Sports agent says let's strengthen, enforce the rules
by
I did not start out on this path, but 10 years ago fate and
dissatisfaction with a traditional legal career led me to the field of
sports management. I became certified as a NFL agent and founded a
sports agency in Jacksonville, Fla.
I named it the Breakthrough Sports Agency because of my desire to break through the current standards, raise the bar and challenge the system that has done little to regulate the billion-dollar industry known as college football.
Forty-one states have laws on the books, and the federal government has added one more to the pile.
Yet even the federal Sports Agent Responsibility and Trust Act, known as SPARTA, requires the states to take the lead and prosecute rogue agents.
States cannot afford to enforce the law, however, nor do they have the requisite resources or ability to cross state lines to do so. The number of prosecutions can be counted on two hands, and known violations — such as the one that led to the suspension of Alabama’s Andre Smith for the Sugar Bowl following his 2008 junior season — have gone unpunished.
The National Football League Players Association grants agents permission to negotiate NFL contracts and is the main source of rules regarding agent-player contact.
Each year, the NFLPA adds more prerequisites to obtain certification. Most recently, it mandated a graduate degree. Ostensibly, then, the agent pool is better than it was, although most of the rules contain grandfather clauses.
Additionally, no authority licenses or regulates marketing or endorsement agents. In an attempt to earn 18 to 24 percent of future endorsement dollars, these and similar financial managers or promoters were the source of Reggie Bush’s early payday.
As a result of the cash and rewards Bush and his parents received, the University of Southern California was recently harshly sanctioned.
Meanwhile, the NCAA puts pressure on schools and is seemingly the only entity actively investigating violations. However, it has no control over agents.
Plus, the NCAA puts schools in a precarious position (which Alabama Coach Nick Saban pretty accurately described as “double jeopardy”). A university must decide whether it should help clean up its campus and aggressively assist in the prosecution of agents (and potentially open itself up for more NCAA scrutiny), or just do its best (such as the University of Texas’ purported monitoring of the registration of its players’ vehicles).
Some schools opt to not listen too carefully, lest they hear the campus’s worst-kept secret: that some players are receiving benefits or are actively being courted by rogue agents, financial advisers and those who try to be “matchmakers” and get a piece of the ultimate deal.
The NCAA’s latest sweep has already brought several programs to the boiling point and caused them to increasingly disparage agents, comparing some to “pimps” (Saban) and “predators” (Florida Coach Urban Meyer), or advocate the use of a firing squad (Grambling Coach Rod Broadway).
It’s time for the name-calling to stop and reform to start.
More must be done. Maybe the student-athletes deserve a piece of the pie, but that proposition is not easily tackled.
And under the current system, the NFL wants and will get these athletes no matter what road they take to the league. So it’s disingenuous for the NFL or NFLPA to act overly irate. The system itself is inherently flawed.
The NFLPA has to balance risk vs. reward and suspend law-breaking agents.
In an upcoming law review article to be distributed to academia and state legislatures, I lobby for federal licensing or registration, and for the IRS to prosecute (for tax evasion) student-athletes who are “on the take.”
I also support a two-strike rule: If you cheat once, you sit out for a draft or two. If you do it again, you must find a new career. In addition, I urge the creation of an enforcement bureau that has the ability to travel and investigate across state lines, while also respecting due process.
Is football just a sport? Yes, but it’s a billion-dollar enterprise, too.
Is more government regulation necessary? It is when 42 different laws don’t curb the corruption.
There is little that compares to college football. It is an institution. I learned that the first time that I stopped watching and started to truly feel the Alabama-vs.-Auburn rivalry.
The guys who play college football love to play the game, and certain very fortunate ones get to use football as a means to change their lives.
There is so much riding on their every game, their every season and their careers. To have that jeopardized by people wanting to selfishly take advantage of them is something I cannot join.
I named it the Breakthrough Sports Agency because of my desire to break through the current standards, raise the bar and challenge the system that has done little to regulate the billion-dollar industry known as college football.
Forty-one states have laws on the books, and the federal government has added one more to the pile.
Yet even the federal Sports Agent Responsibility and Trust Act, known as SPARTA, requires the states to take the lead and prosecute rogue agents.
States cannot afford to enforce the law, however, nor do they have the requisite resources or ability to cross state lines to do so. The number of prosecutions can be counted on two hands, and known violations — such as the one that led to the suspension of Alabama’s Andre Smith for the Sugar Bowl following his 2008 junior season — have gone unpunished.
The National Football League Players Association grants agents permission to negotiate NFL contracts and is the main source of rules regarding agent-player contact.
Each year, the NFLPA adds more prerequisites to obtain certification. Most recently, it mandated a graduate degree. Ostensibly, then, the agent pool is better than it was, although most of the rules contain grandfather clauses.
Additionally, no authority licenses or regulates marketing or endorsement agents. In an attempt to earn 18 to 24 percent of future endorsement dollars, these and similar financial managers or promoters were the source of Reggie Bush’s early payday.
As a result of the cash and rewards Bush and his parents received, the University of Southern California was recently harshly sanctioned.
Meanwhile, the NCAA puts pressure on schools and is seemingly the only entity actively investigating violations. However, it has no control over agents.
Plus, the NCAA puts schools in a precarious position (which Alabama Coach Nick Saban pretty accurately described as “double jeopardy”). A university must decide whether it should help clean up its campus and aggressively assist in the prosecution of agents (and potentially open itself up for more NCAA scrutiny), or just do its best (such as the University of Texas’ purported monitoring of the registration of its players’ vehicles).
Some schools opt to not listen too carefully, lest they hear the campus’s worst-kept secret: that some players are receiving benefits or are actively being courted by rogue agents, financial advisers and those who try to be “matchmakers” and get a piece of the ultimate deal.
The NCAA’s latest sweep has already brought several programs to the boiling point and caused them to increasingly disparage agents, comparing some to “pimps” (Saban) and “predators” (Florida Coach Urban Meyer), or advocate the use of a firing squad (Grambling Coach Rod Broadway).
It’s time for the name-calling to stop and reform to start.
More must be done. Maybe the student-athletes deserve a piece of the pie, but that proposition is not easily tackled.
And under the current system, the NFL wants and will get these athletes no matter what road they take to the league. So it’s disingenuous for the NFL or NFLPA to act overly irate. The system itself is inherently flawed.
The NFLPA has to balance risk vs. reward and suspend law-breaking agents.
In an upcoming law review article to be distributed to academia and state legislatures, I lobby for federal licensing or registration, and for the IRS to prosecute (for tax evasion) student-athletes who are “on the take.”
I also support a two-strike rule: If you cheat once, you sit out for a draft or two. If you do it again, you must find a new career. In addition, I urge the creation of an enforcement bureau that has the ability to travel and investigate across state lines, while also respecting due process.
Is football just a sport? Yes, but it’s a billion-dollar enterprise, too.
Is more government regulation necessary? It is when 42 different laws don’t curb the corruption.
There is little that compares to college football. It is an institution. I learned that the first time that I stopped watching and started to truly feel the Alabama-vs.-Auburn rivalry.
The guys who play college football love to play the game, and certain very fortunate ones get to use football as a means to change their lives.
There is so much riding on their every game, their every season and their careers. To have that jeopardized by people wanting to selfishly take advantage of them is something I cannot join.
