July 9-15
As you know, the 2022 NFLPA Exam is Wednesday, and hundreds of aspiring NFL contract advisors will sit for seminars Monday and Tuesday evenings in anticipation of passing the 60-question, multiple choice, timed exam that costs $2,500 just to take. Also, as you know, the passing rate for the exam hovers somewhere around 40 percent annually, with last year’s results just a tick below that.
If you’re one of the hundreds of people taking the test in five days, you also know plenty about the Bert Bell rule, the 25 percent rule, the Therapeutic Use Exemption (TUE), the differences between an accrued season, season credited for salary, and a season credited for benefits, and the like. But there is still plenty more you should know, or at least, we think you should know.
Here are five things to know before you take Wednesday’s big test (or even if you aren’t):
But that’s not all: In the past week, we’ve interviewed four contract advisors who just completed their rookie seasons (Carl Agnone, Dylan Jiles, Warren ‘Trey’ Verrett and Altay ‘Ty’ Tascioglu) for our annual pre-exam series, the ITL Rising Contract Advisors Newsletter. We got a later start on this year’s series than we’d planned, but still we’ve interviewed 11 total members of the 2021 rookie agent class (also George Holley, Jason Donnell, Philip ‘Red’ Miller, Derek Hawkridge, Jeremy Hebert, Michael DelleDonne and Nick Linta), all of whom pulled off the monumental achievement of getting a player on a 90-man roster in Year 1. We’re proud to have made their respective roads a little smoother with our monthly Zoom sessions, the information they found along the way at Inside the League, and, of course, our one-on-one tips and guidance when they needed it.
ITL’s pre-exam services are the gold standard: You may have heard that we’ve added six instructional videos that cover all the major concepts in the CBA to our palate of services, which include our study guide, which is without a doubt the best study resource on the market; our first practice exam, which is a must if you want to see what the questions will look like next week; and our second practice exam, which we also strongly recommend.
About those videos: We’ve been talking about our Zoom series for weeks now, but in case you’re new to the Wrap, here’s what each one offers.
· February ($50 plus tax): Given a signing bonus and Year 4 cap number, calculate rookie salary. Also, June 1 rule and agent fee calculation when a player terminates his representation mid-contract.
· March ($50 plus tax): Difference between accrued, credited for benefits and credited for salary, and what each of these designations mean for the purposes of free agency, etc. Split-salary contracts. Exclusive rights free agency (zero, one or two accrued seasons), restricted free agent (at least three accrued seasons), transition tag, franchise tag, exclusive franchise tag. Minimum salaries based on credited seasons, when you are counted as active based on what day you get, when a player goes to waivers when he’s cut. Workman’s comp offsets. Termination pay and pay for players who get cut. Veteran salary benefit.
· April ($50 plus tax): Calculating minimum tenders for franchise and transition players. Preseason split and in-season split, types of splits, definition, etc. Calculating contracts with up/down amounts. Calculating payment to a player on practice squad. Extended injury protections and worker’s compensation offsets. What is the rookie salary given signing bonus and cap number for Year 4?
· May ($50 plus tax): Veteran salary benefit. Termination pay. Injury grievance. Proven Performance Escalator. Draft signals. Agent fee calculation. Split contract calculation/IR. Practice squad salary computation.
· June ($50 plus tax): RFA tenders. PPE. Fifth year option. Minicamp rules. Reporting dates. Offseason workout rules. Option bonuses. Five-day acclimation period.
· July ($50 plus tax): Substances of abuse: types of testing, testing procedures (Sample A and Sample B, entering the program, dates to be tested, Stage 1 vs. Stage 2; discipline for violations. Alcohol and non-alcoholic substances of abuse (SOA). Computation of fines and suspensions. Performance-enhancing drugs. Unknowing ingestion of drugs. Levels of punishment. Therapeutic Use Exemption (TUE).
Need them all? We are offering all six at $35 (plus tax) each. Order here. There’s one caveat: you must have a gmail email address (ends in @gmail.com) to log in to YouTube and view private videos. But that’s it. For $227.30, you can have a six-hour, video walk-through of all the tougher concepts in the CBA.
