Locked On Colts - Daily Podcast On The Indianapolis Colts - LOCKED ON COLTS - Bonus Episode - Cultivating the Agent/Player Relationship W/Super Agent Leigh Steinberg (@leighsteinberg)

Episode Date: March 18, 2017

Super agent Leigh Steinberg, who inspired 'Jerry Maguire' and consulted on various other sports productions, joins Matt to discuss how the relationship is formed between player and agent. Leigh also remembers representing #Colts great Edgerrin James, former Colts quarterback Jeff George as well as offering stories about the pain-killer epidemic, Ricky Williams, his role in 'Any Given Sunday' and much more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Learn more about our healthy benefits at fepblue.org slash getmore. No, I'm not for sale. You are lockeded On Colts, your daily Indianapolis Colts podcast. Part of the Locked On Podcast Network, your team every day. Welcome back to Locked On Colts, ladies and gentlemen. I'm your host, Matt Dainley. Thank you guys for joining me. And today, as promised, I'm going to give you guys that extra episode I was talking to you about.

Now, being that we're in kind of the thick of free agency, and you're hearing all these rumors about so-and-so's visiting this team, or this team's interested in this player, I wanted to give you guys a little bit of an insight to what kind of the agent and the player's relationship is like, like how that relationship is cultivated from the beginning steps before they've even got the client and all the way through the draft process. And for this, I brought on Lee Steinberg, who is best known for having the famous movie Jerry Maguire modeled after him. He has represented multiple first round picks, a ton of big time NFL players, including Edrin James and Jeff George from the Colts. So I wanted to give you guys this little bit of insight, and I wanted to talk to him.

And I found him very interesting. So sit back and enjoy this extra episode. And thank you guys, as always, for listening. I really appreciate you. I hope you guys find it as interesting as I did. And here we go. And we have a great guest today on the line with us. This is Lee Steinberg of Steinberg Sports and Entertainment. Lee, thank you so much for joining us. Really appreciate you jumping on with me today for a few minutes. It's my pleasure.

I just got to start off with, you have represented an inordinate amount of first overall picks in the NFL draft, I believe eight to date. What is that like? And if you could kind of, I mean, I don't know who they are. Could you tell us about those eight individuals that went first in the NFL draft? If you're representing players, I think there are three transcendent experiences. One would be to have the player pick first in the first round of the draft. One would be to have a quarterback or dramatic player win the Super Bowl. And one would be having players go into the Hall of Fame. So in 1975, I began with Steve Bartkowski. By

being his dorm counselor in an undergraduate dorm at Cal Berkeley. He was a quarterback, and he got picked number one in that draft, and there I was brimming with legal experience, never having represented anyone. And there really was no sports representation then. Teams could hang up the phone and say, we don't deal with agents. So it's all evolved.

This will be my 43rd draft. And so Steve Young was the first pick in the sub-draft, the quarterback of the 49ers. And then Troy Aikman in 1989 was the first picked overall by the Cowboys. In 1990, it was Jeff George with the Colts. In 1991, it was Russell Maryland with the Cowboys. In 1993, it was Drew Bledsoe with the Patriots. In 1994, it was Dan Wilkinson with the Cincinnati Bengals. And in 1995, it was Kajana Carter with the Cincinnati Bengals. So I've had 61 first-round draft picks overall in football. We've had a lot of high draft picks in basketball and baseball,

but football, we're now up to 61 first-round draft picks. Very interesting. Now, Jeff George, being an Indiana guy myself, he was quite the interesting character, I would assume, as well. Being that he ended up playing for the Colts, what was maybe your relationship with him as far as when he was able to get on the Indianapolis Colts? Was that a source of excitement for him that you recall? So I asked him, what would be your aspirations for this draft?

