by Josh Luchs
3. Go slow. Build a bond. We’d talk about it on and off over a few lunches or dinners, or hanging out playing Madden Football, not pressing too hard, waiting for the player to bring it up again. Then I’d say, “Hey, I know you’re in a tough spot. Why don’t I just do this for you? I did it for some other guys, guys you know. I’m open to it.” I’d make it clear it was because we cared about him. We’d even turn him against the school, paying coaches so much, making a fortune from TV dollars, using the NCAA’s oppressive rules, all on the backs of players like him. The player could trust us, maybe more than he could trust the school. It was a relationship. He would be part of our family.
4. Make it a loan, not a gift. When the player showed real interest, he’d ask how it worked. I’d say, “Hey, it’s just a loan. A no-interest loan. Until you have the money to pay me back.” They liked that. No interest was like free money. And because it was a loan, it felt legitimate, a loan to be repaid, not a gift that players weren’t supposed to accept from schools or alums or boosters. It was just as much against the rules, but it didn’t seem like it.
5. Make the relationship clear. We’re doing this for you because we care about you and you’ll work with us because you trust us. I’d talk about our track record with players, our draft and contract results. I’d find out if there was a family member who had to be comfortable with us, or another agent he’d been talking to, or a family member who wanted to be the agent, any obligations that might get in the way of our working together. If there was resistance of any kind, I’d just wait, a week or a month, until they came up short on money and then I’d get a call.
6. Make it official. We had agreements printed up—our rep agreement on white paper and our loan agreement on pink paper. The player would sign both, but we’d tell the player we were not going to put a date on the rep agreement until after he’d played his last game as a college athlete—last game of the season or a Bowl game—to preserve his eligibility. So, at the end of the year, other agents would talk to these kids and tell them the contracts weren’t enforceable, but once we put a date on them, they were … kind of. Of course, the player could fire us; but in fact, the loan agreement would still be in force—as long as we were willing to risk enforcing it, which was essentially a suicide mission.
Agent Norby Walters and partner Lloyd Bloom made loans to players only to have them defect to other agents when they turned pro. Then Walters tried to collect the loans, even filing lawsuits—a move that completely backfired. The contracts were ruled to be against public policy and thrown out of court, and Walters’s agent status was destroyed. Anyway, we weren’t going to go that route for three reasons. One, if you sue a player, word spreads through the locker room; you’re dead at that school for years, and no other player will talk to you. Two, it was a complicated path; you’d make a very different case to the NFLPA than you might make in a state court. The courts are governed by law: innocent until proven guilty. But the Players Association can judge you arbitrarily: guilty until proven innocent. Still, a loss in either one would be a killer. And three, because Doc Daniels was a badass and I never saw anyone cross him.
7. Do not pay in cash. Doc told me cash was a no-no, big mistake, bad, dumb, never. Cash had no record, which on the one hand was good because we didn’t want it to be traced to us, but it also gave the players deniability. “What cash? I never took any money from you or anyone else.” The answer was money orders. Growing up in Beverly Hills, I knew nothing about stores that cashed checks and sold money orders. If my family needed money, we went to banks, not the post office or bodegas or gas stations. A whole other world opened up. You could stop at the Exxon Station in Long Beach, fill up the car, buy a grape Slushee, and get $2,000 in money orders, all paid for in cash. Doc would buy stacks of money orders and we’d just fill in the To and From lines, usually From: the player’s mother or girlfriend, and To: the player. From: Rhonda Miller, To: Jamir Miller, Amount: $300. When we filled them out, we pressed down hard and there was a carbon copy for us to keep.
8. Keep records. We kept our carbons of the money orders and our copies of the loan agreements, and I took it upon myself to keep a log of all transactions. On the rare occasions when I’d give a player a few bucks in cash, I’d initial my log and have him initial it too. Again, it’s not as if we’d go to court with these records but just that we had a record and that it made everyone feel a real obligation to honor the contracts.
