Aug. 20-26
Next week, we expect that the 2022 NFL Agent Class will get results back from July’s exam. For many, results will bring news of the culmination of years of study and preparation. For more than half, however, it’s “wait ‘til next year,” or perhaps, five years. We live in a new era, however, and dreams of player representation don’t have to wait.
This Tuesday (8/30, 8 p.m. ET), ITL’s Neil Stratton will be joined on Zoom by Athliance’s Peter Schoenthal and Sammy Spina of Breaking Into Sports. The trio will be joined by a top NFL prospect for the ’23 NFL Draft – figuratively, not literally. Peter and Sammy will discuss how they would market a hypothetical player who lacks the star power of, shall we say, a Kardashian. In fact, here’s a rundown of who our hypothetical player is.
· He plays offensive line (offensive tackle, to be exact).
· He’s a high-Day 3 (fourth or fifth round) prospect in the ’23 draft.
· He plays at West Virginia University in Morgantown, W.Va., population 30,953 (WVU’s enrollment is 28,776 as of this week). WVU is a member of the Big 12.
· He comes from a small town in West Virginia.
· He has accounts on Twitter, Instagram and YouTube, but has fewer than 500 followers on any of them.
Does he have any interesting hobbies? Is he good-looking and photogenic, or well-spoken? Does he have a fascinating backstory? We’ll leave it to Peter and Sammy to discuss how all of this matters, and what could be done if the answer is “yes.”
There’s a lot to cover, of course, and we’ve apprised them of the questions we always get. We already covered many of them in last week’s edition of the Friday Wrap, but there are so many more. Here are a few more our team will answer:
· I’m a new agent without many/any clients and no NIL experience. How do I pitch a player on signing with me?
· Where do I start? What do I do after signing a player?
· I’m wary of signing a QB, RB or WO who has high expectations. What can I do with a “less sexy” player like an offensive lineman, linebacker or punter?
· What do I say when calling a potential sponsor? How do I make my client stand out?
· How do I take advantage of help from the player’s school when seeking opportunities?
· What are my responsibilities with regard to notifying the school?
· How do I motivate a player to see NIL as more than just making social media posts?
· What can I not do? How do I stay out of trouble?
· What is Opendorse? What’s INFLNCR? How does this and similar services work?
So what are Peter’s and Sammy’s credentials, respectively, to speak on these topics? Good question. Let’s start here: each of them are certified NFLPA agents, but much more than that. Peter, a Miami-based attorney, launched Athliance to help schools more easily track the contracts and NIL commitments of their players. Today, he’s considered an expert on marketplaces and collectives, and is much in demand as a speaker and media resource. Read more about him here.
Meanwhile, Sammy’s background in marketing goes back to his work with one of the all-time greats, former Dolphins QB Dan Marino, and extends to his innovative NIL work last year with Pittsburgh QB Kenny Pickett. Pickett not only starred on the field last year, but his off-field exploits were lucrative and imaginative while also beneficial to charities as well as his more unsung teammates. Sammy launched Breaking Into Sports to help others hoping to follow in the footsteps of today’s athletics professionals. We feel Peter and Sammy will not only help Zoom participants get clarity on the NIL landscape, but offer creative ways to take advantage of this new era.
We recognize that hearing from two experts brimming with information and insights can be a little daunting, and that’s why we’ll provide the Zoom recording to all participants. We encourage everyone to re-watch it as many times as it takes to get comfortable with all the info. Can’t make it Tuesday? No worries! Watch and listen to it at your leisure. We’ll send it out Wednesday in a private link from YouTube. To obtain a copy, you must provide a Gmail email account, and you must be logged in to view it.
As for the signup procedure, if you’ve been part of our previous Zoom sessions, you know the drill. We’ll take registration up until Tuesday afternoon, then send out the link shortly after. We’ll get started at 8 p.m. ET, then go for an hour-plus, usually a good bit longer (however long it takes to answer every question). Both Sammy and Peter will make presentations and give real-world insights you won’t find anywhere else.
We hope you’ll join us. In the meantime, here’s a look at what else we saw, heard, read and said about the business of college and pro football this week.
Catching Up: Bryan Broaddus, 59, scouted from ’92 to ’05 for the Packers, Eagles, Jaguars and Cowboys, but now has a different role in the game. We caught up with him this week.
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Where are you living and what are you doing now? “Currently living in Grapevine, Texas, and I have my own radio show. I work with three other guys on 105.3 The Fan here in Dallas from 2-7 p.m., the G-bag (Good Broadcasting About Games) Nation. We cover the Cowboys, the Mavs, the Rangers, the Stars and everything in between. This is my third year of being on the radio full-time.”
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Do you miss the job? What do you miss most? “I miss working on the draft. I miss the preparation of building the board. I told people, this job in scouting would be great if they let you build teams but didn’t have to play games. You just built the board. But I miss the camaraderie of the discussion, the debates, building the board, then seeing how it works out and how it looks. The games are gut-wrenching. The injuries, the QBs, the coaching, it comes down to a lot of different things, but when you work on the draft, it’s exciting. There’s frustration and you go through every single emotion when you work on the draft. That’s the thing I miss the most.”
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Do you keep in touch with any of your former colleagues? “It’s not as prevalent as it once was. I have a group that I try to keep in touch with. They help me along. It’s guys mainly from other teams that I’ve worked with. My own guys (I used to work with) have gone on and are doing their own things, too. But when I have a question, the guys I know in the league, they’ve been really good about taking my calls and helping me along. I’m (part of) an older group of guys now, and some are still working and some aren’t. I do my best to reach out and say hello, or if I remember a guy’s birthday, I’ll reach out, so if I heard (something) about a player, I can call and can ask them, can you help me confirm it? It’s not like you talk to them every day, but you do have the ability to check with them when you need something or they need it from me.”
