by Josh Luchs
Then Neil introduced me to Mike Trope, an agent-turned-attorney in Century City. He’d been a pretty prominent agent but had had enough, especially of the recruiting part, the players’ bad behavior from alcohol to weed to Quaaludes to girls to cars to money, what you had to do to win, and he had turned to practicing law. He had no interest in chasing players anymore but he was willing to advise us on negotiating. So I’d turned to Neil for counsel and now he was turning to Mike.
Mike is a story in and of himself. He started young, when he was in college or law school, and became an early superagent, before the era of Leigh Steinberg. His office was crammed full of pictures of him with some star athlete or another in glossy magazine spreads—Johnny Rodgers, the Heisman Trophy winner from Nebraska; Chuck Muncie, the running back from Cal who played for the Saints and the Chargers; Anthony Munoz, the USC offensive tackle who played for the Bengals. Trope was big-time, or had been at one point. Now, he told me, he just wanted to be a lawyer, leaning back in his big chair, in blue jeans, with shoes that had holes worn through, being comfortable and not killing himself in the crazy world of athletes anymore. Mostly, he had developed a cynicism about the business, and about life.
I should’ve learned something from that but I was young and intoxicated with the thrill. So now there were three of us—Neil, me, and Mike—but Mike didn’t want to be the agent, just the advisor. Besides, he hated the NFLPA, hated the industry. He’d burned out. He shared stories now and then about what had happened to this player or that or a deal gone bad or someone in the union you couldn’t trust; and how he was divorced and had two daughters now and didn’t want to be in that kind of business. (That’s a little ominous to look back on too, having two daughters of my own, not wanting them to see me in that business today.) He became my first mentor, even more so than Neil.
One day, I was in his office and he let me in on an odd secret. He was about to get married for the second time, to a beautiful blonde woman, and he said, “I want to show you something.” He reached in a drawer and pulled out a big legal document and said, “These are my divorce papers, already filled out.” I was thinking, “You have divorce papers for a marriage that hasn’t even happened yet?” I was young and sheltered and thought of marriage as a permanent bond, not something disposable (and even now, older and wiser, I still do). I remember when the Raiders would have Family Day and all the players’ families would come—the wives and kids—and take pictures and have a big day. I thought it was great. Of course, when it was over and the families went home, then the players’ girlfriends would reappear. So I knew it wasn’t the ideal picture it seemed to be. But I still thought marriage mattered and here was Mike Trope, who hadn’t yet said “I do” and he’d already drafted the papers to get out. That’s how jaded he’d become. And, of course, he wound up needing them when he got divorced again a few years later.
But I worked with him and learned from him, and he fronted me the money to travel and recruit players. That also had an odd twist to it years later. After all the trips he paid for, one day after I’d been in the business awhile, he asked to borrow $10,000 from my share of commissions we’d collected. He said he’d pay me 20 percent interest so it would be a good deal for me. And I felt like I owed him anyway. But why was this successful lawyer coming to me, still a kid, for that kind of money? I never asked. And he didn’t pay me back for years. I’d almost given up on getting it but right before my own wedding, when I needed the money to buy an engagement ring, he made good. (Although not before taking me to a pawnshop and trying to convince me to buy a ring that I thought he must have had there on consignment.) He paid me back the money, though without interest. There were lots of lessons from Mike—some good, some not so good.
Here’s how we were operating: Before Greg Townsend’s deal came up for negotiating, I was doing some recruiting with Neil, and Mike was staying strictly in the background as backer/advisor, never the agent of record. I’d go to Mike’s house, pick up a plane ticket and cash in an envelope, and take off to some campus. I was so young, I couldn’t rent a car most places. I’d use Mike’s name and track record to give me credibility with the players, get their attention, because otherwise why would they pay attention to me, a guy their age with nothing to sell of my own? I went to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to recruit defensive back Henry Jones, defensive tackle Moe Gardner, and defensive end Mel Agee, and then on to Fresno State, then to Boulder, Colorado, for linebacker Kanavis McGhee, in what turned out to be a fateful trip.
