Super Agent Leigh Steinberg

Sports superstars’ agent speaks

By Christopher Laddish, Marinscope contributor via Twin Cities Times

“There I was, brimming with experience, having never practiced law before,” Steinberg said wryly. “But we had leverage. We ended up with the largest rookie contact in the history of the NFL.”

“I should have quit then,” Steinberg joked.

Steinberg reminisced about landing in Atlanta in 1975 with Bartkowski and being surprised by the throngs of fans and the contingent of news reporters that had gathered for their arrival. “I saw then the tremendous idol worship and the veneration athletes are held in across the country,” he said.

A strong community advocate and philanthropist, Steinberg said he always upheld the core values his father taught him, which included valuing human relationships and making positive changes in the community. The agent passed on that set of values to his clients. “I saw that practice as a way to persuade athletes to serve as role models,” Steinberg said.

Steinberg has always encouraged athletes to give back to the schools, churches and communities that helped shaped them. “I asked athletes to retrace their roots,” he said. At the collegiate level, football players Steve Young and Troy Aikman both started scholarship funds at their universities.

Cruise’s title role in “Jerry Maguire” is loosely based on Steinberg. Film director Cameron Crowe approached Steinberg in 1993. “He wanted to be a fly on the wall,” Steinberg said. Crowe spent weeks in Steinberg’s office and accompanied him to press conferences, the NFL draft in 1993 and the Super Bowl.

Steinberg also worked with directors on other sports films, including Oliver Stone’s “Any Given Sunday” and the 1999 film “For Love of the Game,” directed by Sam Raimi.

“For me, you have to be a steward of the sport,” Steinberg said.

A longtime advocate for athletes’ safety, Steinberg said the most distressing part of his career was witnessing injuries.

“Playing football is an act of courage,” he said. “The level of contact in these sports is like getting in a car accident every time they get hit.”

Steinberg spoke candidly about his struggles with alcohol, which stemmed from the death of his father, personal financial problems and a divorce. “I turned to alcohol at those times to check out and block it all out,” he said.

In March 2010, in the midst of financial ruin, Steinberg “crashed” and enrolled himself in a treatment program for homeless addicts. “I had sold my business for $120 million, and there I was in indigent rehab. I felt I had hit rock bottom,” he said.

“Today, I’ve been sober for 795 days,” Steinberg said, drawing applause from the crowd.

Steinberg said he is coming out of bankruptcy and plans to start a new agency based on the same core values he has always held dear. “I want to stimulate the best in athletes, prepare them for a second career and try to make a meaningful change in this country.”

Contact Christopher Laddish at scope@marinscope.com.

May 26, 2012|By Leigh Steinberg via The Daily Pilot

Last year I had the pleasure of speaking on the field at the awards presentation for the Daily Pilot Cup. It was heartwarming to experience our community coming together to support third-, fourth-, fifth- and sixth-graders as they competed.

Daily Pilot Editor John Canalis, Sports Editor Steve Virgen and all of the giving volunteers are to be complimented for the way in which they have created this bonding event. And, major kudos to Kirk McIntosh, who takes time away from his busy law practice to serve as tournament director.

This year’s 13th annual tournament will start Tuesday and concludes June 3. The games are played in Costa Mesa on the fields at the Jack Hammett Sports Complex, Costa Mesa High and Davis Elementary School.

My children Jon, Matt and Katie spent a collective 22 years playing soccer in Newport Beach AYSO. That meant that I had years of Saturday mornings on the sidelines.

Soccer is the first organized sport that most children ever play. It is the first time they have a chance to be measured against their peers. It can be a time of extraordinary empowerment or a traumatizing crushing of their self esteem.

Coaching plays a major factor in creating the perceptual prism that kids view the experience with, and so does parenting.

Because I am concerned that how to parent children in youth sports is a rarely discussed or taught skill I co-wrote a book with Dave Smith on the subject that will be published later this year. No one instructs parents as to whether they should encourage their kids to be young Vince Lombardis and win at all costs, or if enjoying the experience is the key.

There is no “parenting license” that is required. If your son or daughter is not getting major play time, the team is losing, they are playing an undesirable position, or the coach is not nurturing – should you counsel your kids to assert themselves with the coach to improve their situation? Or, should they accept the situation and build character?