Zoom No. 7 coming Sunday night: Our final Zoom session will be Sunday night at 9:30 p.m. ET, and it will be free (no cost, nada). Chicago-based Ian Greengross will work a few problems (involving Bert Bell rule, injury grievance, VSB and PPE), then we’ll answer questions from participants, trying to wrap up the session in about an hour. Here’s the Zoom link. We hope to see you Sunday night.
ITL helps Wednesday and beyond: Per the last NFLPA SRA list posted shortly before the 2022 draft, 43 rookie agents got at least one player on a 90-man roster in their first year certified. Just 23.5 percent of the class accomplished that. Of those 43, only 14 didn’t use our materials and/or join ITL this year. #TeamITL!
We hope you’re one of the hundreds of potential contract advisors who are using our materials, but if you’re not, you can be assured we’ll be huddled in our war room through Wednesday, ready to help in any way possible. Don’t believe us? Respond to this email or reach out (nstratton@insidetheleague.com) and we’ll be at your service. We are dedicated to helping people Succeed in Football, and for many, passing the toughest certification exam in professional sports is Step 1.
In the meantime, here’s a look at what else we saw, heard, read and said in the business of college and pro football this week.
Catching Up: Bill Kuharich, 69, spend more than 30 years in scouting across three NFL teams (Saints, Chiefs and Browns) and three professional leagues (the USFL, NFL and most recently the Alliance of American Football). We caught up with him this week.
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Where are you living and what are you doing now? “We’re living in Fenwick Island, Del. It’s a place that we purchased in 2003 as a summer home. Fenwick Island is below Rehoboth Beach, right before you get to Ocean City. It’s on the water, and I’m retired here. I have three daughters, and after they all left to go into their careers, we retired here in 2016. It’s a good place to relax. We have one daughter in Boston, one in New York and one in the Midwest. We’re gonna do some traveling – my wife and I have been married 33 years – in November. We’ll be going on a 15-day trip through Turkey, Greece and Italy. I play some golf, try to keep myself busy. If the right situation came up, which I don’t foresee happening, I certainly would consider consulting or even full-time, because I feel healthy.”
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Do you miss the job? What do you miss most? “I do miss it. I miss the interaction with people in the organization, and I miss going out on the road and evaluating players and keeping your relationships with college coaches. I miss game day a lot. The biggest thing is, the grind of trying to improve your team during the course of a year, whether it’s in the offeseason through free agency and the draft, or in-season through trades or the waiver wire or signing someone out of a tryout. Those things I really enjoyed during my tenure, and I really miss it. I’m healthy, I feel good, and when you have those things, you miss going to work every day. I never felt I had a real job, and I used to get up in the morning and couldn’t wait to get to the office.”
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Do you keep in touch with any of your former colleagues? “I do stay in touch with some of the people I worked with and people in the business. It’s good to keep your fingers in it as far as talking some football and talking with people you came up through the ranks with. But the majority that I came up through the ranks with are retired, though I have some people that were very young that worked with me at different stops that are still in the business.”
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Do you go to any live games (HS/college/pro)? “For the last six years, we would go to at least one Alabama game because of my daughter, who worked there. I would go down with my wife and we would always get good seats. I love college football, love to watch college football. I watch more college now than I do pro. But I will go to the occasional game. I went to Middlebury College, and we’re having a reunion of our 1972 team, I’ll go up for that. My daughter graduated from Villanova and we might go to a game there sometimes. A lot of my high school friends went to Villanova, so we still stay in touch.”
