by Josh Luchs
What we did get into the deal was a set of off-season bonuses. All Maurice had to do was show up for off-season workouts and he’d collect the equivalent of the rejected signing bonus. That way the team got some assurance, or at least hope, that he’d overcome his bad work ethic to get his money. As it turned out, Maurice, not being in the shape he should’ve been in, strained his hamstring in training camp and nursed the injury for most of the preseason, saying he wanted to be completely healthy for the regular season. We tried to explain to him that with other running backs showing their stuff in the preseason, if Maurice didn’t win a spot on the roster, for him there wouldn’t be a regular season. For the last preseason game, the Broncos reported that Maurice wasn’t hurt so technically he could play, but as Steve and I had predicted to Kenner, they didn’t play him. The decision had been made. If they had played him, and he’d gotten hurt, they couldn’t have cut him without an injury settlement. They kept him out of the game and then they cut him. Maurice never took a preseason snap, never played a down as a Bronco, and other than preseason pay, never got a salary or bonus.
We had a couple of phone calls from him after that in which he asked, “Now what?” First, he had to clear waivers, that is, give another team a chance to pick him and pick up the terms of his contract. But that would’ve meant paying him those big back-end workout bonuses, which wasn’t going to happen. Maurice cleared waivers in twenty-four hours. Every NFL team had the chance to sign him, and nobody picked him up. No one wanted to touch him.
It was about that time that David Kenner and Hai Waknine started to think maybe they’d bet on the wrong horse. Maurice was headed to the CFL or NFL Europe at best. (In fact, a year later, he was arrested for armed robbery and was convicted. In 2010, he played for the Omaha Nighthawks of the UFL.)
The whole fiasco was sad. We did our best to save Maurice from himself. And we almost did it. In the end, it didn’t hurt our reputation. It probably helped it. It was almost as if prospects looked at us and thought, “Hey, if they can candy-coat a turd and get him drafted in the first day, imagine what they can do with me and with talent instead of drama.”
Unfortunately, I did win that one-dollar bet with Steve (the only dollar I made in working with Maurice Clarett).
Sports Biz Meets Show Biz
The biggest news in the industry in 2006 was Tom Condon’s move from IMG to CAA. Condon, who represented some of the biggest names in the game—Marvin Harrison, LaDainian Tomlinson, both Peyton and Eli Manning—said, “Two years ago, I told IMG that the sports agent of the future needed to have ties with other entertainers. These athletes are celebrities and entertainers just like movie stars and rock stars. But IMG wasn’t interested.” So he made a deal with CAA, Hollywood’s powerhouse talent agency. Condon would remain in his home base of Kansas City, but he’d have the glitz and glamour of CAA to offer his clients. Going Hollywood was the new game in town.
Almost simultaneously, Steve Feldman had been in quiet talks with the Gersh Agency, a talent agency with a reputation for building strong personal relationships with talent and a distinguished client list that included timeless icons like Humphrey Bogart and Richard Burton, and recent TV stars like Debra Messing of Will and Grace and David Schwimmer of Friends. As we started recruiting in late 2005 for the 2006 season, the talks heated up. Steve was talking with Hugh Dodson, COO of Gersh, and with Toi Cook, who they’d brought in to be Director of Player Development. Toi had been a defensive back, out of Stanford, who played with the Saints and the Super Bowl champion 49ers, a very sharp guy and Stanford alum. With Feldman and me, they’d have a sports agent base.
We worked out the details in late ’05 and early ’06 and announced it in the spring. Gersh represented all kinds of major writers and directors, which should theoretically provide opportunities for ball players in entertainment, plus access to red-carpet events, hobnobbing with stars, going to premieres, a really glitzy package. This was big news. Everybody who heard about Condon and CAA could nod their heads and get it. But Feldman and Luchs? That was a coup. One year together, no first-round draft picks, but a lot of PR, a lot of buzz. Gersh was betting on our momentum.
We had to get clients to build our roster under their banner, not only Steve’s NFL veterans or our handful of new guys, but clients for Gersh—with Hollywood potential—and demonstrate real synergy. It was a chance for me to show my value as part of the new venture.