CHAPTER 3
Paying a player is like losing your virginity. You can never get it back.
Kanavis McGhee was the first player I ever paid. But not the last. (I would later learn, you don’t “pay” players; you “loan” them money, a big difference but not one I knew at the time.) Kanavis was a big pass-rusher, touted to be a high draft pick in 1991. Somehow I convinced myself, and Mike Trope, that Josh Luchs, the boy-agent, could connect with him. I parked my somehow-rented SUV outside Kanavis’s apartment, waited half a day, and practically followed him in the door, reeling off my pitch, barely taking a breath. “Kanavis, I’m Josh Luchs, a sports agent, and I flew in from L.A. and then drove here just to talk to you because you’re a great football player and I can really help you, and I’ll tell you how if you’ll give me a few minutes, okay?” He said, “Okay, sure, come in,” and I was already in the door, sitting on the couch. I proceeded to say anything and everything to create a bond. After a while, he asked if he could talk to me about something personal. I was thinking, Great sign. He trusts me. “Sure, Kanavis, anything.” He said, “My mom is not well and she just lost her job and she can’t pay her rent. She’s going to get evicted from her apartment …,” dramatic pause, “… unless I can find twenty-five hundred dollars for her.” And he looked to see if maybe the money had somehow appeared on the table across from him. Since I don’t carry rolls of hundred-dollar bills and since I didn’t know what to do, I said, “Let me think about it tonight. I’ll come see you tomorrow and let you know.” I was thinking that, no matter what, this would give me another chance to meet with him. But I had no idea what I was going to do. I went to my hotel room and made a list of why to do it and why not. I knew it was breaking NCAA rules to give money to a player before he’d played his last college game. But I also knew it would help a young guy and his mother. What if my mom was sick and needed money? What if I couldn’t help her? But what if someone found out? And where would I get that kind of money? I called Mike Trope to ask for the money but he told me that whatever I did was up to me; he wanted no part of it, and didn’t even want to know about it. I had to decide on my own. I had some money in a bank account, from my bar mitzvah. My parents had said to save it for something really important. Maybe this was it—an investment in my career. But it was wrong. Or was it? I went back and forth all night.
The next morning I went to the local bank, pulled the money from my account, went to Kanavis, and handed him $2,500 in cash. He shook my hand, put his arm around me, and said, “Thank you, Josh. Thank you so much. You’re my boy. You really came through for me.” I felt good, as if I’d helped somebody in need and created a relationship with a future client.
I went back to my hotel room and the phone rang. It was a teammate of Kanavis. “Kanavis told me you’re cool, a good man, and I need some help ’cause my pop is sick and losing his home and I need twenty-five hundred dollars …” And—boom—I felt sick to my stomach. I was the sucker. One player tells another that there’s a chump who’s passing out money. How could I be so dumb? I beat myself up all the way home. And I didn’t tell anybody about it for a long time—not Mike, not Neil, and definitely not my father—no one, until I did the Sports Illustrated story on my career as an agent. When contacted by the magazine for corroboration, Kanavis initially asked to be called back the next day, then did not return calls or e-mails, but some time after the article came out denied having taken the money.
Who Paid the First Player?
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br /> I was hardly the first to pay a player to win him over. The first time somebody tried to buy a college player with money? If Adam had played football in the Garden of Eden, an agent would have beaten Eve to giving him an apple … and some spending money. Here’s an excerpt from an ESPN.com Commentary article by Patrick Hruby.
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2010
COLLEGE FOOTBALL, AGENTS GO WAY BACK
The Heisman Trophy winner checked into a Philadelphia hotel under a false name, the better to keep things hush-hush. The agent handed him a contract, along with two bonus checks totaling $10,500. The young man signed.
Roughly a month later, the same Heisman Trophy winner placed a call with another agent, this one promising a more lucrative contract, along with a $20,000 bonus, ownership of five gas stations, half-interest in an as-yet-unformed eponymous oil company and, just because, a Cadillac for his father. The young man eagerly agreed.
