One thing is for sure, I’ve enjoyed the chance to blog about my passion. This is a great forum and Darren (the other one) is doing some fantastic work building this community of people who share the same passion for player representation, allowing us to sit back and critique the world that we all want to be apart of.

I will continue my rant on the Canadian Football League with some more odds and ends about the inner workings of the league from an agents perspective.

First off, the length of contracts in the CFL. In most major professional leagues you have players signing long term deals of four, five…even fifteen (see Rick DiPietro) year contracts. In the CFL, you really only have two varieties of contracts: One year or Two year. In both cases, the contract is coupled with a club option. Every CFL contract includes a standard option year. However, last year one player made headlines in the CFL by being the first (and last) player to sign a one year contract without an option. His name, Ricky Williams. It’s amazing what the CFL will do to accommodate a star player. Anyhow, long term contracts just aren’t seen. I’ve signed a few four year (plus option) deals in the past, but those were a rarity.

The major reason why contracts are kept short is because players don’t want to be bound to the CFL. The objective for most players is to play a year or two in the CFL and jump to the NFL where the real money lies.

Another similarity between the CFL and NFL comes down to the fact that contracts are not guaranteed. In he NFL, many players have guaranteed contracts that cover a partial or in some cases the full amount. In the CFL, nothing…nada. There have been a few guaranteed deals in the CFL, but those are rare cases.

Signing bonuses are common, but are not significant. For example, the 1^st overall draft choice in the 2006 CFL Draft received a $10,000 signing bonus. Not large by NFL standards, but when you consider that his base salary was $40,000, the signing bonus seems a lot nicer!

Sun Tzu once said “Know yourself.” That advice must be heeded in all forms of business, especially when it comes to contract negotiation. Successful negotiators can predict how their opposition will react to their demands and know exactly what buttons to push. When I started off in the CFL, I had negotiated plenty of contracts – but, none in the CFL. They were all hockey related contracts done at the minor pro level. The only way to learn how to negotiate is to do it as often as possible. It’s not something that you can practice with a friend or map out on a piece of paper. It’s something that you need to learn on the job.

Sports representation is a people business and the only way to succeed is to get to know the people who run the business as well as you can. Just like a pitcher keeps a log of all the batters he has faced, a good agent will develop a little black book of negotiation. I do it all the time. You’ll find that one team in particular likes to offer a particular incentive. It’s not something that they will offer up to you, but if you negotiate well, it will end up on the table. Some teams are keen on roster bonuses (12, 16, 18 games) and some would rather give the player a larger playtime bonus (51% of all offensive plays). There is no way to know that unless you can experience it first hand.

Luckily I operate in an 8 team league where it becomes pretty easy to get to know all of the key decision makers pretty quickly. The only downside is that it’s a small tight knit group and you can’t afford to make any enemies, risking the potential of cutting off 12.5% of your target market.

Negotiating in any sport is very much like a game of chess. During the process you’ve got to make decisions to give up some pieces for others. As an agent, your role is to make sure that you’re giving up the pawns and not the queen!

-Darren Gill

The Canadian Football League – Continued from Sports Agent Blog - Sports Business, Sports Law, Sports Negotiations, NCAA Rules

Before you get all excited, there are many more steps to the process. I can’t give away all of the trade secrets, but these three steps are the three most pivotal steps in the recruiting process.

1 – Establish contact early

2 – Develop your pitch

3 – Be honest

Here is a description of each step and how you can make sure that you dominate at each level. Just remember that your competition is trying to do the exact same thing you are.

1 – Establish contact early

I’ll admit that I have a major advantage in Canada. Athletes playing in the CIS (Canadian Interuniversity Sport) have no limits as to when they can sign with an agent. Essentially I can sign a player at any time. So, when I want to establish contact early, I can. I can speak to a player and sign a player at any point. I do sign many Canadian football players who are playing D-1 football, so I know about the stringent rules in place. We all know that the role of the “family advisor” is growing in most college sports as well. Agents aren’t dealing with players directly, but they are providing families with advice. So, there is a way to go about speaking to and signing players at a young age – but, the key is establishing contact early.

How can you establish contact early? The easiest way to access a potential client is via the Universities website. About 60% of them have an easily accessible directory that offers up an e-mail address and phone number for all of their students. Use this method and you’ll have contact information for several top prospects within minutes!