And he said, well, first of all, I'd like to be the first pick. Second of all, I'd like to get the biggest contract of all time. And third of all, I'd like to play for the Colts, even though they didn't have a first-round draft pick. The problem with the transaction was that to get the first pick in the draft away from Atlanta, they had to trade Chris Hinton, their best tackle, Andre Rison, their best offensive threat. So it made it more difficult. And then I think Jeff found that playing in Indianapolis in front of all his extended family and everyone was rougher than it would have been playing in 31 other cities

where your parents aren't reading the newspapers, you're not reading the criticism. was rougher than it would have been playing in 31 other cities where you can, your parents aren't reading the newspapers, you're not reading the criticism, you know, your friends and all that. So the irony in Jeff's career was that as he finally matured and got with the system, he played excellent for Atlanta, and then that owner wouldn't extend him, and he played really well for Oakland. And then they went with Rich Gannon, and he played well for Minnesota, and then they drafted Dante Culpepper.

So, you know, as the years went on, he matured quite a bit. He got married, but the timing wasn't right. Hmm. Very interesting. He matured quite a bit. He got married. But the timing wasn't right. Very interesting. What is like that? I'm sure that all players, our clients, are vastly different. I mean, everybody has their own type of personality. But what is the experience from being hired by a client or you guys trying to kind of cultivate that relationship with a client.

What is the beginning, the onset of the relationship like for you? So agents need to be certified by players' associations, and there also are state laws and state regulations, and there is also compliance on college campuses. So we have a profile, which is I'm looking for athletes that are bright, from good families, and who are willing to retrace their roots and serve as role models back to the high school, where they can set up high school scholarship funds, Boys and Girls Club, work with the church. At the collegiate level, re-bond with the alums,

so players like Troy Aikman have set up a scholarship fund at UCLA and Steve Yang at BYU and Edgerton James at the University of Miami. And then at the pro level, invite the leading business figures, political figures, and community leaders, put them on a board, and then execute a foundation program for something that's in their own, they'd like to leave the legacy for. So we're done. The running back for Tampa Bay and Atlanta just put the 161st single mother into the first home she and her family will ever own by making a down payment

and having it outfitted. So we're looking for role models, people that understand and holistically looking for someone that you know is going to be a good citizen, you know is going to try to make it in a nicer world, and you know is going to be open for second career planning so that the experience works out well. So you research and find those people. And then generally today what happens is that in strong families, a father, a mother will be the designated person that deals with agents.

Now, let's take the NFL. There are 1,000 certified agents, and probably 300 players get drafted, so the competition is really hard. And so the parents of most of the players will do all the interactions, generally until the end of whatever the senior season is, and then if you've made the cut down to the last few choices, then it'll be the player's choice. So that's how it starts. And then the first part of it is putting together a plan to get a player through the draft process

in whatever sport. In football, the first part of it is to find a training site for prospective draftees in the month of January and on into early February to prepare them with nutrition and strength and speed to do well in all-star games, scouting combine, and then at pro scouting days. That's quite a handful, too. I mean, like you said, you do the research because you want these guys not only to be – you don't want them just to get drafted. You want them to get drafted, and you want to keep that relationship together as long as long as possible and uh you

know you obviously want them to search for additional opportunities outside of just playing football so i mean of course that that makes a ton of sense that's really interesting too i i didn't realize the the initiation of of the relationship uh kind of how that uh formed or blossomed so to speak um you've got some amazing clients currently. One especially that I like that you currently are representing is Paxton Lynch, the quarterback for the Denver Broncos. And just covering a little bit of the draft process over the past couple months and such,

Patrick Mahomes and Jamal Williams running back out of BYU, two of my favorite guys as well as Cooper Rush. Dane Evans, another quarterback. Very interesting guys that you've got ahead of you for this draft process. Is there anything that can prepare you for something that goes up and down and is unpreparable, i guess is probably the better word for something like the nfl draft that can change drastically while the draft is actually being uh done um so the draft comes down to individual teams drafting individually

so it's a matter of understanding as we go through this. We've now gone through all-star games and we've gone through the scouting online. Now in football, we're getting ready for pro scouting days, which are just starting to happen, which will be another time to test on the college campus. And then that sort of followed. So you need to have the best possible feedback from teams to know and understand what's missing, to use the testing process to fill any holes,

to illuminate any areas that were their doubts and solidify relationships. When you say it goes all the way into the draft, it's because very often those picks are traded. So if a team is sitting in the fifth draft position and they're not particularly enamored with the next couple of players up, or they think that's too high to take the player they really like, they will trade with a team that has aspirations to draft somebody they think will be gone on the board when their turn comes.

