Earlier this year, I had lunch with a couple financial advisors who have been longtime friends as well as ITL clients. In the course of conversation, one of them mentioned that he’d developed a friendship with a talented young player who had bounced around at a few FBS schools.

He asked about the young man, and mentioned that he was slated to train with one of the top combine prep specialists in the business. That piqued my interest, so I called the trainer. It turned out that the young man had found the trainer and placed a call or sent an email, but was still a ways from finding someone to fund his training.

This has become pretty common. As I talk to agents across the business, I always get stories about solicitations they get from unsigned players. More and more often, these players — often the longest of long shots, sometimes no longer even draft-eligible — usually close their emails or voice mails with, “I’ve already picked out who I want to train with!” This is seen as a kind of step-saver, proof that the player is ready to hit the ground running without further ado.

Today, players see training as a given part of the agent-player relationship. This is just the latest manifestation of accelerating expectations.

As someone dedicated to helping young student-athletes realize their NFL dreams, it’s incredibly frustrating that players are getting farther and farther away from realistic goals instead of closer to them. I run a series of newsletters during the summer for draft-eligible players and their parents, and I’ve also created a series of mini-podcasts that addresses the questions I get most often.

When players reduce their whole agent selection process to which contract advisor is willing to offer training, it trivializes an agent’s role and turns the relationship into a mere business transaction. This is an absurd oversimplification, and in the end, I think this is one reason why these relationships so often become contemptuous.

If you’re a draft-eligible player reading this, I beg of you to realize that you can’t train your way into the first round. In no way am I trying to minimize the role of combine prep specialists. More often than not, they do an incredible job of sharpening a player’s athleticism and bringing out the best in a prospect. However, it’s important to understand that covering the cost of training is a major investment by a potential agent, and not something you should take for granted.

Just because a prospect can’t find an agent to cover training, that’s no reason not to go for it. And maybe it’s even better to find a contract advisor willing to go for broke for a player even if he’s not willing to go broke paying his training fees.

Today, as I sent emails back and forth with one of my longtime clients in the NFL financial planning square, the tone of things changed rather quickly, and he asked if I could address loyalty, or, in his words, integrity, on one of my platforms. Here’s what he wrote:

“I think the lack of integrity on the players’ part would be an interesting discussion. We all have been fired, it is never fun.  Agents get it worse than we (financial advisors) do, for sure.  But I think most would agree that a notice from the player would go a long way. “Hey, I appreciate everything you have done.  My decision is final but I want you to know I am taking my business elsewhere.”  Stinks, but that is a WHOLE lot better than getting a notice by the NFLPA or an ACAT e-mail (email that tells an FA the account is transferring out).

“Me personally– I’ve had a player stay at my house, I went to see the week before my wife was due with our first child (you know that baby could arrive at ANY minute), thought highly enough of me that he referred 5 other players—he fired me with no warning.  Not even a text message.  Still to this day no clue why it happened.

“So I would be interested in war stories/theories as to why players have no integrity when it comes to business.  Is it upbringing?  Is it they have been pampered the whole way up and never taught about integrity?  I doubt that, coaches take that pretty seriously.  Lack of maturity? Food for thought.”

I gotta tell you, this topic is one that’s regularly discussed in the business. There’s a general lack of decorum when it comes to terminations (actually, player-advisor relations in general) that is getting worse instead of better. In fact, I would say the two reasons most often cited by people getting out of the business is (a) the money involved in earning clients and (b) the difficulty in maintaining them due to the lack of respect many players have for the relationship.

My theory on this is that all their lives, elite athletes are use to getting their way. Very rarely in modern society is a great athlete told ‘no.’ For that reason, they start thinking it’s an entitlement to be told ‘yes.’ It’s rare for players to grow up in the warm sunshine of preference and not become impossibly self-centered. Only those whose parents did an exceptional and intentional job of keeping them grounded wind up handling this kind of attention.

For what it’s worth, offensive linemen seem to be the exception to ‘great athlete’ syndrome. For whatever reason, regardless of race, socioeconomic background, geography, or any other factors, most O-linemen seem to be understanding, deferential and even respectful to the people who manage them. Of course, there are always exceptions, but this is why I always recommend a new agent’s first client be a center, guard or tackle.