Parents can confuse their own desires to have their children be a star with the child’s actual needs.

Type A parents may try to live through their kids and be unduly prideful with success and embarrassed with anything less.

I wrote earlier this year about a time when my daughter Katie was crying on the field after her team lost in the playoffs. I ran out on the field to console her. She looked at me and said, “I’m not crying because we lost Dad, I’m crying because this means I won’t get to see all my friends on the team as much.”

We need to be careful as parents to allow our kids to chart their own paths and not impose our own reactions on theirs. Time spent watching games on the sidelines is important to our children, but not as important as one-on-one time spent with them.

Children tend to be more focused on how their parents act than on what their parents say. Kids are easily embarrassed by over-the-top parental behavior. Even worse is the parents who berate the referees or coaches. The people who coach and officiate are also busy parents who care enough to volunteer their unpaid time and energy to providing a productive learning environment for the young players. It’s about the kids, not the parents.

Some of the sideline behavior has been so distracting and negative that the Pilot Cup has actually enforced a new rule which allows the referee to penalize a team for their fans’ behavior.

Soccer can teach invaluable life skills to young participants. They can learn self-discipline, teamwork, performance under pressure, resilience and never quitting. It shouldn’t be about the winning at that young age.

Please come out and support the community spirit, good parenting and youthful exuberance that the Pilot Cup experience offers.

LEIGH STEINBERG is a renowned sports agent, author, advocate, speaker and humanitarian. His column appears weekly. Follow Leigh on Twitter @steinbergsports or blog.steinbergsports.com.

Center Andrew Bynum played in the All-Star game this year and forward Pau Gasol has in the past. They are tall, strong and athletic, but not consistent. Bynum takes games and plays off. He should be unstoppable offensively and defensively, but his attitude is not conducive to team play. He draws multiple technical fouls and is difficult to coach. When he decides to play well, the Lakers are successful, but he can simply disappear in games. That’s a difficult thing to do at his height.

Gasol has a better attitude but is equally streaky. He is getting older and it shows. Both players are perfect examples to younger athletes of why talent can be outplayed by desire and heart.

The Lakers, who trail the Thunder, 3-1, following Saturday night’s 103-100 collapse, have not been able to find a point guard to run the offense since the heyday of Derek Fisher. Point guards can completely alter a team, as Derrick Rose does in Chicago and Chris Paul has done for the Clippers. Ramon Sessions simply can’t keep up with the younger OKC players.

And then there’s Kobe.

He has had one of the greatest careers in the history of the NBA. His shooting has won countless games in the clutch. In this series, he has not been able to score at dramatic junctures as he has in the past.. He is still brilliant, but is also aging. Oklahoma City, with Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant, has been fast and accurate. It is sad to watch the Lakers struggle with a younger, more athletic team, but OKC could well win the championship.

This has been the most exciting season for the Clippers since they arrived in Southern California. The trade for Paul brought a spectacular floor leader at point guard, who has a remarkable soft shooting touch and a hyper competitive mentality. Blake Griffinmakes crowd-pleasing dunks from every angle. But Griffin is nursing a sprained knee and has not been as effective, and Paul has not been his consistent brilliant self against a seasoned San Antonio Spursteam that has won multiple championships.

The Spurs, who hold a 3-0 edge against a Clippers going into Sunday’s elimination game, may be the best coached team in the playoffs. Tim Duncan has been rejuvenated and the Clippers need DeAndre Jordan to neutralize him. The Clippers lost veteran Chauncey Billups early in the season, who would have been critical to their success in this series. The playoff inexperience of this team is no match for the well-oiled Spur machine.

It looks like our hoop dreams for the two local NBA franchises are turning into hoop nightmares. Maybe next year.

LEIGH STEINBERG is a renowned sports agent, author, advocate, speaker and humanitarian. His column appears weekly. Follow Leigh on Twitter @steinbergsports or blog.steinbergsports.com.

by Caroline Wong of The OC Register

Leigh Steinberg is a famous sports agent and has super-coached A-list actors for movies such as Jerry Macguire & Any Given Sunday.