Oh, and two days after that, he played his final college game.
The Heisman Trophy winner in question was LSU’s Billy Cannon. (The alias in question? Peter Gunn.) The first “agent” was Los Angeles Rams general manager Pete Rozelle, who later became commissioner of the NFL. The second “agent” was Houston Oilers (now Titans) owner Bud Adams, who tells the story in his own words in “Going Long,” an oral history of the AFL. (The whole case ended up in court, and Adams won.)
The year this all went down? 1959.
I did finally recruit a player, Latin Berry, an Oregon running back who became a defensive back in the pros. I had originally been after him, and a couple of other guys from Oregon, but didn’t land any of them. Latin signed on with another agent, Bradley Peter in northern California, and then got drafted by the Rams in the third round. He was right in our backyard so I went after him again. There’s a rule that you can’t solicit clients once they’re under contract to another agent, but that didn’t stop me, or Neil, or most agents. It’s one of the most flagrantly ignored rules in the business. Thou shalt not steal thy neighbor’s players … unless you want to and can. If you lose a player to another agent and you think he was poached, you can file a grievance with the union. But guess who’ll be the star witness in that case. Right—the player you just lost. And that new player isn’t about to turn against his new agent, or he wouldn’t have switched. He’s going to swear he got to you on his own, not that you solicited him. That’s why agents are able to raid competitors’ client lists with little fear of NFLPA discipline.
Neil and I were out to win Latin over, after the draft but before it was time to negotiate his deal, through mini-camps, in April and in May, until July or early August, up to training camp. We told him we were local, we could do more for him in L.A., and we would be there when he needed us. He was young and I was young, and we could relate; I’d go to his hotel, take him out on the town, and have him over to my parents’ house in Beverly Hills. Neil could be charming and persuasive, suggesting to Latin that he’d made his initial agent choice without all the information needed—what city he’d be playing and living in … and partying in. And since I was dating a Rams cheerleader, she and her girlfriends made his head spin to help make our case.
Latin jumped to us, a big score for me, my first negotiation. Neil did the negotiating and I watched and learned, and tried not to giggle out loud with excitement. Because I was sitting in the Rams office on Pico Boulevard with Jay Zygmunt, second only to the general manager (and later president himself). I was making a deal for an NFL player with the VP of the Rams! Un-fucking-real!
Okay, I wasn’t making the deal personally. But I was there. I signed the player. I got the call from the agent he fired, Bradley Peter, screaming and swearing and threatening to break my fingers. I got the next call from Mark Levin of the NFLPA, the first of many I’d get over the years, this one to scold me for behavior that was “not becoming” of an agent. I had a pretty arrogant attitude, almost dismissive. He didn’t understand the reality of winning over a player. He sat in an office in Washington, D.C., and pushed paper around. We were in the trenches. And I wasn’t too shaken by a finger-wagging from NFLPA since it was decertified at the time anyway—part of an ongoing labor dispute with the NFL during which it was legally advantageous for the Players Association to dissolve itself as a “union” (not unlike the one that happened in 2011). Once the disagreement was settled, the organization re-formed as a union for collective bargaining. But in the interim, ironically, more power with the league meant less power over agents. If you wanted to be a member, you had to follow their rules, but the penalty was more like a parking ticket than a moving violation. I appeased the union rep a little and got off the phone. I had players to pursue. I was an agent.
Kind of. Was I more of a runner than an agent? A recruiter more than a player rep? And what was the difference? I tracked down the players, made friends with their friends, or girlfriends, or found their home addresses or sat by their cars, or knew where they hung out. I was a runner on my way to being an agent. A lot of agents start that way. Like Gary Wichard, one of the biggest agents in the business, who was the other inspiration, along with Leigh Steinberg, for Jerry Maguire, and who I later worked for. According to Tom Friend of ESPN, “He entered the agent business at the urging of NBA star Julius Erving, a friend from Long Island, who introduced him to his own agent, Irwin Weiner. Wichard recruited players for Weiner, bringing in Colts running back Don McCauley and hockey player Jean Potvin from the New York Islanders. He eventually branched off to start his own agency …” Running, recruiting, bird-dogging, whatever you want to call it, can be an apprenticeship. I was in Agent School, learning about contracts, deal points, bonus structures, endorsement deals. And I was an equal partner with Neil Allen, getting an equal share of whatever we earned. So it was like a scholarship to Agent School.
