/bad news proposition. If you didn’t pass, sorry! The NFLPA keeps your money and gives you another shot to take it next summer at no extra cost (besides the trip back to D.C. in July).

Then again, if you pass, congratulations! Now the NFLPA needs a $1,200 annual dues fee plus liability insurance of about $1,400, and even if you’re an attorney with your own liability insurance, you still need to buy this. Bottom line: to get fully certified and ready to roll as a contract advisor, you’re in about $5K (plus the cost of travel/hotel/food for the exam) before you fire your first shot, figuratively.

More bad news: you are forbidden from any form of recruiting until you pass the exam, and you won’t know your results until at least October. This means all other agents have attended agent days; gathered contact information; built relationships with prospects and their parents; and whittled down their recruiting lists for 3-4 months before you’re allowed to make your first call.

That’s enough to chew on for one day. We’ll be back with more Tuesday.

More on the roots of NFL scouts

27 Friday Jun 2014

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Today we thought we’d wrap up the week with a few more notes on NFL scouts, and where they come from.

  • One of my AFL friends, Scott Bailey with the Los Angeles Kiss, let me know that Colts GM Ryan Grigson was Director of Player Personnel for the AFL’s Buffalo Destroyers just 15 years ago (1999). So, that’s one more recent connection between arena football and high-level people in the game.
  • Though the UFL never turned out to be the pipeline to the pros its founders hoped it would be, the league did help a few budding personnel types hone their skills. Though the Redskins’ Bret Munsey is the only NFL scout who was also a scout for the UFL, Eagles area scout Trey Brown (UCLA) played in the UFL, while Jets scout Rick Courtright coached in the UFL and Rams scout Brian Shields was a personnel intern in the league.
  • One might expect that people in the scouting world got their jobs by playing or coaching at powerhouse college programs that send players to the NFL by the bucketful. Not true. For example, as of last fall, there were three NFL area scouts from Florida State, but also three from Heidelberg and North Carolina A&T; four from DePauw, UMass and Richmond; and even five from that powerhouse of powerhouses, Princeton!
  • If Miami (Ohio) is the ‘cradle of coaches,’ the University of Tennessee is the Cradle of Scouts. As of last fall, there were eight former Vols at the area or regional scout level in the NFL, including Jeremy Breit (Giants), Reggie Cobb (49ers), C.J. Leak (Bills), Mickey Marvin (Raiders), Raleigh McKenzie (Raiders), Kevin Simon (Cowboys), Jon Salge (Titans) and Mike Yowarsky (Titans). That doesn’t even count Raiders GM Reggie McKenzie or Raiders Director of Player Personnel Joey Clinkscales, also UT grads.
  • Being an area scout — the person who goes on the road 11 months out of the year and often lives out of hotels while driving thousands of miles annually — is, no surprise, a young man’s game. Out of 286 scouts from the Director of College Scouting level down to area scout, we found only one (Oakland’s Mickey Marvin) who’s been on the road, in his current position, since 1977. The only other man with similar tenure was former Vikings Director of College Scouting Scott Studwell, who retired this year.
  • Expanding on that, there are six road scouts who started in the 80s; 29 who’ve been on the road since the 90s; 151 who started between 2000-2009; and 98 who got their start in 2010 or later.
  • Youth served again: 198 of the 286 have been on the job for 10 years or less, indicating that (a) there’s a high burnout factor and (b) area scouts are often seen as disposable, especially when a team is looking to tighten its belt.

 

Volunteers

26 Thursday Jun 2014

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I wanted to take a minute today to talk about how important it is to volunteer in your quest for a career in football.

If you live in an NFL city, and you want to work in pro football, find a way to volunteer with your local team. If you have an FBS (or FCS, or good D2 or even D3) team in your city or town, go volunteer. Granted, volunteering for NFL teams may be a little harder, but usually if you poke around on a team’s website long enough you’ll find someone that will take you. As for colleges, summer camps have become a really big revenue stream for most coaching staffs, and if you’re willing to work for no pay, they can usually find something for you to do.

I’m always struck by how many people in awesome football jobs started off as volunteers, hung around, paid attention, showed their intelligence, and got hired. Dru Grigson started off as a volunteer scout with the Eagles in 2005, and 10 years later, he’s the Director of College Scouting for the Cardinals. Tom Ciskowski volunteered as a defensive coach with Butch Davis at Miami (Fla.) in 1985; in 2008, he was named Director of College and Pro Scouting for the Cowboys. Steven Price volunteered with the Panthers at the age of 16 and now he’s a scout with the Vikings.

Granted, some of them had an angle and had some assurances that if they put in work they’d get the first opening, but not all of them; Price started interning with the Panthers because his mother was a secretary there.