Watch some videos of classroom sessions with NFL veteran Mike Sherrard & Fox Sports lawyer Robert Hacker HERE…

Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. says paying college athletes is asking for trouble

by: Robert L. Ehrlich via The Baltimore Sun

Many of you know I was fortunate to play high school football at Gilman and college football at Princeton. What most of you do not know is that I worked as a graduate assistant on the Wake Forest football staff to pay for my room and board during law school. These experiences instilled in me a strong sense of the appropriate role of academics and athletics in our secondary schools and colleges. So it should come as no surprise that I have a strong opinion as to the increasingly aggressive calls to pay college athletes in revenue-producing sports.

The rationale is familiar: Big-time athletic programs (particularly football and basketball) produce in excess of $6 billion in annual income for our Division 1 colleges and universities. These institutions are constantly jumping at new revenue-producing opportunities. Indeed, the sports pages are full of reports about conference switching, new post-season tournaments, new media networks, and the extension of the regular season to unheard of lengths. (Remember when college football was played in the fall and basketball in the winter?) The money grab may have grown perverse, but the dollars keep coming in. And now advocates are asking the NCAA to cut the players in on the revenue pie.

On the common-sense side is a proposal to increase grant-in-aid scholarships to reflect the full annual cost of attending college. This is the one new proposal that makes sense to me. Some recent studies have concluded that the average scholarship package (including educational expenses) is approximately $3,500 below what it should be. So, just increase the package to reflect the actual cost of the educational and related expenses and be done with it.

Numerous other ideas floated to date are rife with problems. One would have college athletes contract out their marketing rights to sponsors, while another would have schools create a trust fund to be held in escrow until such time as a student athlete graduates. South Carolina Coach Steve Spurrier, a former Heisman Trophy winner, advocates a lump sum payment per season.

A brief review of recent pay-for-play proposals (mostly applicable to football and basketball) brings to light a multitude of potential issues: minimum salaries, Title IX, antitrust protection, unionization, workers’ compensation, and endorsement revenue are but a sampling of the potential problems attendant to a college athlete wage scale.

Reportedly, some major college athletes are angry at what they perceive as unfair treatment. They feel as though they are being cheated out of their fair share of an ever-growing revenue stream. Leigh Steinberg, a top-drawer agent, shares this sense of disparate treatment: “The dominant attitude among players is that there is no moral or ethical reason not to take money, because the system is ripping them off.”

Wow. I understand my athletic experience was not at the Division 1 level, but we’re still talking about an expenses-paid college education — that ticket to success in post-industrial America. In this respect, it is appropriate that folks remember the consideration given in exchange for the athletic talent on display: a four-year free ride at many of America’s leading universities. That brief sentence must sound pretty good indeed to the millions of American families presently struggling to pay for their non-athlete child to live the college dream.

It is not unusual for many scholarship athletes to drop out of school once their eligibility is complete. The resulting unacceptable graduation rates are more a reflection on the individual institutions than the student-athlete. And herein lies the real problem with revenue-driven college athletics: Too often, the young athlete fails to receive what he has been promised — a real education.

This is not a problem of dollars. It is a problem of moral responsibility too often forfeited in the glitter of big-time athletics. As the commercial says, most “D-1” kids will be going pro in a field other than professional athletics. Many gave their energy, talent and bodies to play in the big time. Their obligation is to attend class, learn and graduate. The university’s obligation is to ensure that just such a result occurs, even if it takes five or six years to get it done. Anything less is simply immoral. That so many athletes fail to ever attain a degree means the immoral often wins in today’s athletic arena.

By HAL HABIB

Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Updated: 9:37 p.m. Saturday, May 5, 2012

Posted: 5:11 p.m. Saturday, May 5, 2012

Marv Fleming, a tight end on the 1972 undefeated Dolphins, became so concerned about the concussion problem in pro football that he had his doctor perform an MRI on his brain last year.

The results left him even more alarmed.

“I had six or seven black spots on my brain the size of 50-cent pieces,” said Fleming, who requested the MRI even though he was symptom-free. “The doctor says I was on a slow highway to Alzheimer’s, dementia and Parkinson’s and everything else.”

Fleming, 70, today considers himself lucky. He credits about six months of therapy in hyperbaric chambers — three sessions per week, one hour each time — with producing a clean follow-up MRI.

“I nipped it at the bud,” he said. “A lot of guys don’t want to do it. A lot of guys get onto that highway and get into the fog and it’s going to be too late.”