It’s a Lot Easier to Pay Players than Get Paid by Them
In fact, getting paid was one of my early lessons. Get the money when you can. Agent commission was still 5 percent at the time and as soon as we consummated the Latin Berry–Rams deal, Neil got in the car with our new NFL player, went to a bank, opened an account for him, and deposited his signing bonus. The rule is the player has to pay you. You can’t get your commission straight from the team. Neil said, “Once you do these deals, it’s hard to get paid. When you have the opportunity to get paid, take it.” He took our cut that day in cash and handed me a stack of one-hundred-dollar bills. I went home, to my bedroom, and threw the money all over my bed and rolled around in it—$6,500 in hundreds. My sister walked in and looked at me like I was nuts. She was on her way to USC, to be a double-major in political science and communications, and all I could think was, “Go ahead and kill yourself in school. I’m gonna make some real money in football.” I was probably the only NFL agent rolling around in money in his bedroom in his parents’ house.
Find the Fat Chick
Next, I was off to Knoxville to go after Chuck Webb, the Tennessee running back. He was a red-shirted sophomore starting to get a name for himself. I had my plane ticket and some cash and I got there, went to the locker room, and couldn’t find Webb. Then I remember something Neil had told me: “Find the fat chick.” He said on every college campus there’s a big girl with a big ass who hangs around the football building and knows every player on the team, everything about them, and is in love with them, and follows them like a stalker. It’s a pretty crude observation but it served me well. There was an overweight girl wearing a Tennessee Vols T-shirt and warm-up pants hanging around the facility, just like Neil said she’d be. I’d dressed in jeans and a T-shirt so I looked like a student, and I struck up a conversation with her. “Do you know Chuck Webb?”
She proceeded to tell me every detail of his life, when his classes were, when he went to practice; she almost knew when he went to the bathroom. I waited outside the weight room when she told me to, and even though I had no idea what Chuck Webb looked like, the school made my job easier by plastering its players’ jersey numbers on their scho
ol-issue backpacks, sweatshirts, hats, whatever—so I literally had Chuck Webb’s number. Hello 44, I’m Josh Luchs. I told him I had flown all the way from Los Angeles to see him and wanted a couple minutes with him. He said he had to go in and lift but gave me his phone number and we met for dinner.
I was staying at the University Inn; every campus in the United States seems to have one. And they’re all pretty crappy and overpriced. At this one, there was a big picture of the head coach, Johnny Majors, at the front desk, and it made me paranoid, as if he were looking right into the guest register, following my every move. Over dinner and the next day or so, Chuck and I talked, and he let me know he could use some money. At this point, I knew Kanavis McGhee had spread the word about my having given him money and made me look like an easy mark, but I didn’t yet know that Kanavis was not going to sign with me. So I wasn’t afraid to put up a little more. Just a little this time: $300 to $500. I made it clear to Chuck that if he chose to turn pro after his sophomore year, I wanted him to come to L.A. to meet with me and Mike Trope after the season. And I gave him a full dose of Mike’s credentials—six Heisman Trophy winners, star running backs like Tony Dorsett, Earl Campbell, Johnny Rogers, and Mike Rozier—a legend in the business. I gave Chuck a few hundred bucks with the understanding he’d come see us, no agreement, no loan, nothing formal. And Mike didn’t know I was doing it, just as he still didn’t know anything about Kanavis. If I paid, it was my decision. I was just getting players for him, like a runner, but a runner who’s a certified agent. I didn’t know if Kanavis was going to sign and I didn’t know if Chuck was turning pro and coming to L.A. But I had bet on it—an investment of sorts.