And that was it—a simple eight-step system that, if executed well, produced reliable results. I don’t know if other agents followed the same steps, but I do know other agents were paying players. I know it because sometimes a player would tell us he didn’t need money since he was already getting it from another agent. I know it because sometimes I got the feeling the players were shopping for the best deal. I know it because sometimes when a player signed with us, he’d have us pay back another agent. And I know it because it’s common knowledge.
Arm-Wrestling for Players
Leigh Steinberg tells the story of sitting in the lobby of the hotel at the Senior Bowl one year and overhearing two agents across the room in a heated argument.
Agent 1: He’s mine! I’ve been giving him money this whole year, five hundred a month.
Agent 2: No way, he’s mine! I’ve been paying him since right after his red-shirt year.
Agent 1: I’ve paid him more than ten grand and he promised to go with me in the draft.
Agent 2: His dad said he’s signing with us.
Agent 1: His dad said the same to me.
Agent 2: Maybe we should split him.
They were fighting over who had bought the player, who owned him, but this is a human being, not an object. They were going to divide him like Solomon splitting the baby. Exactly how could they split him? And who was in the wrong here, the agents, the player, or both?
Around the same time, Steinberg says, a story circulated about a USC running back who signed agreements, prior to his eligibility, with six agents. Was he more unscrupulous, or just better at gaming a system that was trying to game him too? Paying players, or lending them money, was commonplace; it was rampant and flagrant. If an agent didn’t do it, he had to try to convince the players to hold off and that they’d get a plenty big enough payday by waiting, and not to jeopardize their futures. But it was a tough sell, some of them came from nothing, and money was being dangled in front of them and they simply hadn’t had the chance to mature. We used to say, “Players get the agents they deserve.” In hindsight, I’d say, “Players got the agent they were ready for”(meaning their level of maturity or understanding of the stakes and consequences).
Doc’s Eight Steps worked. Jamir Miller was sort of a typical case; study that scenario and you understand how this stuff works, good and bad. You look for players who are good as juniors; with sophomores or freshmen you’re taking too many chances on injury or being a hot prospect who flames out. And by the time they’re seniors you’re too late. You start by paying maybe $350 a month. Do the math and over a year and a half that’s more than $6,000 for one player … who may or may not pan out in the draft. Still, I’d tell a guy, “If you need more sometimes, let me know and I’ll see what I can do.” And even if a player wasn’t a star and dropped to a mid- or late-round pick, he might be a connection to another player. That’s how I met Jamir. He looked like a star from the start. He was explosive, a great pass rusher, linebacker, defensive end—a hybrid. When I first met him, I’d go over to his place and hang out, just trying to establish a relationship. He found out I was a cigar smoker and he asked me to take him empty cigar boxes when I took his money. I was pretty naive so I just thought he was collecting cigar boxes or had something he kept in cigar boxes. Actually, I was right: he kept his weed in them. By the end of season, right before he was coming out, we were paying about $500 a month, and he looked like a first-round prospect. The stakes were getting higher to keep him as a client.
Doc made it clear that he had only so much money and w
as in no position to up the ante into the thousands or to buy the kid a car. So, he did something he did from time to time, and brought in a big money guy, an investor. In this case, it was a guy named Al, who had ties to the music business and lived in a huge house in Beverly Hills (not from the rougher part). He tried to impress players by bragging about his “involvement” producing disco hits, but they were more impressed with his house. We had to give away a third of our commission to him. The theory, though, was that the player would still pay back all the money once he signed with a team, even the cost of a car. But that theory was built on the premise the player would be drafted and drafted high.
Jamir wasn’t working out as hard as he should have. We didn’t have any formal structure to help him train like agents do now. It was up to the players to work out with the school’s strength and conditioning coaches. Jamir didn’t run well. His times in the forty-yard-dash weren’t fast. A month or two before the draft, somebody from the Arizona Cardinals called and said if Jamir could run a 4.6 in the forty, they’d take him as their tenth pick in the first round. It was because of Doc pulling in favors, asking them to take another look at Jamir privately. We worked with him at a track away from UCLA so nobody would know about it. The Cardinals sent a scout and Jamir ran just well enough to satisfy them.
