by Josh Luchs
Over time, the better we did, the more tension there was. We had a strong 2002, thanks in part to John Blake’s magic. The Super Bowl Cowboys’ defensive line coach went with us to Fresno State to meet and sign defensive lineman Alan Harper. On the ride home from Fresno, we had a particularly unpleasant conversation. In front of Blake, Gary felt the need to explain the key to my success. “Josh, you’re smart enough to realize your limitations,” he said. “Without earning your college degree, you have to make sure you keep yourself surrounded by people more capable than you, with better credentials. If you continue selling accomplished people like me, maybe someday you can hope to achieve a small portion of the success that I have.” Instinctively, I responded, “Why would I ever choose to limit myself to your accomplishments?” Gary nearly drove off the road, screaming that he had represented all these great players, and produced movies, and I could never be as successful as he’d been. Between the car swerving and Gary screaming, I could hear Blake laughing in the back seat. I never understood Gary’s thinking. Why put me down? The better I did in the business, the more he’d benefit.
In 2002 we had Blake work out defensive end Kenyon Coleman and defensive tackles Rodney Leisle and Kenny Kocher of UCLA prior to their senior year. I would pick the guys up from Kenyon’s apartment or meet them at the bottom of a service road right near the UCLA locker room and practice field. This was clearly a violation of NCAA rules but I could rationalize it: no money changed hands and the kids were improving their conditioning. Gary also took credit for getting Kenyon on the back cover of Kiper’s preseason draft preview. We were helping the players. Wasn’t that what we were there for? That same year, Gary signed Dwight Freeney out of Syracuse, and some Oklahoma players, who were also in Gary’s territory, but with a big assist from Blake.
Then I got us in contact with Larry Tripplett, a defensive tackle from the University of Washington who was touted as a top pick. We’d had Willie Howard, one of the premier defensive tackles out of the Pac 10 the year before, and now I had a formal meeting set up with Tripplett and his family, right after a bowl game in San Diego. Bowl games are major events, with lots of demands on players’ time, so if a prospect wants a meeting, it usually means he’s ready to sign, or at least that we’re one of his final two or three. I had a great rapport with Larry; he was really smart, personable; he was one of my big fish for the year. It happened to be the same year elite safety Roy Williams was coming out of Oklahoma. If we signed Tripplett, I would get my 25 percent. If we signed Williams, Gary would get 100 percent. But I didn’t think it was either-or. Why not sign both of them? I made an appointment for Blake, Gary, and me to see Tripplett. Gary canceled at the last minute, saying he was going to see Roy Williams and I could forget about representing Larry Tripplett. He did essentially the same thing the next year in passing up a meeting with Nnamdi Asomugha, a Cal cornerback. These were big-time prospects, guys who were ultimately drafted high and well compensated in their pro careers. Why miss a chance at possible first-round picks? I began to realize Gary was competing with me, making sure I didn’t get too much.
The same was true when I orchestrated the meetings with running back Justin Fargas, who was transferring from Michigan to USC, and his father, Antonio, who had played Huggy Bear in the Starsky and Hutch television series and who eventually represented his son in the 2003 draft. But I got no accolades from Gary. Despite all of our successes, he was determined to keep me on a short leash. But he still wanted those big West Coast players I was getting him. So, eventually, he was going to find an avenue into my geography, to get the players I was bringing in. He got it when his former client Ken Norton Jr. won the linebacker coach’s job at USC. Between that and the doors I’d already opened for the agency at Arizona State, Stanford, and UCLA, he now had his own entrée into my territory.
To add to his West Coast presence, with less reliance on me, Gary decided to use an outside “street runner.” This meant a person who was not certified as an agent, was not a financial advisor or marketing expert, just somebody who was paid to connect the actual agent with a player. It could be a former teammate, a guy from the old neighborhood, a cousin, a girlfriend, even a player’s mom. An agent like Gary didn’t want to know how the runner got a player’s attention. Maybe he invited the player to a party, or hooked him up with a girl, or got him the use of a car, whatever—it’s better not to know. And he was only paid, on or off the books, when and if the player signed with the agency. One thing Gary and every other agent did know was that if any of this took place while the players were still considered student athletes, it was strictly forbidden by NFLPA and NCAA rules, and by forty-two individual state laws.