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Do you go to any live games (HS/college/pro)? “It’s funny. When I got out of scouting, I was working with DallasCowboys.com, and for four years, I did high school games for Coppell here in Dallas. Myself and Ted Emrich, and Teddy’s covered the Masters. He’s a very prominent broadcaster. We did that for four years, then my son got into high school and started playing and I had to quit. I still do the Cowboys preseason games on the radio, myself and Brad Sham, when Babe Laufenberg does TV. So every year, for the last 6-7 years, I’ve done Cowboy games on the radio. Our station is the flagship station for the Cowboys. Matter of fact, (today), I have the Cowboys-Seahawks game and I look forward to (Seahawks GM) John Schneider coming into town. I still do a lot of stuff working on the draft for the radio station, and I still evaluate about 190 players every year and build boards. Our draft show on DallasCowboys.com is incredible, and we actually do all three days of the draft live. Whether it’s DallasCowboys.com or The Fan, we basically do 18 hours of the draft, so I stay really involved in what’s going on in scouting.”
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Are there any players you love to watch and/or feel close to due to your work in the game? “The guys from my era of scouting, most of them, except Brady . . . it’s very rare to go back to ‘05 and find players still playing. But my favorite player to watch is (Rams WO) Cooper Kupp. I really, really love watching him play. I loved watching him play at Eastern Washington. He was resilient. The weather didn’t matter. If it was good or bad weather, cold or hot, he was always going to find a way to make plays. He’s one of my most favorite players to watch when you start to talk about the players today. I could go on and on and on. If you . . . say, ‘give me one guy I love watching from where he came from to where he is today, it would be Cooper Kupp. Back then, you’re looking at the level of football he played in and and you’re trying to determine, ‘could he play (in the NFL)? Did a Pac-10 school miss on this guy?’ Here he is at Eastern Washington, and down after down, this cat is making plays. To see him have the success he had last year is just incredible.”
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.
Interested in being an NFL scout?: It’s a long road to the league, but we at the College Gridiron Showcase may be able to help. The 21 members of the inaugural CGSU class – our program designed to help aspiring NFL evaluators network and assist NFL teams with their interviews of players participating in our showcase – are out doing exciting things in personnel. Some of them are at schools big and small across the country, and one (former UCLA personnel associate Hajriz Aliu) was even recently hired by the Browns as a scouting assistant. For more information, visit our website or contact us here. See you Jan. 7-11.
Left behind: The NFLPA resolved its problem with test-takers who couldn’t sit for the exam last week, but the frustration lingers for many. We turned this week’s blog post over to one of them, Tampa-based attorney Zach Karber. He recounted the real-dollars cost of getting ready for an exam he was not allowed to take. It’s a reminder that rampant technical issues have consequences for the people affected by them. Read Zach’s post here.
Keep an eye on your inbox: Four out of the last five years, the NFLPA notified test-takers in less than six weeks whether they had passed or failed the exam. It was five weeks, six days in 2016; five weeks, three days in 2017; five weeks and two days in 2018; and five weeks, five days last year. On Wednesday, it will be six weeks since Test Day 2022. As far as the day of release, there’s no consensus. Since 2013, results have been provided twice each on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday with Monday and Tuesday once each. Whatever day it is, we believe next week is the week. We’ll be sure to discuss it all in next week’s Friday Wrap.
Agents by Total Clients: This week, we took one last look at client totals before cuts change everything. We counted 148 contract advisors with at least 10 clients on 90-man rosters this summer. The top ten didn’t change, though the order moved slightly with Sportstars’ Jared Fox reclaiming the No. 6 spot. We counted nine agents with at least 40 clients; 23 with at least 30; and 57 with at least 20. Make sure to check out the results for yourself here.
Rugby, anyone?: A new U.S.-based pro league dedicated to unearthing some of sports’ most gifted athletes and unlocking a new breed of competitor is getting set to launch. It’s called American Tens, and it’s going to change the way Americans think about the world's most ferocious and captivating full-contact sport. The league is targeting current and former college and pro football players open to exploring the opportunity to earn a pro rugby contract for its inaugural season (no prior rugby experience required). Think you have a client that has what it takes? Or are you a football player that's curious to learn more? The league will have a VIP invite-only combine Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 8-9, in Lake Nona, Fla., just outside Orlando. It’s limited to 25 participants with football backgrounds. Pro contracts will be earned! Apply and learn more here.
Next week: By this time next week, several official college football games will be in the books and we’ll be on the brink of much more. We’ll also be three days past NFL camp cuts and roster spaces will be finalized. Here’s what we’ll be working on:
· Obviously, Tuesday, we’ll have our NIL Zoom session. Register here if you’re an ITL client, and here if you’re not.
· We’ll have five more schools in our Profile Reports, including Syracuse, TCU, Temple, Tennessee and Texas A&M.
· Presuming we get NFL Agent Exam results, we’ll get reaction from those who passed and those who failed and put it in our Succeed in Football post.
· We hope to have our Agent Changes for the July-to-August phase, as well.
· We’re working on a partnership with the NFL Alumni Academy and hope to bring news of the opportunities the Academy provides to the “next men up” across the league, as well as their new location for 2022.
· With cuts taking place, we may get to update our Draft by the Numbers page for the 2022 NFL Draft, but that might be left till September.
It’s getting good. Whether you’re a scout, agent, marketing professional, trainer or someone who hopes to be part of the football business soon, let us help you get from good to great. Start here.
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