It’s too early, four days after the suicide of Junior Seau, to know if concussions - or, more to the point, football - led to the death of the Hall of Fame-caliber linebacker for San Diego, Miami and New England. But there are scores who have strong suspicions.

Included is Leigh Steinberg, a one-time agent of Seau’s who last week wrote an online call to action under the headline How Many Deaths Will It Take? Steinberg said he would be surprised if chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) is not discovered in an examination of Seau’s brain by Dr. Bennet Omalu, who 10 years ago began uncovering a string of CTE-related suicides in retired players including Pahokee’s Andre Waters, who shot himself in 2006.

Seau’s death came only 13 days after the suicide of former Atlanta safety Ray Easterling, who suffered from dementia and had filed a concussion-related lawsuit against the NFL.

“We could well see in 10 or 15 years an epidemic of concussion-related damage in athletes who’ve played,” said Steinberg, a member of the SportsConcussions.org advisory board and former agent for Troy Aikman and Steve Young, Hall of Fame quarterbacks who suffered multiple concussions. ” It’s not going to get better. It’s going to get worse.”

NFL taking big hits

Seldom has the NFL faced such unsettling times. Amid the fallout from the New Orleans Saints bounty program, the league now faces the prospect that one of its all-time greats may have taken his own life at age 43 because of the very ferocity that earned him the nickname “Say Ow.” The NFL can only hope Omalu doesn’t reach the same conclusion about Seau that he did Waters: “Football killed him.”

CTE has claimed Hall of Fame talent before, but when former Pittsburgh center Mike Webster died in 2002, CTE was unknown. Today, there are more than 1,800 former players suing the NFL, many claiming the league concealed the dangers of concussions, according to NFLConcussionLitigation.com. The league has consistently denied wrongdoing.

As we wait to learn more about Seau’s death, scores of retired NFL players are left to wonder about their own health and that of their peers.

“I have a great concern for anybody who played the game or anybody that is thinking about playing the game, young or old,” said O.J. Anderson, the former Forest Hill High running back and Super Bowl MVP for the New York Giants. “Because obviously, there’s some kind of enzyme - something - that is going on with the brain that is causing something like this to happen.”

Because he is weighing whether to participate in a lawsuit, Anderson, 55, is vague about his health, saying only that some days are better than others. Seau’s suicide, he said, shocked him, because during the string of four years in which he participated in Seau’s charity golf tournament, Anderson knew Seau as the upbeat, driven icon San Diego worshipped.

Enthusiastic, jumping around and happy about life are the terms Oronde Gadsden used to describe his former Dolphins teammate. But now when Gadsden thinks about Seau, another phrase comes to mind: “Worried for everybody.”

Seau shot himself in the chest, eerily reminiscent of the death of former Chicago Bears defensive back Dave Duerson, who left a note saying he wanted to preserve his brain for science. CTE was discovered on Duerson’s brain.

Gadsden, a plaintiff in concussion litigation, said he’s trying not to jump to conclusions regarding Seau, but it’s difficult. “Some coincidences, we need to take into consideration,” he said.

Terrifying results

The elevated concern doesn’t surprise Steinberg, who said if football is blamed in Seau’s death, “It jolts former players, but current players will continue doing the same things that contributed, potentially, to Junior’s tragic end.”

Steinberg once was one of the most powerful agents in the NFL but said by the 1990s, he began fearing he was an “enabler” of a potentially “devastating” problem: the potential long-term effect of concussions. Steinberg ceased watching games from sidelines, unwilling to stomach violent collisions up close.

Steinberg said Young once admitted to him that he pre-selected a certain play from the 49ers playbook as a fail-safe option for “when I realize I’m impaired.”

Then there was the evening of Jan. 23, 1994, after Dallas had defeated San Francisco 38-21 for the NFC championship despite losing Aikman to a concussion. When Steinberg entered the darkened hospital room, Aikman asked a series of questions: Where am I? Why? Did I play today? It was only when Steinberg informed him the Cowboys were bound for the Super Bowl that Aikman’s face brightened.

“About 10 minutes later, he looked at me and said, ‘Hi, Leigh. Why am I here?’ ” Steinberg said. Realizing the string of questions wasn’t going to cease, Steinberg resorted to writing down his answers. “It terrified me.”