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Are there any players you love to watch and/or feel close to due to your work in the game? “We had (Browns OG) Joel Bitonio that (then-Browns GM) Ray Farmer, when I got there and joined Ray at the end of February in Cleveland, (drafted). We got into discussions, and he had his sights on Joel right away, and he nailed it. Joel has been a good player, an underrated guard. He’s had just one winning season since he’s been there, and players like that don’t get accolades, but if Cleveland is playing Baltimore, I’ll turn it on and watch him. Most of the guys I’ve been involved with are obviously out of the league. There are some AAF guys, but not many left. I always enjoy watching the strategy of the game and how people are attacking people. I like these young coaches like (Rams head coach Sean McVay) and how they go about it, which is completely different from when we were in it. The game has evolved so much even in the past five years. But some of my buddies, like Omar Khan, who we hired at New Orleans out of Tulane, he’s just been promoted to GM, so I’ll follow the Steelers. I’ll follow teams with the connections I still have. We have some scouts that were with us in New Orleans. One of them, Mark Sadowski, just got hired in Pittsburgh, and Marty Barrett was with us, and he’s with the Rams, so you stay up with those guys. Mitch Lapoint was with us in Kansas City and he’s down in Dallas, and there’s Terry Delp, who’s still in KC. So you kinda track those guys and see how they’re doing more so than players. I naturally like to follow the Alabama players, not so much personally, but from my daughter (who used to work in the Alabama football offices) telling me about them.”
Review the latest from other former NFL scouts and executives by accessing our Catching Up archive here. Want to hear from a former scout, or know someone who may be interested in being interviewed? Let us know.
Save the date: One question we’ve gotten consistently over the past several months is, what does the pay structure look like for the XFL? How will it compare to the last XFL season? How will it compare to USFL pay? Will there be win bonuses? Will teams help with lodging costs? Well, thanks to our partnership with the XFL, we’ll bring you those answers a week from this Monday. On July 25 at 8 p.m. ET, XFL Senior VP of Player Personnel Doug Whaley will join us for an hour-long Zoom in which he’ll answer questions posed by ITL’s Neil Stratton as well as your questions. He will also no doubt answer other questions related to tryouts, the player pool, the draft, and whatever else is on the minds of today’s player representative, much as he did in early June on our blog. Doug, the former Bills GM and longtime Steelers executive, is exceptionally player- and agent-friendly and will answer every question, but if you’re not sure he’ll get to yours, send it over and we’ll make sure he does. We’ll have details on how to join us via Zoom in next week’s Friday Wrap. In the meantime, make sure to set a reminder in your phone for Monday, July 25, at 8 p.m. ET.
Scouting Changes Grid: The moves have slowed to a trickle as the football evaluation community enjoys the last few weeks before it’s time for camp. Still, we uncovered a few moves here and there. Here’s what we shared on Twitter and in our Rep Rumblings pages:
· Zach Truty, formerly the Player Personnel Executive for the Jets, has moved on.
As always, we’ve added all the latest scouting and evaluation moves to our big board.
Next week: For the next five days, at least, we will be pretty single-minded, obviously. However, we won’t completely limit our activities to solely exam-focused pursuits. Here’s a look at what to expect in the coming week.
· We’ll have five more Profile Reports, including UNLV, New Mexico, New Mexico State, NC State and North Carolina.
· We’ll interview three more agents who hit it big this year by getting a player on a 90-man roster as a member of the ITL family in our Rising Contract Advisor Newsletter.
· We’ll have a Zoom for anyone and everyone taking the exam Wednesday (link here), so get ready to get those last-minute questions answered.
· We should have a more robust Rep Rumblings schedule this week, and who knows? Maybe we’ll finally start getting to some of our back editions of Agent Changes.
· We will also have our Agents by Total Clients list for July.
· We’ll have details on a Zoom series aimed at anyone interested in making money in the name, image and likeness arena. The plan is to bring you the experts who are already making money in NIL to, for a very reasonable fee, help you make money with it.
· In our weekly blog at Succeed in Football, we’ll get reaction from everyone who takes the exam Wednesday. How did it stack up to last year’s exam? Was it harder than expected? Easier? And how well did ITL’s resources prepare test-takers for the big day?
· In next week’s Friday Wrap, we’ll talk to former NFL scout and ex-player Richard Shelton for our Catching Up feature.
We’ve got a lot of work to do before Friday, and a lot of it will involve our efforts to take every measure to get all our clients to pass Wednesday’s exams and start living their NFL agent dreams this fall. However, if you’re part of the trainer world, scouting and evaluation, or anything else related to the world’s greatest game, we got your back. Find us here.
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