The deal was, we would essentially turn over all of our income to the agency and take it back in the form of salary, but suddenly I was getting health benefits, a beautiful office in Beverly Hills, a support staff, and a great product to sell. I signed a three-year employment contract and collected a paycheck and that, in itself, was an improvement in my cash flow. When you represent athletes, you don’t automatically get paid or have your piece deducted from their paycheck before it gets to you. You have to go collect it, and that’s not always easy. You can get a little bit from the upfront signing bonus, something when the deal is done in August or September, but after that you don’t get paid again until the regular season ends in December. Typically, you don’t have money coming in again until the next crop of players’ signing bonuses the following spring, unless you happen to pick up free agents at the end of the season. You have to manage your money to carry you through these long periods and you have to hope the player makes paying you a priority. But with this new arrangement, I was getting a paycheck every two weeks, plus a built-in bonus structure as a performance incentive. Prior to Gersh, any players Steve and I had together, we had split sixty for him, forty for me, because he picked up the expenses.
Leading up to the Gersh deal, we were out recruiting players. I’d been talking to Jon Alston, a linebacker from Stanford, who was friendly with David Bergeron, who we’d represented the year before. But at the end of the recruiting year, he did a one-eighty. We thought he was coming into L.A. to sign with us but his mother, who had evidently been an attorney, wanted him to go with Gary Uberstine because she thought he had a more substantial company with ties to the entertainment business. Alston just stopped returning our phone calls. Very classy. He’d had dinner with me and my wife. I’d taken him to see guys training. We’d talked every week. Then, suddenly, nothing. No good-bye. I should’ve been used to it by then, but I wasn’t. I left him a pretty harsh phone message, describing him with trash talk he’d relate to, and figured that was the end of it. But, of course, it wasn’t.
That same year, we had a couple of players in the Senior Bowl: Mike Bell, an Arizona running back (who we signed with the Broncos and coincidentally was assigned number 20, the number that would’ve been Maurice’s), and Daniel Bullocks, Josh Bullocks’s twin brother. We went down to Mobile to the game and I was visiting with Bell in his room. I walked down the hall and there was Jon Alston. We kind of stared at each other for a minute, and eventually I waved him off and walked away. He called after me, “No, no, hold on.” I had already told Mike Bell how disappointed I’d been in Alston, which Mike must’ve shared with Jon. In the meantime, though it wasn’t official yet, we’d made our deal with Gersh. And Alston was a drama major at Stanford, so our working with a Hollywood agency would mean something to him. He begged me to talk and, of course, I did. This was my chance to tell him how disrespectful he’d been and how he should have manned up and called me. He was very apologetic and he wanted to know what was happening with our business, with me, Feldman, my wife and kids, and most of all, the Gersh Agency. His apology was obviously straight from the heart … of his ambitions. We left the conversation saying if he wanted to come see us in L.A. to let me know. He’d already signed with Gary Uberstine, who had already paid for Alston’s training at API (Athletes Performance Institute), a very expensive facility, laid out expense money, and flown his mother all over the place, but Jon was as willing to screw Gary as he had been to screw me. And even though he’d already burned me once, all I saw was another high draft choice.
Sure enough, back in L.A., he came to s
ee me and Steve and meet with Dodson, Toi Cook, and Bob and David Gersh. We paraded him around the office, meeting one talent agent after another, this one who handles big-name comedians, this one who has directors, and writers, and so on. We talked about screenings and premieres, and how we could set up auditions for him, and he was eating it up. On the spot, he decided to sign a termination letter firing Gary Uberstine. There’s supposed to be a five-day waiting period between when a client fires an agent and hires another, but most agents get around it by post-dating the representation agreements. There was just one more thing, Alston said. Would we mind flying his parents out from Louisiana? It was just as a formality, but he was very close to his mom and he wanted her blessing.