Because Seau spent 20 NFL seasons patrolling the middle of the field, Steinberg said there is “no chance” he didn’t suffer multiple concussions.

How to change culture?

Taylor Twellman, a former Major League Soccer star who was Seau’s neighbor in Oceanside, Calif., told ESPN that Seau once told him he was suffering from chronic headaches after multiple concussions. Seau never took up an offer to help, added Twellman, whose career was cut short because of head injuries.

Seau’s death may not have surprised Dr. Robert Cantu, a leading expert on CTE. In a story published in May 2011, Cantu told the Buffalo News he wondered if Seau might have CTE because he once drove his vehicle off a cliff after a domestic dispute. Seau said he fell asleep while driving.

Earlier this year, Seau told Sports Illustrated he favored a new culture in the game because he was concerned about a father “not knowing his kid’s name, not being able to function at a normal rate after football.” Whether Seau was referring to himself is unclear.

What is clear to Anderson: “Another fallen soldier is no longer with us.”

What’s clear to Steinberg is that law firms nationwide are aggressively recruiting potential plaintiffs for additional lawsuits. Former Dolphins involved in litigation, according to NFLConcussionLitigation.com, include John Avery, Lyle Blackwood, Keith Byars, Troy Drayton and Mark Duper. The list also includes Garo Yepremian - a former kicker who said he couldn’t comment on the advice of his lawyer.

When even kickers are affected, and when players in more risky roles are added to the list of casualties and fatalities, it’s time for change, Steinberg said.

“People can argue all they want that this is the choice that people are making (to play) and you don’t want to put a dress on the quarterback or it’ll destroy the game, but let me make this point to you,” Steinberg said. “If you really look at the research on pro football and what draws the viewers, it is not the ferocious hit.” Instead, it’s a quarterback- and star-driven league, Steinberg said.

“So when people say we’re trying to change the nature of the game, no. We’re actually trying to preserve the nature.”

by: Leigh Steinberg via The Huffington Post

The human race has shown a remarkable capacity throughout history to ignore physical reality and embrace demonstrably false facts. When Galileo was bold enough to assert that the sun rather than the earth was the center of the universe he was put under house arrest for the remainder of his life by religious authorities. Those unfortunate souls who claimed that the earth was round and not flat risked being put to death. Once again our species is in denial about the reality of climate change.

As polar ice caps melt, oceans are rising around the world wreaking havoc with worldwide weather patterns and threatening to overrun low lying areas. Mountain ice packs are melting and water supply is threatened, we will soon see water wars. Tornadoes, hurricanes and other dramatic storms are increasing. The ozone layer is dissolving with unprecedented greenhouse gases. The earth is one eco-system, pollution from China travels to Southern California. This is science — the only debate is how quickly the changes will impact human and animal life. The earth is not in danger, our species is. We don’t want to be the first parents in U.S. history to hand a degraded quality of life down to our children and grandchildren. The debt crisis is already threat enough.

Sports can lead the way in changing attitudes. I am resurrecting the Sporting Green Alliance to take sustainable technologies in water, solar, resurfacing and recycling and integrate them into professional, collegiate and high school stadia, arenas and practice facilities. Add in golf courses and that is a substantial amount of real estate. The purpose is to drop energy costs and carbon emissions and turn these venues into actual energy providers for the grid. These facilities can function as educational platforms enabling the hundreds of millions of fans who attend events to see a waterless urinal or a solar panel and think about how they can incorporate these energy saving practices into their own homes and businesses. If there is demand for these technologies, American industry will respond and start to make products the world wants to buy. This would force China to compete and modify there current toxic practices.

Sports can be a rich source of content supply to stimulate attitudinal change in the public.

Saturday morning cartoon shows with Superhero athletes fighting for the environment or comic books promoting these themes could start the educational process early. Owners could establish local forests and nature preserves. Green technologies can become the subject of naming rights and signage. Warren Moon and I were employed as spokesmen in sports-themed public service advertisements for the Sierra Club. I gave the keynote speech at the United Nations Convention on Sports and the Environment several years ago in Lausanne, Switzerland. Some of my clients participated in Laurie David’s virtual Million Person Environmental March on Washington.

