USC quarterback Caleb Williams and Ohio State wide receiver Marvin Harrison Jr. created buzz earlier this week when news broke that the two stars were not going to hire agents for the NFL draft. This was not particularly stunning news but part and parcel of the athlete empowerment movement that has swept into big-time college sports and is creeping into the NFL.
In 2018, Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson famously announced that he was not going to hire an agent and would be represented by his mother. The move by Williams and Harrison raises the question of whether this is a trend or a blip on the screen. As much as I’m tempted to call it a trend, Jackson, Williams and Harrison may be mere blips.
Everyone needs an advocate.
Beginning in the mid- to late-1970s, the sports agent became a powerful player in the sports world. The sports agent not only negotiates player and marketing contracts for the athlete, but often guides the athlete in investment and personal lifestyle decisions.
The agent often serves as a buffer between team and player.
“There are two types of agents,” legendary agent C. Lamont Smith, founder and CEO of All Pro Sports and Entertainment, said during a recent phone interview. “There’s the transactional agent, which is less valuable and less important. Those are the ones that just negotiate a contract and that’s it. They see the athlete four years later and they do it again.”
Then there are what Smith calls the “transformational” agents, who “take a role in their players’ lives and manage their careers and pretty much are involved in everything businesswise that they do if they’re allowed to be involved in it. A lot of the personal stuff in their lives.”
I’ve gone back and forth on the subject of agents and admittedly have a lot of baggage. I remember the days when Black agents had an awful time simply cracking into the field, when the industry looked like a plantation with white agents managing the lion’s share of Black athletes. Smith, who broke into the business when he was in his late 20s, was part of that early vanguard. The issue then was not self-representation by athletes but Black athletes choosing Black representation.
There was the frustration of convincing Black athletes and Black families that the white man’s ice was not colder, that Black agents could represent clients as effectively as their white counterparts.
Aspiring young Black agents were often discouraged from entering the profession.
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In 1979, Smith was a young production assistant with WATL-TV in Atlanta. He also worked as an usher at Atlanta Hawks basketball games. When Smith was considering sports management as a career, he was told by then-Hawks general manager Lewis Schaffel, “You’re bright and articulate, but there’s one problem: You’re Black.” Smith’s company, All Pro Sports and Entertainment, became one of the country’s largest sports management firms.
In a 1996 article Sports Agents, Role Models and Race-consciousness, in the Marquette Sports Law Review, Smith told author Ken Shropshire, “The sports and entertainment industry is to African Americans what technology is to the Japanese and oil is the Arabs. It is incumbent upon us to work to control our natural resources.”
Today, the playing field is a bit more level. Just as the field is leveling, though, will there be a shift away from players using agents as part of the athlete empowerment movement?
Jackson, a two-time NFL MVP, represented himself and last offseason signed a five-year, $260 million extension with the Ravens. Now, Williams and Harrison say they are conducting business without agents. There is a part of me that applauds them for taking matters into their own hands. Williams has endorsement deals with Fanatics, Neutrogena, Beats by Dre, PlayStation, Athletic Brewing Company and AC+ION Water.
On the other hand, those two are high-profile outliers. Most rookies — 20, 21, 22 years old — need guidance, even when the salaries for rookies are slotted. The argument against rookies hiring an agent is that the pay scale is already locked in. There is no real negotiating that needs to take place.
Though if it were that simple, there never would be rookie holdouts and contracts would be signed a week after the draft instead of in late July.
“What’s not slotted is where they’re going to get picked at, and where they get picked at determines how much money they make,” Smith said. “So, it’s still a value-add proposition. It’s different than if you get picked in the seventh round. It’s a lot different than when you get picked in the second round. And agents have an impact on that based upon how they manage and direct their career: where you set them up to train, how you deal with the issues and the question marks that teams may have about them.”
Agents — advocates — can also combat negative narratives and help set the record straight.
University of North Carolina defensive back Don Chapman, one of Smith’s clients, was arrested in 2022 in connection with an altercation with his then-pregnant wife. When more details surfaced, it turned out that Chapman’s wife had threatened to commit suicide and Chapman had interceded and stopped her.
Smith made sure that NFL teams knew what really happened.
“Turns out that it was all just a big misunderstanding, and he actually was a hero,” Smith recalled. “He’s trying to save somebody’s life. And so that type of thing, in the absence of somebody that can guide you through that, doesn’t get handled. So, it’s more than just saying, ‘Hey, give me a number.’ It’s kind of managing them through the process.”
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Smith has a number of clients eligible for this year’s draft, though none are high-profile players like Williams and Harrison.
They need advocates: Clayton Isbell, a safety from Coastal Carolina; Aidan Robbins, a running back out of BYU. Smith also represents from Florida A&M University quarterback Jeremy Moussa, who shared the Deacon Jones Trophy, given to the best player in Black College Football, on Feb. 24.
Far from being a quarterback like Williams or projected top-5 pick Jayden Daniels (who are both reportedly skipping on-field drills at the NFL combine), Moussa needs the sort of advocacy an agent can provide. Moussa was not invited to the combine in Indianapolis. He needs an advocate: “Yes, 100%, if you hope to elevate,” Smith said.
“Caleb Williams can pull this off because there’s no elevation involved with him,” Smith said. “He’s going to be the first pick in the draft — if not the first, then the second. Marvin Harrison — another unique outlier — his dad played for years in the league. He’s going to be the fourth pick, at worst. So those are unique circumstances.
“It’s a whole different ball game and a whole different world, four years from now or three years from now, when they get to negotiate on the open market with teams and it’s not slotted. That’s a whole other ball game.”
Moussa, for his part, participated in the HBCU combine, one of several combines outside of Indianapolis. “That’s another way that the business is changing,” Smith said. “I mean, it used to be the combine in Indianapolis was one-stop shopping. But now you’ve got the HBCU combine, you got the Big 12 combine. you’ve got all these other locations that are well-attended, where kids can showcase their skills.”
So, where do I land on this? In the treacherous world of sports and management, most athletes are like lambs being led to slaughter as they attempt to maneuver through a multibillion-dollar industry. They need good shepherds. Everybody needs somebody to represent their interests. Maybe the top dogs can do without, but those players who are going to be drafted at the bottom of the second or third round need someone who will give voice to the voiceless.
Everybody needs an advocate.