So last year while the draft was going on, we were aware that Kansas City, Dallas, and Denver were all trying to trade when the draft got to around the 19th pick. They were all trying to trade to get Paxton Lynch. And so we were communicating with the different teams, and we couldn't have gone wrong with any of those teams, but they all want to know what you're hearing and what you know because teams are all disconnected on draft night. Sure. So then once they get now, and I want to ask about this real quick.

When Edger and James was drafted, you said that you represented him. Is that correct? Yes. Okay. So when he was drafted to the Indianapolis Colts, there was some hoopla, so to speak, that the Colts should have drafted another big running back in that draft. Can you tell me a little bit about that and kind of how that went down?

I'm sure that Edge was excited about being paired up with Peyton Manning, but how did that kind of work itself out, I guess? So I later represented Ricky Williams, so I had both of them. But for that draft, I had Edgerin. Bill Polian had a very strong sense for what he wanted in a player, and then I believe it was Jim Moore who was coaching. But Polian, who hates agents, but you've got to give him the fact that in terms of spotting talent,

he helped build the Buffalo Bills into the second-best team in football for four years. He turned Carolina into a very effective team, did the same thing for the Colts. So he was looking for a back like Edgerin who just keeps the ball moving down the field. You know, he's squirting, he's squeezing through and moving forward all the time. And so they had a really strong feeling about it. And as it works out, you know, Ed edger and his offensive rookie of the year makes the pro bowl his first year and um you know it's a much more effective than ricky was early yeah that that was it was kind of where a lot of people uh at least around colts country here in indiana were uh second guessing it a little bit, I think,

and were kind of like rolling their eyes at each other. But then after the first couple years especially, the Colts fans were quite excited that, you know, the things turned out the way they did. Very interesting. I was always curious about how that may have shaken down from somebody that was close to the situation there. Well, I think that Paul Ian knew what Edgerin could do and the fact that he just kept the ball moving down the field and would squirt through for three, four, three, five, and break one or two um and so it uh it it it fit perfectly because it gave them

enough of a threat now ricky ended up leading the league in rushing um one year so he had some good years he just had um you know other issues yeah i just had a rough start he was kind of uh mixed in with uh i think it was the marijuana issues at the time but now as as we kind of progress into uh how uh pain killers are are taken and stuff that seems like maybe even ricky was ahead of his time Is that fair? Well, I've written a campaign for looking for an alternative to opioid painkillers because we know there's an epidemic going on in the country, and I've had players come out of a hospital addicted. And what happens in that situation is you get someone who's addicted to the pain pills, and then once you're not getting them from a doctor, they're really expensive, and then people turn to heroin. Man, that's crazy.

I know Brett Favre had a lot of issues with it when he was in his days, and I think up until even after he retired, if I'm not mistaken. And I'm sure that there's a lot more than that, but it seems like that's something that is definitely a very strong issue with a lot of players late in their career and a lot of former players. So remember this. We are screened off as fans from the actual reality of the game. When you're watching on TV, you're not really getting the picture of these massive bodies moving in real time, hitting, and the fact that it's a traffic accident on every play. Now, so even a player who's not considered injured can hardly get out of bed. I mean, the human body was not designed to slam into fast-moving forces

or slam into someone on the other side of the line, you know, 70 times a game. Yeah. And so these guys are in real pain, and they're tough. I mean, they have a much higher pain tolerance than an average person would have. So when they're complaining about pain, you know, you and I would be in bed not moving. Oh yeah, for sure. I played football in high school and a little bit after, but I just couldn't imagine being chased down. You know, the big difference as you get to steps is guys get faster, stronger, and bigger. And, you know,

when linebackers are as fast as your running backs and they're probably as heavy or another 10 to 15 pounds heavier, that's a lot of injuries just waiting to happen. That's crazy. Yes, we're creating robo players. Yeah, absolutely. consulted on the movie Jerry Maguire, and they've also actually stated that it's believed that a lot of the agents on there, or it says agents in plural, and that's why I ask, is credited to follow you and based on you and your experiences. Can you kind of touch? I mean, you've also been on any events.