For recruitment at USC, Gary brought on Wade, a young guy who he said had the right “paint job,” meaning he was black. Wade was a former Fresno State player, so Gary tried to convince me he’d add value to our West Coast recruiting and I should reduce my piece of the commissions to offset Wade’s fee. No way was I buying that. Wade recognized me from my days with Doc; we’d represented, and funded, his teammate Tony Brown, a defensive back who was picked by the Houston Oilers in the fifth round in 1992. Wade knew me and my street reputation with Doc and I knew a lot of Wades—street runners.
Gary was out of his element. I had a pretty good handle on how this new venture was going to work out—not well—but I figured Gary wouldn’t want to hear my take anyway, and I decided to just let it play out. After all, he was using this guy to try to replace me, so why should I help him? Wade promised to deliver a player, his “cousin,” Kassim Osgood, a San Diego State receiver. Wade convinced Gary to front him some cash, pay his cell phone bill, and rent him a car so he could drive down to see his “cousin.” Kassim, of course, was no more Wade’s cousin than he was mine. I’d seen this movie before and I knew how it ended. A week later, Gary couldn’t reach Wade, even on the cell phone he was paying for, and now he thought Wade had stolen the rented car. That was the end of Gary’s “street runner,” but it sent a clear signal to me. He had always bragged he wouldn’t bring a certain type of recruiter into his company, but now he’d gone down the low road to try to assure he never needed me the way Steinberg had needed Dunn.
I talked to my wife, Jennifer, about the episode but we agreed I should swallow it for the time being. We’d planned our life around family and my career. It wasn’t a good time to rock the boat. We even went so far as to plan her pregnancy so she’d deliver after the draft, and before the start of the season, so I’d never risk missing a birthday party. The draft was in April and her C-section date was May 15.
The Wonderlic Test: The Test Nobody Should Fail
So, I just put my head down and did my work. Sometimes it was more like homework, like when we prepped players for the Wonderlic test. In addition to all the strength and speed tests at the Combine, the Wonderlic is given to every player in each year’s draft, supposedly to provide an objective evaluation of their intelligence as another of the tools they will need to excel in the pros. In a word: bullshit. What it really provides is an evaluation of agents’ ability to get their hands on the test in advance and teach players how to answer the questions. It’s all about cheating—agents cheating to help players pass a test. (Not that the players should need our help, of course, because they were getting a college education while they played football, right?)
We had copies of the Wonderlic, every year. So did a lot of other agents. In fact, I’d say, if your agent couldn’t get you a Wonderlic test, you needed a new agent. We got them from people who got them from people … I don’t know where it started. There were five or six versions of the test, same concepts, same format, fifty questions of increasing difficulty, taken over twelve minutes. We drilled the players to memorize the questions and answers, if not verbatim then at least the concepts, which were the same from year to year. Sometimes the order of questions would change, and number six became number twenty-two, or sometimes in a math problem the apples one year were lemons the next, or sometimes Betty
became Nancy, Nebraska became Texas, or June became September. But overall, not much changed. Even if you didn’t understand the questions, you could still memorize the answers. But plenty of players, even after we’d been spoon-feeding them the answers, quizzing, and repeating, still couldn’t get them right. Some refused to learn. Some had almost no experience of actually learning other than Xs and Os on a chalkboard. Some never had to go to class or had tutors who did all their work for them. A score of twenty is acceptable. Still, plenty—too many—can’t score a twenty or even close.
I watched Mike Sasson, a guy who worked for Gary building a baseball practice, who’d also been coaching players on the Wonderlic for years, learning his techniques and adding some of my own. It was as important how many questions were answered as how many you got right. The teams wanted to make sure the player could make his way through the test. Our goal was that the player would get a decent, respectable score … but not get them all right and raise suspicion.