No problem. We put Alston’s parents up in a boutique hotel in Beverly Hills and gave them the same tour of the office. But his mother gave off a really bad vibe. She was curt, almost rude, hard as nails. When she met with Dodson, she laid out her own plan for the agency to set up a branch in Louisiana where she’d help us recruit players. Ballsy. And a really bad idea. Then we were sitting in Bob Gersh’s office, running through Steve’s track record, the great players he’s represented, from Lee Roy Selmon to Andre Rison to Junior Seau. She was not impressed and said something like if a rock sits by the side of the road long enough, eventually it grows moss … or some such analogy. Steve politely excused himself, which took all the self-control he could muster, and I was stuck taking them out to lunch, where the insult continued. She didn’t even attempt to make small talk. She took out a book and began reading at the table. We got them back on a plane, ducked the idea of her “branch office,” and proceeded with the paperwork with Alston. We didn’t discuss Jon’s momma’s drama with him—why embarrass him? Our goal was to keep him happy and sign him. And we did. Variety did a story on it, featuring Jon Alston, drama major from Stanford, the first player to sign with us at the Gersh Agency, attracted by the Hollywood connection.
We were in contact with Michael Hoffman, a young agent who worked with Uberstine, and they were plenty pissed at us. We assured them, and Jon, that all the costs they had laid out on behalf of Alston—training at API, per diem living, whatever—would be reimbursed. Jon was obligated to repay the money, so we were just promising that we’d make good, out of our pockets, on his promise. They sent us a breakdown of expenses and we disagreed with some items, such as travel to Las Vegas for him and his family, a laptop computer, entertainment costs, some things not directly related to training. We cut a check for what we thought was right but Jon was worried they’d file a grievance against him, which they did. He paid some of the costs that were in dispute. Part of the deal with API, the training facility, was that they’d get a bonus if Jon was drafted in the first, second, or third round, a different amount for each round. He was the thirteenth player taken in the third round by the Rams that year so they got an additional $1,500, which we thought was excessive; but we paid it.
NFL Economics: Short Course
Jon Alston’s was a typical NFL deal, not as lucrative as most people think—not for him, and not for his agents. Take a look at the economics: We got him a signing bonus of $550,000, plus his first-year base salary of $275,000, for a total of $825,000. As his agents, we received 3 percent, which was $24,750. But between Uberstine and API we paid back almost $25,000, so we were essentially at breakeven, or worse if we factored in the nonrecoupable expenses of recruiting him. His salary went up in year two to $360,000, so if all went well, we’d get 3 percent, or $10,800. There may be glamour in the business, but except for the superstars, the money is less and you can’t spend glamour. It takes a lot of deals with a lot of players to add up to a real business.
Meanwhile, we were out beating the bushes for clients. Alston had been a good get, but we still needed more that year. So, to bring us to the attention of players, at the Super Bowl, Gersh sponsored the Hawaiian Tropic Model Search. The event featured beautiful girls in bikinis showing off their tans for the judges who just happened to be our clients … and yes, it brought players and their friends, some of whom became new clients. And, at the Senior Bowl, I’d connected with a financial advisor to some of the players and asked him if any of them might be lured by the Hollywood connection. He told us about Marcus Spears, first-round pick out of LSU drafted by the Cowboys, a client of Jimmy Sexton. Spears was a charming, good-looking guy with a big personality, and we set up a conversation. I started pitching him about how Gersh represents these big-name comics, Jamie Foxx, Chris Tucker, Dave Chappelle, and Monique. Marcus loved Monique, who was going to do a concert in Dallas, and we got him VIP tickets. He was trying to decide whether to come out to L.A. to meet with us, and if he did, he wanted to bring his sister. I had him on the phone and I held the phone up to the window, to the outside traffic, and I said, “Marcus, do you hear that? Do you? You know what that is? That’s Hollywood calling, baby. Are you gonna answer the call?” He laughed, eating it up, and he and his sister flew out to see us. Besides Hollywood, I had a connection with Jim Rome and his syndicated sports radio show. I’d known him for years, including in our childbirth classes and from trick-or-treating with the kids, and our wives had become close friends. I called and asked if he wanted to have Marcus on his show, and he jumped at it. (Cowboys training camp that year was all over the news, because they’d recently signed superstar receiver and one-man circus Terrell Owens.) We had Marcus picked up in a limo and taken to the studio and he hadn’t done much national media so his head was spinning from the attention. By the end of the trip, we had him. Even though he and his coach, Bill Parcells, were both represented by Jimmy Sexton, Marcus fired Sexton and hired us.