Go ahead. I'm sorry. Right. So Cameron Crowe was the writer-director, and he called me up back in 1993 and asked if he could follow me and shadow me to pick up atmosphere and stories for a film that would revolve around a sports agent. So in 93, Drew Bledsoe was the first pick in the draft,

so Cameron came back to the draft in New York. When we went up to a press conference in New England with Bill Parcells, he went to the league meetings with me for a week and watched me marching players who were trying to sign around and interactions with teams. He came to a whole series of games, mostly 49er games, but I think I'm also a Charger game. He came to my Super Bowl parties. He came to Pro Scouting Day at USC, and then he came to my Super Bowl parties, and then he also just spent time in the office.

So I told him lots and lots of stories. And then my job as technical consultant was to take the script he brilliantly wrote and to vet it to make sure the willing suspension of disbelief necessary to keep you in a motion picture so you don't think it's a spoof, so you don't think this could never happen, didn't get broken. Then he assigned me Cuba Gooding Jr., a young actor, to take to Arizona for the Super Bowl, and he had to pretend for a week he was wide receivers so i put him into role and uh jerry o'connell who was a quarterback and uh played the quarterback in the film actually had to show how to throw a spiral because he had gone to nyu and they didn't have football there so um you know it was a lot of life up there on the screen. It's not strictly autobiographical

because I had the first player in the first round of the draft first time out. That's not much of a dramatic arc. And I've never been able to walk through an airport or go out in public without someone running up and saying four words to me to start the show. Oh, no. So let's just assume that nobody said. It was Tim McDonald. It was Tim McDonald. Well, remember, the player really is supposed to say it to the agent. Right.

So Tim McDonald was a strong safety. He was playing for Arizona, looking for a new team. We were out at the league meetings. He ended up with the 49ers. He's now coaching at the Buffalo Bills. And Cameron took him up into our hotel room, and Moneyline with Lou Dobbs was on in the background. So he asked Tim what he was looking for in the experience, and Tim gestured towards the screen and said,

I'm looking for someone to show me winning. I'm looking for someone to show me a great team. I'm looking for someone to show me a great team. I'm looking for someone to show me the money. That's where that came from. So it actually was part of it. It wasn't just that he was doing that kind of creatively just to build the character. That actually originated from part of this, then. Right.

Well, in this research, I mean, he saw everything. I introduced him to owners, writers, players, coaches, and told him, you know, hour after hour of stories. Hmm, that's crazy. And you also helped with Any Given Sunday, and I believe for Love of the Game, and have done a couple HBO, consulted on some HBO specials as well. What would be, in your opinion,

maybe the most entertaining experience on something like that that you were a part of? Well, I mean, Jerry Maguire is just so close. I mean, I watched it once, but it's on TV twice. I went to both premieres. But it's sort of shocking to see the whole thing on the screen. One of the interesting things was on any given Sunday I was working with Oliver Stone, and they had initially cast a rapper to be the quarterback in the film. So I went out one day to the practice field,

and I realized she just could not throw a credible spiral. And, you know, not to be sexist, but I know powder puff quarterbacks that can throw better than he can. Anyway, they bring in all these experts, and I won't embarrass them, but they bring in all these experts.

Oliver kept saying, go show this tape to everybody in the NFL and see what they think. I said, Oliver, I'm representing half the starting quarterbacks in the NFL. I don't have to show this tape to everybody in the NFL and see what they think. I said, Oliver, I'm representing half the starting quarterbacks in the NFL. I don't have to show the tape to anybody. If you want to double him for every action scene. So that gave a young comedic actor who'd never done drama before his first role that way, and that was Jamie Foxx.

And one of my jobs was to put Cameron Diaz into role. And I was married at the time, not that there's cause and effect, but coming home after a long, arduous couple-hour session with Cameron Diaz was probably not the best way to maintain a marriage. Yeah, I can see that. So, you know, I appreciate your time. I've kind of kept you on here a little bit longer than I asked you for. But I would like, if you could and you wouldn't mind,

could you share with myself and the audience maybe a story that kind of takes us behind the scenes a little bit further into a part of your job and the relationship with the players that we just don't know or just don't get to experience very often. So the worst part is the specter of injury. So you have athletes who are in denial from when they played Pop Warner and Little League. And they're taught to ignore pain. They're taught to be stoic. So I've had players play one with a collapsed lung, one with a broken leg. And the concussion issue is one in which a player gets a concussion in game one,

you tell him not to play in game two, and he goes out and plays anyway. Because from the player's standpoint, long-term health is an abstraction, you know, an injury is something they deny.