2 – Develop your pitch

This is the key step. You’ve established contact early, now the potential client is starting to ask questions about you and your company. What are you going to tell him? You need to work on your pitch before you do anything else. I had to tell you but “I just graduated from law school and always wanted to be an agent” is not going to work (yes, I’m having fun taking shots at the law school enthusiasts).

What might work is “My firm currently represents 5 select clients and is looking to add another. Through our selection process we determined that you would be a great fit with our organization and we also feel that our strengths would allow for us to sell you at the next level. You will not find a more dedicated firm out there today. The fact is that nobody knows the inner workings of the league like we do and it has paid off for our firm and helped us gain the respect of several influential General Managers. In fact, I was speaking with a GM a few weeks ago and he brought up your name and insisted that I should make contact with you.”

I must start by pointing out that I’ve never used that intro, but I wanted to give you an idea of what a good one might sound like when you’re trying to establish yourself in the business. The toughest aspect to establish is credibility, especially when you’re a rookie looking to break into the market. You’ve got to convey confidence and your knowledge must shine through.

3 – Be honest

Here is the part that bothers me most. Dishonest agents. And, when I speak about dishonesty I’m not even going to get into some of the major ones. I want to hit on one that worries me the most – creating false expectations. After you make your pitch a player is going to ask you “so, where do you think I’ll end up” (or some form of that..) and you the agent needs to give him an answer. You wouldn’t believe what some players are being told. In Canada, agents run around telling college football players that they are headed to the NFL and that they (the super agent) can get them that opportunity. You must understand that a Canadian college player jumping to the NFL happens one out of every five years (Steve Morley, Israel Idonije).

When players ask you what their potential of playing at the next level might be – be honest. It sounds simple right. Why lie about something like this? Because it becomes part of the negotiation process with the player. I’m going through it right now with a potential client! He’s telling me that other agents are telling him that he can play X, and I tell him that he can play Y. Guess what, he’ll likely sign with the other guy and be disappointed when he signs with Y. I can do the same thing, but it’s not a good business practice.

- Darren Gill

Chasing the Client from Sports Agent Blog - Sports Business, Sports Law, Sports Negotiations, NCAA Rules

Here’s the Canadian Football league in a nutshell:

- 8 teams, with 42 active players per team.

- Half of the players on each roster are Canadian, half are American.

- The field is longer (110 yards) and wider (65 yards). The end zones are also 20 yards long.

Why point out those facts? Because they relate directly back to my business. Here’s why:

- 8 teams mean that your opportunities for a roster spot in the CFL are limited. With 336 active roster spots, my firm represents 8% of them. In most other leagues, top agents are representing between 4-5% of the total active membership. (Apologies for the selfish plug)

- With half of the players in the league being Canadian, a Canuck has a distinct advantage over an American player. There are far less talented (in number) Canadian football players to fill quite a few spots. In addition, each team must start 7 Canadians. You see, Canadians in the CFL are gold! For that very reason, the majority of clients that I represent are Canadian.

- The larger field means that players in the CFL are leaner and faster. For example, most players who play DB/Safety at a US College would be converted to an outside linebacker in the CFL. That 350 pound hole plugging offensive lineman won’t make it either and the defensive lineman are slim and fast.

Here’s the way I look at the CFL. It’s not a minor league to the NFL, it’s a completely different brand of football. Some former 1^st round NFL draft picks haven’t been able to make it in the CFL. The league demands a different skill set and it’s up to a player agent to recognize this and seek out the right type of player for this league.

What’s interesting is to see how the gap has widened over the past 25 years between the CFL and NFL. It’s hard to believe that the CFL used to lure players away from the NFL, including the likes of Tom Cousineau. Remember that Cousineau was drafted first overall in the 1979 NFL Draft by the Buffalo Bills, but never played a game with the Bills after Cousineau thought that the Bills were rude to him. He instead signed with the Montreal Alouettes where they offered double the money that the Bills originally offered! Imagine if Mario Williams would have spurned the Houston Texans for the Saskatchewan Roughriders!