We threw a draft party, picked up the tab at a soul-food place called Creeque Alley on Melrose. Plenty of UCLA players came, including star wideout J. J. Stokes, who, like his teammates, was still college-eligible, and therefore not supposed to be there. But they were great contacts for us to make. Going forward, they would know us as the guys who had put on the big bash for Jamir Miller. The Cowboys even sent a scout to the party because they were thinking of trading up to get him, and if they decided to pull the trigger, the scout would get on a plane to Dallas with Jamir. When the tenth pick came, though, the Cardinals stuck to their plan and took him. And we celebrated. My parents were there. It was a big deal.
But, in fact, at that point, it was still no deal at all. The deals aren’t made until training camp in late July or early August. I remember asking Doc why we and the teams weren’t exchanging offers during that time and trying to get it done. He said, “If they have a choice of giving you a million dollars now or a million dollars later, which do you think they want to do?” I got it. And at this point in my career, I wasn’t doing much negotiating, just learning. Doc did the deals. We finally agreed to terms with the Cardinals, through Bob Ackles, and Doc and I flew out to Phoenix. When we got there, the deal we thought we’d agreed to with Ackles was overruled and reduced by the head coach, Buddy Ryan. He wanted less on the signing bonus and a different contract structure, all at the eleventh hour. That led to us having Jamir hold out of training camp. He missed the first practice while we stayed in Arizona and negotiated. In the end, we had to “compromise,” meaning we settled on a different deal than the one we’d agreed on, closer to Buddy Ryan’s deal. We could either keep holding out, keeping Jamir off the practice field while Ryan ripped him in the press, or we could “compromise.” There was no free agency so we had very little leverage. Even when a contract ran out, the team retained its exclusive rights to the player.
As soon as we made the deal, he got on the field. And a few days later we had our payday. We got our commission on the signing bonus and our loan money, but nothing was paid on the salary until the players started to get paychecks. And our investor got his piece.
Now jump ahead to year two with Jamir. In his second season with the Arizona Cardinals, he tested positive for drugs and got a four-game suspension. As a rule, agents are not informed of drug problems unless the player tells us. And according to league policy, a first-time offense means a rehab program, second-time offense a fine, and third-time, a fine and suspension. We didn’t even know there was a problem until the third offense. Jamir was absolutely adamant that he had not done any drugs even though the NFL’s tests were positive. So we arranged for another sample to be done, a “B Sample” of the same sealed and initialed specimen, and sent it off to an independent lab. It came back positive too. (I still have a copy of that report.) Jamir told his mom, still claiming to be clean, and she said, “If you say you didn’t do drugs, then you didn’t do drugs. And if you’re going to get suspended anyway, then your agents must be no good. You need to fire them.” So he did. He did pay off the loans, and the agent commissions owed from the signing bonus, and it was by far the biggest payday of my career to date.
And here’s the big irony. He came back, played a long time, and even made a Pro Bowl. A few years ago, he was one of the candidates to succeed Gene Upshaw as NFLPA executive director (DeMaurice Smith eventually got the job). A guy who took money from agents when he was in college, a guy who tested positive for drugs, was up for the top job in setting and enforcing the rules. He’d already served as a member of CARD, the Players Association Committee on Agent Regulation and Discipline, passing judgment and suspension on agents. What’s wrong with this picture?
That same year, we followed up on a guy who’d been at the draft party, J. J. Stokes. We had the guy who was the tenth pick in the draft in Jamir Miller and we had Sean LaChapelle, the all-time leading receiver for UCLA. Sean and I got to be friends off the field and he came over to my parents’ house, later even giving me a dog, named Touchdown. Ironically, I didn’t give him money but he gave me a dog. I thought I’d sign him after his junior year but UCLA coach Rick Neuheisal convinced him to go back as senior. For the next year, to keep other agents away from him, I moved him into my house. I’d made a deal on a distressed property in Woodland Hills, twenty minutes from UCLA, that I co-owned with Glen Walker, sports broadcaster on Prime Ticket, hosting the Pac 10 show. Glen lived in the master bedroom and I took the other two bedrooms, one for me and one for Sean. I even got Sean to give out my phone number for his. I’d listen to the messages agents would leave in pursuit of Sean, including Leigh Steinberg, (who claimed he never recruited players, that they just came to him). My answering machine would’ve proven otherwise. Sean, Glen, and I were roommates during Sean’s senior year.