So it's a really difficult time in the discussions you have with players and doctors to get them to protect themselves. And because they will look at an outside person. My biggest allies are the wives and the mothers and fathers, depending on how old an athlete is, to try to talk some protective sense into them. Because I remember giving a presenting speech for Warren Moon when he was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2006. And they let you do everything onto a stage that was sort of raised, and half of them couldn't do it. I mean, they were in, their, every joint in

their body had been broken down, and, you know, if you ask them, would they do it again, yes, but they were, there was a whole lot of impairment. And now we're seeing, even in younger players, impairment from concussions. So it's a very tricky thing. Yeah, it definitely makes it a lot more personable or personal when you see some of these players and some of the long-lasting effects that have come from the game. On a brighter note, you've got guys that have done it for years and it seems like they're just fine, but often it's that period that's in between

their playing days and when they're a little older that is when it all kind of sinks in a little bit so the real problem concussion is that every time an offensive lineman hits a defensive lineman at the inception of every football play it produces a low level sub-concussive event a little bit of change so you could have an offensive lineman walk out of football with 10,000 subconcussive events without realizing he'd ever been impaired without having any of them diagnosed. And the aggregate of all that

does the same thing to the brain as five or six knockout blows do. And so the real danger here is that 50% of the moms in this country were to understand these facts and tell their teenage boys, you can play any sport but not tackle football. It won't kill football. It would just change the socioeconomic so that the same type of people would play football who currently box or in MMA knowing there's a real risk of brain injury but needing it for economic opportunity. So I've been working trying to help companies that have new helmet technology that can dissipate the energy force, that have nutraceuticals, pharmaceuticals,

that can stop the swelling, better question how young kids should be when they start, and a whole series of ways to make the game safer. Matt, what I was going to ask you is, are you of the belief that maybe a 14-year-old or a 15-year-old is better suited to start football at that time as far as tackle football? Oh, yes. I mean, the adolescent brain is at a much higher risk. It takes much longer for someone who's 16 to recover, three times as long to recover as it would someone who's 30,

just as a basic rule. And you can actually stultify or stop certain aspects of the brain continuing to develop, which it does, especially the prefrontal part of it, because I've been in touch with experts. We had the first player safety conference in 1994. And you can really alter the brain development with someone who plays too early. It takes three times longer. And remember, you have kids that have to go to school. So it's like pro football players where that's what they do. And this is not just an issue for pro football. It's college football, high school football.

It's hockey. It's field hockey. It can be AOSO soccer. So it's any sport that has the chance of collision. That's very interesting. Lee, I can't thank you enough for spending some time with me today. I really appreciate your insight. And it was nice to get to know you a little bit, and I appreciate you giving some of your knowledge to my listeners today.

Thank you very much. My pleasure. Anytime. Like I said, I hope you guys enjoyed that as much as I did. Really interesting things. I mean, he spoke about the marijuana deal uh the head injuries you know all sorts of stuff i thought it was really interesting you know the the backstory behind the ricky williams and edron james draft i didn't know if you guys knew much about that i tried to get him to kind of lead into that a little bit and i hope you guys kind of got the gist of that so

thank you guys uh as always for listening i. I appreciate all of you. Go to iTunes. Subscribe if you haven't already. Give me a rating and a review. Tell me why you guys like the show. Those five-star reviews help tremendously. Keep up the good work, and I appreciate you guys very much. Keep sharing it with your friends, sharing it with your family, any Colts fans. And just thank you guys for reaching out and everything that you guys are doing to make this show grow. So thank you all.

And I'll talk to you guys on Monday right here on Locked on Colts. You are Locked on Colts, your daily podcast on the Indianapolis Colts, part of the Locked on Podcast Network, your team every day.