Plenty of scouts, general managers, and coaches know the players are getting tutored—that is, memorizing questions and answers they’ve been fed—and some are okay with that. There even are some people in the NFL who say they don’t want players who are too smart, just enough to do what they’re told, run a pass pattern, or cover an opposing player. On the Internet site ProFootballTalk.com on February 13, 2004, in his “Daily Rumor Mill,” Mike Florio wrote, “With as many as six versions of the [Wonderlic] test floating around, there are some league insiders who think that if the players are smart enough to memorize the answers, they’re smart enough to memorize their plays.”
According to Charlie Wonderlic Jr., president of Wonderlic Inc. and grandson of the founder-inventor of the test, “The closer you are to the ball, the higher your score.” That axiom is commonly accepted knowledge in the game—though never logically explained—but it was corroborated by a chart published after the 2004 Combine:
Our job was to get our players up to the acceptable level, high but not too high. Ironically, I wasn’t a great student and here I was tutoring these guys. Maybe I could relate to them. In any case, we got our players through the test with respectable scores. Kevin Curtis from Utah State got forty-eight out of fifty even though I begged him to miss more. Willie Howard was the same way. He figured he went to Stanford so he should get a high score. Adam Archuleta scored in the higher range, smart enough to learn the plays but not too smart to be coachable. Later on, we had trouble with J. P. Losman, the Tulane quarterback. The first time he took the Wonderlic, he had a ridiculously low score, but we managed to get him into the low twenties the second time. Then it was our job to explain the big difference to the scouts. We said he just hadn’t taken the test seriously the first time, had got up and gone to the bathroom and not even finished the test. Not a great excuse, but good enough. He was drafted in the first round by the Bills.
In the end, the Wonderlic is another box to be checked. Time in the forty-yard dash—check. Vertical jump—check. Shuttle drills—check. Interview—check. Our players could all check the Wonderlic box. And we never had to worry about disasters like what happened to Vince Young. In 2006, the National Champion, Heisman-winning University of Texas quarterback got a score that made national headlines, but not in a good way. He scored a six out of fifty.
(Excerpt from story posted on USA Today after Vince Young’s score became public)
WONDERING ABOUT THE WONDERLIC? TRY IT.
By Mike Chappell, the Indianapolis Star
INDIANAPOLIS—Wonder why there’s so much fuss at the NFL Scouting Combine regarding the Wonderlic test, the one Texas QB Vince Young purportedly bombed?…
The Wonderlic has been part of the NFL’s player evaluation process for nearly three decades. It consists of 50 questions and must be completed in 12 minutes. The average score is 21 correct answers …
Michael Callans, the president of Wonderlic Consulting, describes the examination as a “short-form intelligence test.” Others consider it an exam to assess an individual’s problem-solving skills.
The test starts off with simple questions, perhaps pertaining to the days of the month or, according to Callans, “adding 2 plus 3. As you go through the test, it gets more and more challenging, and we begin to add more content and types of questions.”
The key is for an individual not to dwell too long on one question …
TEST YOURSELF
Here is a sampling of questions included on a Wonderlic Personnel Test:
1. Assume the first 2 statements are true. Is the final one: a) true, b) false, c) not certain?
The boy plays baseball.
All baseball players wear hats.
The boy wears a hat.
2. Paper sells for 21 cents per pad. What will four pads cost?
3. How many of the five pairs of items below are exact duplicates?
Nieman, K.M./Neiman, K.M
Thomas, G.K/Thomas, C.K.
Hoff, J.P./Hoff, J.P.
Pino, L.R./Pina, L.R.
Warner, T.S./Wanner, T.S.
4. PRESENT, RESENT—Do these words: a) have similar meanings, b) have contradictory meanings, c) mean neither the same nor opposite?