How do players make it into the CFL? Two ways really, for each nationality. Priority American’s are put on a “negotiation list”. Each team has a list that he can fill up with 40 names. The teams constantly add/delete players from this list depending on their status in the NFL. Amazingly enough Ricky Williams was on the BC Lions neg list for years and about a month after they took him off the Toronto Argonauts added him to theirs and the rest is CFL history. Canadians are eligible for the annual Canadian College Draft. It’s a 6 round event that happens in April after the NFL draft. The CFL Combine happens about a month before. The combine is attended by about 50 prospects annually and is a two day event. Americans who aren’t on negotiation lists and Canadians who aren’t drafted automatically become free agents.

When it comes to representation, It is estimated that about 70% of the players in the CFL have representation. Meanwhile, the other 30% get screwed over by their member clubs…just kidding.

Of important note, the CFL has recently instituted a salary cap which will hover around the low $4 million mark. It’s the first time in league history that a cap has been instituted. The key next season is going to be how the league monitors it next year. It’s a big question mark! The league always had a salary cap in place, but it was never enforced.

One of the problems over the years in the CFL had been the excessive number of “side deals”. Some teams attempted to play under the cap, but would do so by registering a contract that wasn’t legitimate. A players contract that was worth $180,000 would be registered at $120,000 – keeping 1/3 of the contract off the books. In the end, this was bad for everybody.

Why?

A player who got traded would have his bogus contract traded with him. His new team wasn’t going to honor his purported contract. In addition, a few years back when two teams couldn’t make their payroll at the end of the season the league assumed making payments to players and only paid what was registered with the league.

Agents weren’t able to compare contracts with other players because the notion was that all contracts registered with the league weren’t accurate. So, it became much harder to negotiate with so little information.

Teams ended up destroying the parity in their own small league and as a result one of the teams (Ottawa) could no longer compete financially. The salary cap had been just under $3 million, but most teams were in the high $4 million range. The game was great because they didn’t have to play within any set of rules, but that story got old pretty fast!

The average salary in the CFL is about $54,000, with the league minimum at $39,000 and no max on an individual contract. Obviously there aren’t multi-million dollar contracts floating around in the CFL which is why some agents have decided to stay away or just look at the CFL as a place for some of their players to hone their skills. About 5-10 players jump from the CFL to the NFL a year and some of them end up having a pretty good impact; Warren Moon, Jeff Garcia, Doug Flutie, Mike Vanderjagt, Jon Ryan, and a host of others!

Why did I decide on representing players in the CFL? Well, I guess I’ve found my niche.

- Darren Gill

Representation in The CFL from Sports Agent Blog - Sports Business, Sports Law, Sports Negotiations, NCAA Rules

First off, does it seem like every big time football agent claims that he was the basis for the Jerry Maguire character? Both Rosenhaus and Steinberg have made such claims publicly and many others have also claimed to have been consulted on the role.

In a previous post I was talking about research and how it is readily available. One of the more interesting reads you might find is something that you most likely wouldn’t actually call research until you read it.

It comes straight from the movie. Jerry’s mission statement: The things we think and do not say. Believe it or not, you can find the entire thing here: http://www.thisisawar.com/PurposeJerry.htm

What do we learn from this so called “mission statement”? It focuses on personal attention. Something that most agents think they do really well, but most fail at. To be honest, there have been times in my career when I take a step back and ask myself how many clients I can really handle and if they would be getting better service if I reduced my client base.

I’ll take a quick second to talk about selecting the right clients once again. Here’s what typically happens to a young agent. Young agent signs 5-6 decent clients who have a shot at playing professionally. Then, he signs a few more and a few more. During this process he’s signing just about any player that he can get his hands on – making promises along the way.

Now, the greatest moment comes along – You sign a player with real pro potential and he becomes your highlight client. You sit back and wish that all of your clients were like this, but they aren’t. The new star client gets all the attention, but the rest of your clients don’t.

My advice – don’t be that agent.

Don’t be the agent who can’t remain loyal to the clients that were once loyal to him. You’ll want to boast about client retention – not fear the question.

Most agents have that “Jerry Maguire Moment” late in their career. I’m warning you to prepare for it. You’re operating off of a clean slate.