Next up was Mike Patterson, a defensive tackle from USC, picked by the Eagles in the first round in 2005. Now, in 2006, we obviously weren’t going to get a commission on his current contract, but he was still a talented young player, and we thought he had potential to earn us some money and some cred with Gersh.
We’d actually gone after Patterson the year before, ahead of the draft, but not signed him. Funny story, actually: Steve and I had pursued him in his last year at Southern Cal, met with his family, since he was a local kid, and finally, thanks to an undrafted player named Johnny Walker, were able to get a formal meeting with Patterson in December 2004. We were at his apartment in a complex filled with other USC players, like Lawrence Jackson, who was going to be a first-rounder the next year. Patterson told us he was about to sign with Gary Uberstine, who was also the agent for Pete Carroll, Patterson’s own coach at USC. But we told him about how some of Uberstine’s players had fallen in the draft but we could maximize where he got picked (the old Gary Wichard pitch). We showed him our client list, went through our Playbook presentation, and created good chemistry. The meeting went well and Patterson said that, instead of signing with Uberstine as he’d planned, he was going to hold off, wait for the Senior Bowl, and think about it. Patterson walked us to our car and Steve, in his usual surfer shorts and T-shirt outfit, broke into an impromptu tap dance in the parking lot, stomped his feet, stopped, and said, “Can Gary Uberstine do this?” Patterson was laughing and we clearly had made a lasting impression.
Then something unusual happened. We went to the Senior Bowl to spend some time with our players and keep up contact with Mike Patterson. Pete Carroll, who was supposedly in Hawaii on vacation with his family, suddenly showed up in Mobile, Alabama, on the practice field. We talked to Patterson after practice and he told us that Coach Carroll had talked to him about Uberstine. Evidently Uberstine knew we were all over Patterson and he was about to lose out so he called in his big gun, his client Pete Carroll, to save the day. And that’s just what he did for Uberstine. Patterson didn’t want to go against his coach’s wishes so he stuck with Uberstine and walked from us.
So, could that make Pete Carroll a runner for Gary Uberstine? I guess it depends on how you define “runner.” A runner, by my definition, is any unofficial, unsanctioned, unlicensed go-between who gets paid, or stands to gain in some other
way, by helping to recruit a player for an agent, typically frowned upon by the NFLPA, and using a runner is improper without full disclosure.
Fast forward to 2006, when Patterson had just completed his rookie year and Steve and I had joined Gersh. Patterson’s financial planner happened to be the financial planner for Jon Alston, who we’d just signed. The planner said, “Mike, do you know Steve Feldman and Josh Luchs at Gersh?” And he said, “Yeah, I almost went with those guys.” So we brought Patterson to our new offices and talked with him about all the opportunities Gersh offered outside of football. He already knew our track record, and he explained to us why he had signed with Uberstine in the first place, why he now regretted it. He said he had now decided to make the switch. He got a letter together to fire Uberstine, sent it, and started to wait out the NFLPA’s mandatory five-day waiting period to make it official. As soon as he sent the termination letter, his phone started ringing. First it was Pete Carroll, whom Patterson hadn’t heard from probably since the Senior Bowl, insisting that firing Gary was a mistake. Then Mike heard from Derrick Deese, another USC player, another Uberstine client, now with the 49ers, saying virtually the same thing. We’d gotten Patterson an invitation to a party at the Playboy Mansion by way of Toi Cook at Gersh, also an ex-49er. Derrick Deese was at the party too and he was all over Patterson to withdraw the termination letter to Uberstine. But this time Mike had made up his mind and stood by his decision to come with us.
We always knew Pete Carroll was tight with Gary Uberstine, dating from when we’d tried to recruit at USC and Carroll’s rules kept us away from the field or the locker room, but allowed Gary in with access to players under the guise of being Pete’s agent. During the Carroll era, the list of USC players signed by Uberstine was impressive—nine players from one school—and would seem more than coincidental.