Summer 2006

Do you still need an agent?

Throughout the '80s and '90s, sports agents were almost bigger than the game. That's not quite the case today, as more players are choosing to rep themselves. But is that the best thing to do?

By Pete Williams
OverTime

 

Mike Timlin figured he wasn’t taking much of a risk last winter when he decided to part ways with his long-time agent David Sloane and negotiated a new contract on his own. After all, the veteran relief pitcher, now 40, had logged 15 years in the major leagues, earning three World Series rings and about $30 million in career earnings. It’s not that he didn’t think highly of Sloane; it’s just that Timlin wanted to experience the feel of negotiating his own contract.

 

“I knew what I wanted, and after seeing years of contract negotiations, it really didn’t seem that hard,” said Timlin, who re-signed with the Red Sox for one year and $3.5 million. “If I would have been seven or eight years younger, I don’t know if I could have done it myself.”

 

Timlin joined the ranks of other sports tars negotiating deals without representation, including the NBA’s Ray Allen, the NFL’s Tedy Bruschi, and fellow baseball players Curt Schilling, Andruw Jones, and Gary Sheffield to negotiate deals without representation. But going alone is a touchy subject. Players say it’s no big deal, especially veterans. Agents, not surprisingly, say it’s a foolish way to save on commissions, which are relatively modest – and tax deductible. Player association officials, caught in the middle, worry that the players will sell themselves short, thus establishing a lower bar for the comparable players entering free agency.

 

Sloane, while refusing comment on his split with Timlin, mentions a point he often makes to college baseball players considering going solo. “If you’re in a car accident and somebody sues you, I assume you’re going to hire an attorney,” said Sloane, whose clients include veteran slugger Carlos Delgado. “There’s a lot of money on the line there. So why wouldn’t you want a representative with millions of dollars on the line in sports?”

 

Brad Blank, whom Bruschi hired as his first-ever agent after suffering a mild stroke following the 2005 season, says he doesn’t fault Bruschi for going at it alone. “But I’d never do it,” Blank said. “I’m an Ivy League-trained lawyer with a Massachusetts real estate license. But if I’m involved in litigation or need to sell a house, I’m going to hire someone. Most people are like me in those situations; they get way too emotional and need someone to offer an objective, detached point of view.”

 

Players often point to Schilling as an argument for going without an agent. Following the 2003 season, the Arizona Diamondbacks were desperate to cut payroll and placed the veteran pitcher on the trading block. Since Schilling had a no-trade clause, he could veto any deal.

 

The Diamondbacks let Schilling work his own trade, and since the pitcher did not have an agent, he did just that. In a now-famous Thanksgiving dinner with Red Sox general manager Theo Epstein, he agreed to a trade to Boston in exchange for a two-year contract extension with a third-year option.

 

Schilling, who has collected more than $80 million through the 2005 season, long has been an outspoken critic of baseball agents, especially Scott Boras, the game’s most powerful rep, who has never represented Schilling. Before Schilling fired his agents and negotiated his own deal, his representatives generated headlines in Philadelphia, where the Phillies were interested in re-acquiring their former star, by claiming Schilling was insulted by a $7 million contract offer.

 

“Some of those comments bothered me,” Schilling said. “If I were working 70 hours a week for $12 an hour and read about someone being offended at being offered $7 million a year, I’d be ticked at the player. The thing some players don’t understand is that when an agent opens his mouth, he’s representing the player and people see that as the player talking. It's hard to differentiate between the two, and it leads to more problems than it solves.”

 

Ray Allen was something of a pioneer for the no-agent negotiation when he landed a six-year $70.9 million contract extension with the Milwaukee Bucks in 1999. He paid the late Johnnie Cochran $500 an hour to negotiate the contract, which was handled mostly between Allen and Sen. Herb Kohl, who owns the Bucks. (Allen, now a Seattle Sonic, hired agents Lon Babby and Jim Tanner to negotiate his next contract, however.)

 

In the NFL, it’s unusual for players to go without agents. After all, most players have been bombarded by representatives since their junior years of college and choose agents in part to obtain free training for the NFL Combine. Changing agents among veterans is so commonplace that there often seems to be many players without representation, but that’s only because they’re between contracts and in no hurry to sign a new rep. Besides, NFL agents come cheap compared to the other leagues, allowed only a maximum 3 percent commission.

 

“The contracts themselves might seem relatively simple,” says veteran NFL agent Mark Slough. “But I don’t know if a player can deal with all of the complicated language about, say, the signing bonus, on his own. When you get into things like that, they’re really out of their element.”

 

Bruschi, by all accounts, did a good job serving as his own agent. But the stroke brought about a litany of contract issues, not only in his existing pact but in future deals. That’s when he hired Blank, an unofficial advisor through the years, as his full-time rep to sort through the language.

 

Though it’s probably just a coincidence, athletes associated with the New England area seem more prone to go the non-agent route. Even Rocco Baldelli, a Providence native and promising young outfielder for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, negotiated a six-year, $32 million contract extension on his own last winter. Baldelli was in constant contact with the MLB Players Association and did have his new agent, Casey Close, look over the final documents. But he handled all of the legwork.

 

“I know a lot of people might not feel comfortable doing it themselves and want an agent involved,” Baldelli says. “I just feel comfortable doing things on my own. It’s really not as hard as you might think.”

 

 

© Copyright 2006 Maven Media Group, LLC