When I was a young agent, General Managers would always ask “who do you represent?” I always thought that I’d need to produce some laundry list of clients to them to seem important. You’ll find out soon enough that producing a long list of players that aren’t prospects only diminishes your chances of earning their respect.

The hardest part about being an agent is getting the respect of the key personnel decision makers. In essence, signing clients is the easiest step. A polished sales pitch to a client and he’s yours. Getting a key personnel decision maker on the phone is hard enough!

How can you impress a decision maker? I’ll take a minute to mention that a law degree will do little to impress at this point. Just needed to make sure we were all on the same page. However, an understanding of the league, the CBA, and your client will go a long way.

For example, I’ve heard all the horror stories. An agent calling a specific team with a player that they just don’t need. Or better yet, missing the boat on a potential opening for a client because you weren’t dialed in to a specific situation. A good agent spends hours monitoring the transaction wire and speaking to his other clients about possible roster movements.

Typically by the time a move is publicly announced its old news and some other agent has already filled the void. When a GM is quoted in the paper saying that his team is “looking for a new punter”, he likely already has a few punters in town already working out for him. By the time you place your call offering your clients services, it’s simply too late.

-Darren Gill

What We Really Learnt From Jerry Maguire from Sports Agent Blog - Sports Business, Sports Law, Sports Negotiations, NCAA Rules

You’ve convinced yourself that you want to be an agent and are ready to enter the market. How do you go about getting your first client? Hold on; let me change that to, How do you go about selecting your first client? The key word: selecting.

No matter how big or small the agency, the process of signing a player first involves selecting the right client to represent. Listen, we’ve all made the mistake and signed the client that we should have never signed because we’ve been way to eager to add to our client rosters. But, I can tell you from experience that it isn’t the right way to build a business!

I have only one piece of advice to give about selecting your clients from your first to your last: Believe in your client.

You need to truly believe that your client has some special abilities and that he can play at the next level. If you don’t believe in him, you’ll never be able to sell him to any team. Being an agent is being a salesman, plain and simple. How can you sell a product that you don’t believe in? It’s impossible.

No matter the experience of the agent, he needs to get in the habit of selecting the right clients. There are ideal clients for particular agents. Take a look around the NFL (my apologies to those who don’t like the constant football analogies) and you’ll see that several agents focus in on a particular group. There are agents like Kevin Gold who focus on working with long snappers. Even a large agency like Athletes First (David Dunn) tend to represent mostly quarterbacks. Other agents focus on players who come out of a certain school/region, using Drew Rosenhaus as an example he’s owned the University of Miami campus for years.

There is nothing wrong with specializing in a particular segment of the representation market. A young agent typically wants to be everything to everybody. Especially the young hard working agent who is bound to take on more than he can chew at some point in his career. My advice to all agents, pick your niche and run with it.

Why pick a niche within this gigantic market? Simple. It helps control your business and also helps you negotiate. Obviously you don’t want to limit your market too much (left handed pitchers named Ramon) but you want to make sure that you can master your market. Take for example the agent that decides to represent only fullbacks in the NFL (not that I would suggest such a thing). By the time you get rolling, you’ll know everything there is to know about fullbacks, such as which fullbacks are currently on rosters and most importantly who is making what.

Developing an effective niche allows you to master a particular aspect of a much bigger market and when a player who fits into that niche is looking for an agent, guess who he is going to call!

Developing a proper niche brings me to me to my next point: growing your business. The best way to grow your business is going to be through client references. Days, Months, even years of recruiting a player can all be accelerated to a matter of minutes just by getting the proper player references. Believe it or not, talented established professional athletes will start calling you, the hard working rookie agent, based solely on the positive reference of one of your existing clients.

Now, this all goes back to selecting the right clients. By selecting the right client you are setting yourself up to start collecting on the kind of player references that you want. Select the wrong type of client and the reverse will happen.

How can an agent get his start and work towards selecting his first client? Do your research. Become an expert at the sport in which you want to work before you dare to enter it as an agent. If you don’t, players and key decision makers will sniff you out and throw you to the curb. There is no substitute for establishing credibility. When I went about selecting my first client I choose a talented football player from my alma mater and decided that he would be a great fit. This is typically the path that most agents take. It happened with Leigh Steinberg signed Steve Bartkowski at Cal and when Drew Rosenhaus signed Robert Bailey at Duke. There’s no doubt that Steinberg caught a pretty good break when he signed Bartkowski who became the 1^st overall draft pick in the 1975 NFL draft. Michael Barnett also became pretty famous by landing a client named Wayne Gretzky back when hockey agents were uncommon.