Doc and His Jew-Boy
Doc and I were breaking a lot of agent-player stereotypes. Other black agents were amazed that he or we had signed UCLA’s white golden boy, Sean LaChapelle. He said maybe those black agents needed a “Jew-boy of their own” like me. And at the same time, I was running around with black athletes, partying, hanging out, and signing them. One night, I went to an L.A. club with a bunch of players, and the rap group Public Enemy was playing to a packed “all-black-except-one-Jew-boy” house. One of the lead singers, Flava Flav, came out with a replica of Big Ben around his neck, and with the other lead, Chuck D, started singing their hit antiestablishment anthem, “Fight the Power,” from the Spike Lee movie Do the Right Thing: “We got to fight the powers that be / Lemme hear you say / Fight the power …” They were marching like soldiers in formation across the stage, in military uniforms and army boots, and I was thinking, I sure hope they don’t see this one pasty white face as “the power” they need to fight.
Later, when I started dating the woman who would become my wife, I asked her to go with me to a players’ picnic in a park in Pasadena. She thought a picnic would be a nice, wholesome way to spend an afternoon. When we got there, again, we were the only white people. And she was fine until someone started shooting a gun off for fun. When star wide receiver Keyshawn Johnson heard the shots, he planted a stiff arm in my chest like a Heisman pose and started the stampede to the parking lot. This was not from the world my girlfriend/future wife was used to. Nor from mine. But what was becoming my world was being as comfortable hanging with a white player like Sean LaChapelle as I was hanging with black players like Keyshawn or J. J. Stokes.
When Stokes broke Sean’s all-time UCLA receiving record, he was a natural for us to sign. We were starting to gain enough credibility that giving him money wasn’t the key. In fact, he made it clear he didn’t want or need money. We were trying to get him to c
ome out as a junior and we said, if you stay another year, how will you be financially and he said he’d be fine, he was only considering coming out early so he could play pro ball sooner.
One player just led to another, from Sean to J. J. to defensive backs Carl Greenwood and Othello Henderson, to offensive guard Matt Soenksen, to tailback Chris Alexander, defensive tackle Bruce Walker, and offensive tackle Vaughn Parker. First of the month, like a deliveryman, we paid whoever was on our payroll. We paid Ryan Fein, the UCLA quarterback. He transferred to Idaho and so did our payments. Bruce Walker was arrested for firing a gun in L.A., and later pleaded nolo contendere to disturbing the peace. Guess who was his bail-maker. Me. Guess who got Jonathan Ogden, star UCLA left tackle, tickets to a Janet Jackson concert. Me. He didn’t take our money but he took the tickets. I’ll never forget his high-pitched shrieking, “Jan-et! Jan-et!,” like a teenage girl … a six-foot nine-inch, 345-pound teenage girl.
Trusting a College Coach: Big Mistake
In the midst of pursuing J. J. we got a call from Frank Stephens from the UCLA athletic department arranging a meeting with Terry Donahue, the Bruins head coach. I was kind of nervous but also was excited that Terry Donahue knew who I was. Frank was a guy Doc knew pretty well, and I suspected he might have a connection to Marvin Demoff, one of the marquee agents of the time (a guy whose path we would cross many times). Coach Donahue said, “Josh, you’re the biggest threat to the well-being of my football program in all my years of coaching here.” He said it had hurt the program when Jamir Miller had come out as an underclassman and it would hurt if J. J. came out. I wasn’t sure how to feel about this. He was calling me out, as if I were in the principal’s office, but he was also acknowledging that I’d become a factor to be reckoned with. He said to me, very man-to-man, that he’d appreciate the courtesy of me backing off, not putting any more ideas in J. J.’s head about coming out in his junior year. So we backed off and J. J. stayed with the program. I thought we were doing the right thing for a coach who was trying to do the right thing. I never made that mistake again.