5. A train travels 20 feet in 1/5 second. At this same speed, how many feet will it travel in three seconds?
6. When rope is selling at 10 cents a foot, how many feet can you buy for 60 cents?
7. The ninth month of the year is: October, January, June, September or May?
8. Which number in the following group of numbers represents the smallest amount?
7, .8, 31, .33, 2
9. Three individuals form a partnership and agree to divide the profits equally. X invests $9,000, Y invests $7,000, Z invests $4,000. If the profits are $4,800, how much less does X receive than if the profits were divided in proportion to the amount invested?
10. Assume the first two statements are true. Is the final one: a) true, b) false, c) not certain?
Tom greeted Beth. Beth greeted Dawn. Tom did not greet Dawn.
11. A boy is 17 years old and his sister is twice as old. When the boy is 23 years old, what will be the age of his sister?
Answers: 1. a; 2. 84 cents; 3. 1; 4. c; 5. 300 feet; 6. 6 feet; 7. September; 8. .33; 9. $560; 10. c; 11. 40 years old.
There was a brief but temporary outrage over Young’s score and the education, or lack of it, that college athletes were getting. You’d think if a college quarterback can get the snap count under center, he’d be able to answer a reasonable number of questions. The colleges squirmed. The NCAA squirmed. The NFLPA was silent. The NFL wanted the story to just go away. And eventually it did. Young was the number-three pick in the draft. Would he have been number one or two with a higher score? Who knows? He got a big signing bonus and contract, the Tennessee Titans got a quarterback, the fans sang the national anthem, and the game went on.
Was It Wrong? Not If It Worked
From the time we began wooing a player to the time he signed with a team, and throughout his career as a pro athlete, we were a full-service agency, offering Game Plans, test tutoring, strength and training coaches, media management, contract negotiation, financial advisors, even insurance agents. Gary had the connections with coaches in the business. No matter the position, he could hook up a player with the expert. Gary had a media network that was unmatched—from Mel Kiper and Tom Friend of ESPN to Larry Weisman of USA Today. And when it came to financial advisors he had the Rothmans, Judd and his son Erik, the guys Kenny Zuckerman had warned me about.
A twenty-two-year-old kid who wakes up one day with a seven-figure signing bonus and a multiyear contract has no idea what to do with his money. Gary sent them to the Rothmans. Even if they weren’t NFLPA-certified, and therefore not legal to recommend, they were Gary’s pick and that was good enough for most players. (Though later on, Brian Bosworth sued Gary for sending him to someone Gary allegedly knew had been involved in fraudulent activities—Judd Rothman—and for allegedly getting a kickback from Rothman.) Gary a
lso had his favorite insurance agent who got all the business we could send him. I had my insurance license at the time, so I’d work with the players on getting their policies, then run them through Gary’s guy, who would give us half the commission in return. As an agent, Gary was not supposed to receive any referral fees without full disclosure to the players, which Gary did not provide. But since I was not the agent of record on most contracts, I could receive referral fee checks, which I then cashed and split in half with Gary. Anything was okay if he could rationalize that it was in the name of taking care of the client.
Was it wrong, what we were doing and the way we were doing it? Hyped-up Game Plans with fake data? Bootlegged Wonderlics and spoon-fed answers? Financial advisors that weren’t NFLPA approved? Splitting insurance commissions without disclosure? It was all certainly against the rules, but was it wrong? I didn’t think so. I didn’t think too much about the right and wrong of it. I did what I always did in working for someone else: increased my value by doing things his way, learning his methods, improving on them where I could, and mostly by helping the clients. Gary knew how to create these Game Plan books and they worked. I knew how to take the books up a notch with computer skills. He was a good recruiter in the Midwest and East. I was good at recruiting in the West. Added value. And every agent out there was telling his story as persuasively as possible, bending the truth, buying dinner, wooing relatives, saying and doing whatever it took to close the deal. We were doing it with Game Plans and Wonderlics. And we weren’t handing out cash to players. In my mind, I was getting clean … or at least cleaner. The lesser of two evils? Maybe. Where does salesmanship end and deception begin? When does embellishment cross the line into lying? It’s a gray world we work in.