Curt Schilling has really picked up his posting lately. The man loves his blog, especially now that the 2007 MLB season is over. As I have said in the past, I am not a huge fan of Schilling, but it is my responsibility to keep track of his writings and see if he ever mentions anything that could be dissected for your reading pleasure. And a few days ago he did just that [Joe Nuxhall, Mike Lowell, Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez and our next President?]. Here is part of his column, and my responses:
Anytime a player takes matters into his own hands to insure he gets what he wants out of his contract I think it’s a great thing. Kudos to Kenny Rogers for doing what looks to be the same thing.
I cannot disagree. If a player has the time, will, and knowledge to negotiate his own contract with his team and negotiate marketing deals, appearance deals, autograph sessions, along with prepare for retirement, post playing opportunities, etc., then all the more power to him. But look at that past sentence. Sure is a huge obligation if you want to cross all your t’s and dot all your i’s. That’s part of the reason that agents will always continue to operate in spite of the recent move by Kenny Rogers.
I have always felt agents have a place, but I also think that at some point in your career an agent becomes baggage. That’s not all of them because some of them I know are very good, honest and trustworthy people. But I believe there comes a time in every players career where the numbers and the market are pretty self explanatory. Paying someone 5% or more for the task of negotiating a contract is wasted money in many cases. The main concern is that there are many, if not most, major league teams who would barter a player into an embarassing contract without an agent being present.
It seems like Schilling is treating the agent as being in a purely advisory role when it comes to negotiating a deal between player and team. Instead, look at the various other services that an agent may provide (listed in my response ^^^^^ up there). The last thing that we should become is baggage. If an agent is not doing his job, then ditch him. But beyond doing the other tasks that Schilling decided to leave out, agents also tend to end up doing a lot of other “chores” that players do not want to have to deal with, whether it be buying a plane ticket, booking a reservation at a top restaurant, or checking in on the wife and kids back home.
In addition, I think Schilling makes a great point with his “main concern”, which I bolded on purpose. Look way back to a post I made on February 21, 2007. Doug Brown, a defensive lineman in the CFL, gave two reasons why an agent will always be important. One of those reasons: So that he and the general manager of his team do not enter a personal arena where playing on the team becomes uncomfortable [Agents Are Overrated]. This is huge. You do not want to make playing on the team uncomfortable, and by going into a contract negotiation on your own, you will hear about all of your bad qualities that lower your value. You also will have a tough time being objective in representing yourself. Why do you think that lawyers never represent themselves in court?
Many players feel very uncomfortable negotiating their own salaries. Others, and in many cases, are from other countries and cultures and the language barrier presents a massive hurdle that adds immense barriers to negotiating your own deal.
Being from another country/culture definitely increases the importance of having an agent, but so does not being trained in the language, rules or wording of legal documents. How many professional athletes have law degrees? How many of them have even taken a basic Contracts course?
Bottom line is anytime a player takes his own future into his hands I think the end result is the player and the team and its fans win.
No. Bottom line is that most of the time that a player takes his own future into his hands, the end result is not favorable to the player or fans. The team usually wins. Kenny Rogers may negotiate himself a decent contract. But for every Kenny Rogers, there are 10 Daunte Culpeppers.
-Darren Heitner
4 replies on “Curt Schilling And His Bully Pulpit”
Negotiating the terms of his own contract does not preclude Curt Schilling from having a sports attorney from carefully reviewing the contract to protect Schilling from himself. Said attorney would bill by hour instead of taking a percentage.
In the end, Schilling might well end up with as much money or more as he could have gotten using an agent.
Darren,
What is the percentage of players in any given sport that need an agent to do “negotiate marketing deals, appearance deals, autograph sessions, along with prepare for retirement, post playing opportunities, etc.”?
I would think only about 5-10% of the players have enough fan appeal to do substantial marketing deals, appearance deals, and autograph sessions to warrant an agent in that case. In know that the industry I work in, golf, only about 5-10% of the professional golfers need an agent based upon their level of activities.
As for preparing for retirement, I feel that should be left up to a specialized financial planner, not a sports agent who is a generalist on mainly disciplines with a focus on the sport they serve. A financial planner has better knowledge of the financial options in the market at any given time than an agent as financial planning is their full time job. Plus, a financial planner is going to take less fees than an agent. In that case, the only value an agent has is the athlete’s trust.
As for post playing opportunities, why why would an agent still be involved with an athlete’s activities? Why does an athlete still want to work with an agent after they have retired? Wouldn’t the athlete not want to work with a specialist in the area they want to work in (i.e. with a real estate developer if they want to do real estate development, a shoe executive if they wanted to start a shoe company, an Internet guru if they wanted to start an internet service provider, etc.)?
As well, why does the agent still want to work with the athlete after the athlete has retired? I would think, in many circumstances, when a player has retired the agent’s focus is no longer on that player as they are now focused on other athletes in their portfolio which are still active.
If the agent still works with the athlete after they have retired, I would think that agent then becomes more of a business partner than an agent. In that case, the agent is only working with one athlete — the retired athlete.
– JM
Maybe only 5-10% have enough appeal to do SUBSTANTIAL marketing deals, but that does not mean that a much larger percentage is looking for smaller marketing deals that they do not have time to complete on their own.
Often times, a sports agent will refer a client to a particular trustworthy financial planner. Sports agents do not have to do everything in-house. Many times, though, athletes do not want to have complete control of this selection process and would rather their agents to sort out the details. This is often a complementary service that the agent takes on.
Athletes stick with agents because most agents do have expertise in aligning clients with speaking opportunities, autograph signings, etc. Also, there is a foundation of trust that is hard to find. Agents can still make plenty of money based on these opportunities.
There is no reason to believe that the relationship has changed to “business partner”. The agent still operates on behalf of his client. If the client wants to be doing color commentary on CBS, the agent will do everything in his power to get him that job. It always helps to have someone along your side, especially when you have dedicated your entire life to learning how to excel at your sport, not become a business savvy individual.
[…] think I answered that question pretty clearly in my response to Curt Schilling’s recent post. If you do not want to read the reasoning why and just want to know my answer, it is: YES. But […]