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Celebrate These Clauses

dradleWe are right in the heat of Hannukah and just a couple of days before my Christian brothers enjoy their special day.  As a side note, I love Christmas.  If you want to find a Jew on Christmas, hit up your local movie theater or call a Chinese restaurant and ask for the addresses of all of their deliveries on December 25th.  But I digress.  The point of this post is to congratulate a couple of agents on some nice clauses they put into their clients’ contracts.  Starting with…

C.C. Sabathia.  In the first year of his $161 million contract, C.C. will earn $14 million.  $9.5 million of that will be given to him before he ever puts his new Yankees jersey in the wash.  It must be nice to have more money than a majority of Americans will ever see before you ever actually provide any value to the person who pays you.  Although, that may be a lie, because I can imagine that the Yankees have already started to feel the C.C. affect in merchandise sold.

Chad Speck put his thinking cap on this past offseason.  The Titans wanted to place the Franchise Tag on his client, Albert Haynesworth.  Instead of going the traditional route of threatenining a hold out against the team, Speck accepted the deal with some conditions.  One of those conditions was that if Haynesworth were to make the Pro Bowl, he would have the right to become an unrestricted free agent after the 2009/10 season.  Not only has Haynesworth been a major part of the Titans gaining home field advantage throughout the playoffs, but he is going to the Pro Bowl, meaning that Tennessee is not permitted to place the hated Franchise Tag on Albert next year.

By Darren Heitner

Darren Heitner created Sports Agent Blog as a New Year's Resolution on December 31, 2005. Originally titled, "I Want To Be A Sports Agent," the website was founded with the intention of causing Heitner to learn more about the profession that he wanted to join, meet reputable individuals in the space and force himself to stay on top of the latest news and trends.

Heitner now runs Heitner Legal, P.L.L.C., which is a law firm with many practice areas, including sports law and contract law. Heitner has represented numerous athletes and sports agents as legal counsel. He has also served as an Adjunct Professor at Indiana University Bloomington from 2011-2014, where he created and taught a course titled, Sport Agency Management, which included subjects ranging from NCAA regulations to athlete agent certification and the rules governing the profession. Heitner serves as an Adjunct Professor at the University of Florida Levin College of Law, where he teaches a Sports Law class that includes case law surrounding athlete agents and the NCAA rules.