Certain threats to our children seem so colossal and overwhelming that they create a sense of powerlessness and apathy in parents, My father used to say that “there is no ‘they’ when it comes to solving problems and taking action — the ‘they’ is you son, and me!”. The Sporting Green Alliance can be a helpful first step.

by: Leigh Steinberg via The Huffington Post

On Thursday night, the NFL and a massive television audience will be focused on the NFL Draft.

What was a private experience 30 years ago has become a four-day, sponsored and promoted Ramadan of the annual player selection. What you won’t see is the excruciating tension that the college players and their friends and families are experiencing in homes across the country. I have been fortunate to have represented over 60 first round draft picks — eight of whom were the very first pick in the first round. I have also spent almost 40 years sharing this penultimate moment of pressure followed by joy at player’s homes and in New York. In New York, team representatives sit at tables with team helmets. The teams have their brain trusts in their home cities so these are employees. National press gathers. The commissioner comes out and announces each choice.

It takes a village to create a potential professional football player. They represent the hopes and dreams of Pop Warner, high school and college coaches and family, friends and community that have been involved in a player’s evolution. This provides a large rooting section that descends on an athletes’ home to share the unique night. Those players judged to be high first round picks are invited to New York with family members. They take a boat trip around Manhattan, are treated to Broadway shows and parties and take part in the extraordinary pre-draft television and sponsor promotions.

The players in New York are forced to sit at tables in a room just offstage where cameras broadcast every emotion and detail. I spent weeks prior to the draft interacting with teams at the top of the draft attempting to discern which franchise was most likely to take a player. I would sit with the draft order and show a player the most likely scenarios. Each team in the first round has 10 minutes to make its’ selection (that drops to five minutes in later rounds). Virtually every team takes the whole time to announce its’ pick. They have spent weeks running mock drafts and have calculated every possible outcome for their selection. What are they doing as time ticks away? They are fielding trade offers from teams that want to move up or down in order to choose a special player they fear will be gone when their slot comes or aggregating lower draft picks from teams wanting to move up.

For players like Troy Aikman or Jeff George or Andrew Luck, the New York experience is a cakewalk. They have either signed a contract making them the first selection or the team has publicly announced they will be picked. RG3 knows that Washington will use the second pick in the first round to select him. For the remainder of the picks the time is torture. Draft time is not real time, it is Chinese Water Torture time. Each second feels like a minute, each minute like an hour — the wait is agonizing. If a player is not selected in the spot he anticipates, depression and uncertainty set in. Watching the other players being picked and go onstage to hold up a team jersey and be photographed with the commissioner is a bittersweet moment.

A plummeting draft pick may sit in that room for four or five hours. Former Notre Dame quarterback Brady Quinn expected to be picked at the top of the draft and kept being passed over. He removed his coat at one point, then his tie, then opened up his shirt — it was like watching a game of strip poker.

When I sat with Ben Roethlisberger in 2004 I had carefully prepared him to expect the Chargers to trade their pick to the New York Giants. I told him that the Giants would take QB Eli Manning, the Chargers QB Philip Rivers. The first two teams in draft order that I thought were likely to take Ben were Buffalo (which had the 13th pick) and Pittsburgh (which had the 11th pick). But the Giants had told Ben’s coach that if the Chargers took Eli Manning, they would take Ben as the fourth pick. The Chargers picked Manning which meant that scenario could come to fruition, but I still thought the trade would happen. The minutes passed oh so slowly which ratcheted tension to an excruciating level. No trade was announced until all but seven seconds remained on the clock, and then as they were about to lose the pick — the commissioner announced that the Giants had swapped picks with the Chargers, taken Manning and the Chargers had taken Rivers. A deflated darkness settled over our table and the drip, drip, drip of other selections took two hours. Finally Pittsburgh took Ben and the table erupted in exultation. All was forgotten, and Pittsburgh and Ben turned out to be a match made in heaven. But those two hours saw the sprouting of gray hairs, young men turning old and drip, drip, drip.

Notwithstanding how late a player is picked, that moment is the culmination of years of practice, sacrifice and yearning and pure joy ensues. Tears flow, emotional bear hugs break out, prayers of thanks are given, and all’s right in the world. It has always been my favorite day of the year.