{"id":737,"date":"2019-03-01T12:16:23","date_gmt":"2019-03-01T18:16:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/roykessel.com\/?p=737"},"modified":"2019-03-09T12:50:40","modified_gmt":"2019-03-09T18:50:40","slug":"agent-meeting-at-combine-demonstrates-rare-solidarity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/roykessel.com\/agent-meeting-at-combine-demonstrates-rare-solidarity\/","title":{"rendered":"NFL Agent Meeting at Combine Demonstrates Rare Solidarity"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
Peter Schaffer leads push for an agent association while Ralph Cindrich accepts Eugene Parker Lifetime Achievement Award<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Held the night before the official NFLPA’s annual required\ntraining, Inside the League sponsored its annual gathering of agents at the NFL\nCombine.  The meeting was led by long\ntime agent Peter Schaffer who set a strong leadership tone for the\nconversation.  The agent community has\nlong been splintered into factions, and the divides typically look like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. Large agencies;<\/li>
  2. Successful smaller agencies;<\/li>
  3. The solo guys;<\/li>
  4. The dabblers;<\/li>
  5. New agents.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    The challenge has been to bring these groups together,\nbecause while they compete against each other, the only way to protect the\nvalue of the agent and to fight against the NFLPA’s attempts to reduce\ncompensation and restrict activities, is for the agents to work together. The\nlarger agencies usually do not want to be involved with the efforts to reform\nthe system, since they are the ones that usually have the resources to spend\nthe money on recruiting and servicing clients that the other groups cannot\nafford.  So efforts to restrict any of\nthose tactics run counter to their professional objectives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Schaffer sought a unifying environment as he led the\nconversation into the following areas:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    • Inducements<\/li>
    • Transparency<\/li>
    • Payments to players over 52 weeks<\/li>
    • Strike preparation<\/li>
    • Agent Association<\/li>
    • New leagues<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n

      INDUCEMENTS<\/strong>?One\nof the biggest issues for anyone trying to break into the agent business is how\nto compete with the large inducements given to players coming out of\ncollege.  One of my ongoing criticisms of\nthe NFLPA has been its fictional attempts to enforce its regulations.  Though it purports to ban inducements” the\nNFLPA has repeatedly refused to consider marketing advances, training payments,\nliving expenses and many other items paid by the agent as inducements.  The NFLPA says that anything paid after the\nplayer signs is not an inducement, essentially meaning that an agent can show\nyou what he paid for other players last year, and that does not constitute an\ninducement.  In any other body of law,\nthat would clearly be held as an inducement. \nSchaffer quoted research which showed him that the average agent netted\nless than $5500 per client, a number that is far lower than most new\nprospective agents expect when they enter the business.  Under this business model, he said that\nnobody is making money.” This number is likely skewed up based on the\nsuccessful agencies, meaning that for most new agents, this is not a viable\nbusiness, a viewpoint reiterated by many solo agents and those trying to break\ninto the business.  The $15,000 training\nbills along with six figure marketing guarantees are significant barrier to\nentry for most agents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      TRANSPARENCY<\/strong>?One\nfrustration for agents (and many others) has been the lack of transparency in\nthis process.  The addendum’s that agents\nask players to sign have never been released and so there is no way to tell if\nthe agent (or player) is being truthful in their characterization of the\nrelationship.  Without transparency, many\nplayers (and their families) are not comparing apples to apples in the\nselection of their agent.  Schaffer would\nlike to see the addendum’s standardized and allow the agents access to a\ndatabase that shows what the players are being offered and promised.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      PAYMENTS TO\nPLAYERS OVER 52 WEEKS<\/strong>?An ongoing challenge for NFL players (and\nathletes in many other sports) is their ability to manage their finances.  The NFL pays the players on a 17 week\nschedule.  This means that they have\nseemingly huge amounts of money in every paycheck.  This distorts the reality that the money they\nare paid needs to last an entire year. \nWhile the amount that they are paid is enormous in any normal context,\nthe players are typically inexperienced in managing money and fail to take into\naccount some critical elements: 1) They need to pay taxes; 2) They need to make\nthe money last an entire year; and 3) They are likely to have VERY short\ncareers.  Some agents believe that\nspreading the payments of 52 weeks will help with those issues.  This is one of the few areas where I disagree\nwith the push of agent group. My advice to my clients is ALWAYS get the money\nas early as possible. I would much rather have the money in my hands than in\nthe hands of another party.  Good\nplanning and financial management can help alleviate the other issues for the\nplayers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      STRIKE PREPARATION<\/strong>—\nEveryone in the football world is anticipating a strike when the current\nCollective Bargaining Agreement expires in 2020.  It is hard to imagine how any extension will\nbe reached in advance of that time.  So\nwhat this means, is that the players may face a lockout and may need to be\nprepared for a work stoppage.  The agents\nare recommending that the players start putting away 10% of the money from each\ngame check, 20% of the playoff money and 50% of performance bonuses so that\nthey have the funds to endure a lockout. \nNegotiating from a position of strength is always preferable and by\nmaking sure the players are not desperate to take any deal, it will be give the\nUnion some backing in the negotiations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      AGENT ASSOCIATION<\/strong>?A\nlong overdue initiative, an agent association will ultimately help the players\nas well.  This association will give the\nagents some leverage with the NFLPA and possibly even with the NFL.  There are a multitude of issues that the\nagents face regularly that are dismissed completely by the NFLPA as either\nunimportant at all or not relevant for the power agents that the NFLPA has long\ncatered to.  The room was surprisingly\nunified in the desire to create an agents association and many agents expressed\ntheir willingness to pay a fee that would be required.  One important note in this area was raised by\nlongtime agent Jack Bechta, as he strongly cautioned the agents against\nlitigating with the NFLPA.  Bechta’s fear\nwas that it would ultimately cost their own client’s money and that given the\nexpense it would be unlikely to produce any meaningful changes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      NEW LEAGUES<\/strong>?The\nevent was Co-Sponsored by the XFL, and former Buffalo Bills GM Doug Whaley\nspoke to the agent group. It was interesting to hear some of the input the XFL\nhas taken from the agents, most notably, that the XFL will have the agents paid\ndirectly by the league.  This is a\nsignificant change since one continual battle for many agents is to have their\nplayers pay their fees and expenses.  The\nNFLPA’s refusal to allow this payment structure is the cause of many fee\ndisputes, because it is easier for the player to just not pay” without any\ngood reason.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      It was refreshing to see so many agents addressing the\nissues that have plagued the agent community since I was first in the business\nin 2000.  Sadly, the issues really have\nnot changed and the agents have never pulled themselves together.  Prior attempts to create an association have\nfailed, frequently because the individual leading the charge did not have\nenough respect in the agent community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      Schaffer seems to have that respect and seems to be\nmarshalling the resources that are needed to make an agent association a\nreality.  It will be interesting to see\nhow the NFLPA reacts at Friday’s meeting and over the next several months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      The one noticeable absence at this meeting was the large\nagencies.  There did not seem to be any\nrepresentation from CAA, Athletes First, or Rosenhaus Sports, three of the\nbiggest agencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      An agents association would ultimately serve the players\nbetter as well, a fact which seems to escape the notice of the NFLPA.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      NFL Agent Peter Schaffer led a lively discussion about issues facing the agent community. Hosted by Inside the League and sponsored by Test, this gather delved into real issues that need to be resolved with the NFLPA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":742,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[294],"tags":[314,296,371,6,407],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/roykessel.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/roykessel.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/roykessel.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roykessel.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roykessel.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/roykessel.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roykessel.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/roykessel.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roykessel.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roykessel.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}