Can’t get an NFL team to even let you work for free? Have you tried the AFL route? Two Titans scouts, Jon Salge (Nashville Kats) and Brandon Taylor (Columbus Destroyers), were with AFL teams before landing a job in Tennessee. Bears scout Zach Truty was Director of Player Personnel with the Arizona Rattlers before coming to Chicago. Eagles scout Bret Munsey was Director of Player Personnel for the Orlando Predators before he latched on in Philly. Steelers area scout Mark Gorscak was the GM of Pittsburgh’s arena team in 1987 before moving over to the city’s NFL team.

I don’t know how many of these people got AFL positions by emailing resumes, knocking on doors or waiting in the parking lot to assail a top team executive. What’s more, there are lots of indoor teams of dubious nature that are not AFL teams, per se; they’re just teams trying to copy their model. Sometimes, these teams can be a little shaky and offer limited ability to provide reliable contacts.

Still, there are many routes into the game. We’ll discuss this at greater length tomorrow.

 

 

War Story Wednesday: NFL scouts edition

25 Wednesday Jun 2014

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Since it’s WSW, we thought we’d pass along a few stories about NFL scouts that we thought illustrated the inexact nature of the business.

I think there’s a perception that the evaluation process is very scientific, dry and unerring. Nothing could be further from the truth. No matter how many scouts a team has on staff, and no matter how long they’ve been evaluating personnel, there’s a human element to it, and people make mistakes. They always will.

One example of this is the Bears, who in 1991 drafted running back Darren Lewis out of Texas A&M in the sixth round (161 overall), though they didn’t mean to. In ’91, the combine was still in its early stages, but the league did perform drug tests on those they invited. Lewis failed his drug test, causing many teams to remove him from their boards. That includes the Bears. So how did they wind up drafting him? It turns out there were two running backs named Lewis in the 1991 NFL draft: Greg Lewis out of Washington in addition to the Aggies’ Lewis. According to reports, the Bears took the wrong Lewis off their board, then accidentally took the rusher struggling with off-field issues. Perhaps not surprisingly, the he lasted less than three seasons, getting cut by the Bears in 1993. As of last year, he was in jail after a series of petty crimes.

There are also a series of disagreements between scouts on teams that lead to players falling through the cracks. Longtime NFL scout Bill Groman illustrated this by telling this story at our first-ever seminar for parents of draft-eligible players in 2010.

“Dominic Rhodes was at Midwestern State, I think was the name of the school. . . Back then I was a national cross-check scout (for the Falcons), and I was in the Dallas area, up in that area, covering another school, and I thought I’d run into the school. Another guy had gone and seen him and given him a free agent grade. He was about 5-foot-8 and a half, 5-9, a short guy, and about 205 pounds, but I saw him run real fast, and I like speed, you know, and athletic ability, and I saw he had some stats, and he could really (play).

“I went and looked at film and tape on him, and then I stayed over on Saturday and went to the game. Shoot, the game I was at, I think he was at 200-some yards rushing, and did all kinds of stuff, so I wrote him up to be like a third- or fourth-round pick and make somebody’s team. The other (scout), I know what he was looking at was the fact that this was a Division II school, he doesn’t play against the great big guys, but I think offensive linemen, defensive linemen, from those schools, yeah, they aren’t playing against the big guys, but when you’re a skilled athlete, a receiver, a defensive back, a running back, I don’t care who you’re playing with. If you can do it, you can do it. He just stood out so much, and what ended up happening was, I was at Atlanta at the time and Dan Reeves was our coach, and so what happened is, I wrote him up good, and this other guy had just given him a free-agent grade, and for some reason or other, our Director of Player Personnel at the time put him as a free agent, and we didn’t talk about them, so we didn’t talk about him in our meetings, so Dan didn’t know anything about him.

“Well, he gets drafted late by the Indianapolis Colts (Rhodes was actually signed as an undrafted free agent after the ’01 draft), and doesn’t play, like, the first 5-6 games, and then they come and play at Atlanta, and the starting running back (Edgerrin James) gets hurt. Dominic starts the game and gets like 170-some yards rushing (Rhodes ran for 177 yards on 29 carries with two TDs in a 41-27 Colts win), and I get a telephone call Monday from Dan, and he said something about, well, this guy runs so well, and you know, I said just go look at my grade, which he did.”

For more stories from Bill, check out our video archive at Inside the League.

For another story discussing how players fall through the cracks, check out this interview I did with former Cowboys scout Jim Hess. In this YouTube clip (the interview starts at :34), Jim discusses how he, along with then-Cowboys quarterbacks coach Sean Payton, came to like an Eastern Illinois passer named Tony Romo. From obscurity, Hess and Payton came to champion Romo, so much so that he turned down a more lucrative UFA offer from Denver to sign with the Cowboys after the ’03 draft.