I will add that in addition to my comments about hard work, another uncanny trait about most successful agents is a combination of luck and timing. On a personal note, I signed my 3^rd client in a draft day chat room after joking (well, half joking) that I’d represent him if he needed an agent. The player had just been drafted 4^th overall in the CFL draft. A few conversations later I had myself a client who went on to become the CFL Rookie of the Year and ended up winning the CFL’s Outstanding Canadian and Grey Cup’s Outstanding Canadian trophy in years to come.

The First Client from Sports Agent Blog - Sports Business, Sports Law, Sports Negotiations, NCAA Rules

Today, a host of young athletes are singing a different tune. The days of wanting to ‘be like Mike” are gone. Enter the “want to be like Drew” generation. Be honest, did we ever think the day would come where specific agents would become part of our vernacular? That agents would star in TV commercials? Be more identifiable than some players they represent?

When Leigh Steinberg became the first “super agent” in the 90′s people inside the business knew who he was, but nobody outside of professional sports really did. Today, youngsters at parks around America not only dream of catching the winning touchdown, they are also wondering how much more money their agent will get them on their next contract.

Many people are of the opinion that agents (mainly due to this phenomenon) are on their way to ruining sports. Salaries are escalating and the agent business is full of people that don’t belong. I want to focus on the second part of that statement.

The agent business, because of the “be like Drew” phenomenon, has become highly attractive over the past few years. Couple high profile sports and high income potential and you’re bound to have an influx of eager and ready-to-please agents. It is estimated that there are 1600 registered NFL agents vying for just over 1400 NFL players. And, over 60% of registered NFL agents do not have a single client.

The business of athlete representation doesn’t sound so attractive now, does it?!

The answer = yes. Why?

Simply because there is a reason why 60% of those agents don’t have a single client and a reason why 40% of them do! In my humble opinion, 60% of those agents are doing something wrong. What separates the good agents from the bad ones? In my opinion, there is really one secret: Hard Work.

Man, that sounds really cheesy doesn’t it? You’d be expecting me to say something like negotiation techniques, industry contacts, access to athletes, or perhaps even law degree. Certainly, they all play a part in the success of an agent (minus the law degree), but hard work really does stand out from the rest.

A client of mine once started using the phrase when signing autographs “hard work pays off”. So simple, so trite…yet, so true. I came to the conclusion that hard work was the separating factor between success and failure when I started looking at how many of the top agents got their start in the representation business. It didn’t excite me to hear that a particular agent had 50 clients and an office that backed on the beach in California. It excited me to hear about how he chased down his first client and built his business from that point on. In 95% of the cases you’ll find that the agent convinced his first clients that he would work harder than anybody else.

Now, I must add to my comment about hard work for a minute. Hard work is of the utmost importance, but you’ve got to back it up with something. I’ve seen far too many agents who try to sign players on a hope and a dream. They got their certification and they think that they are ready for the big time. Print up some business cards and start signing players. Right? That’s mistake #1.

You see, the problem with wanting to become an agent is that there is no formal training. There are two ways to learn the business.

1. Intern for a reputable sports agency
2. Learn the business by doing your homework and building your own skill set

With the advent of “be like Drew”, most are now opting for option #2. That’s exactly how I did it. I did have a chance to learn from an established NHLPA certified agent when doing some hockey work earlier in my career (at age 18), but moved on to representing clients in the CFL by taking time to learn to agent business.

Believe it or not, there are a lot of resources available to learn about becoming an agent. No doubt that sportsagentblog.com is one of them. The internet has become a great tool for learning and it has facilitated the education of many young agents.

My honest option as to why many agents don’t succeed? They aren’t ready for the business. They are full of zest and can taste the opportunity – but, lack the knowledge and training (don’t forget the hard work) to succeed.

That’s all for today. Off to outwork the other agents!

-Darren Gill

Want to be like Drew from Sports Agent Blog - Sports Business, Sports Law, Sports Negotiations, NCAA Rules