SEC commissioner and league coaches target problems with rogue sports agents

Alabama's Nick Saban is one of the more vocal SEC coaches on problems dealing with unscrupulous sports agents. (Icon SMI)

By Ben Cook, Lindyssports.com

Every year there is a theme that surfaces during the Southeastern Conference Football Media Days. Last season the theme was coaches voting on the preseason All-SEC team that came up after Tim Tebow was left off Steve Spurrier’s ballot.

This year the theme was college football agents, not all of them but just the ones who step outside boundaries and place a player’s eligibility in jeopardy.

This became the hot topic in light of the NCAA looking into situations at North Carolina, South Carolina, and Florida. Then during Media Days, word came out about Alabama’s Marcell Dareus participating in the now famous South Beach party where some of the top players in the country were hosted by … well, nobody really knows, but there is a good bet that an agent or an agent’s runner was behind it.

The thing about agents is that there are more good ones than bad ones but it is the rogue agents who give the entire profession a bad name.

In his opening address to the coaches, SEC commissioner Mike Slive said there is a movement among coaches, conferences and the NCAA to examine ways to handle the situation.

“We're mindful of the complexities involved in a young person's transition from collegiate participation to the role of professional athlete,” said Slive. “As a conference, we have spent considerable time discussing this issue and we have heard from experts in the field in an effort to determine how best to manage these transition issues.

“These discussions include a review of current NCAA rules, which in my view may be as much a part of the problem as they are part of the solution, because the rules make it difficult for student-athletes to seek and obtain the kind of advice in the context in which they need it to properly evaluate potential opportunities for a career in professional sport.

“Dealing with improper agent conduct has been a challenge for a long time, but not only for intercollegiate athletics, but also for the many good agents who try to follow the rules. It is time to reexamine the NCAA rules that relate to agents,” Slive added.

“By saying that, I don't mean in a moment to excuse conduct that's inappropriate by student-athletes. This is a national problem that calls for a national agent strategy for college athletics. In calling for this strategy, our intent is not to eliminate NCAA oversight of agent issues, and not to excuse improper student-athlete behavior, but rather to change the NCAA's philosophical basis for these rules from enforcement to an assistance-based model.

“An NCAA committee has been established to look at this issue. It's a good beginning,” Slive said.

One by one, most of the coaches echoed the same thing that reexamining the NCAA rules in regards to dealing with agents is a good idea.

Alabama coach Nick Saban went one step further. He believes the NFL needs to shoulder some of the burden.

“I think I would like to say there are probably three areas of responsibility here,” Saban said. “We all as institutions have a responsibility to educate our players to make good choices and decisions about what they do.

“I think that the players have a responsibility to make good choices and decisions about what they do with the agents.

“I also think the NFL Players Association has a responsibility to monitor and control what agents do,” Saban said. “I think if an agent does anything to affect the eligibility of a college football player, his license ought to be suspended for a year. That's the only way we're going to stop what's happening out there because it's ridiculous and it's entrapment of young people at a very difficult time in their life.

“And it's very difficult for the institutions and NCAA to control it and it's very unfair to college football,” he said. ‘I think as college coaches, we should look into doing something about that relative to we develop a lot of football players so they can go on and play in the NFL.

“We treat the NFL as well as anybody in the United States when they come to the University of Alabama,” Saban said. “If something doesn't go on from their end of it to control what they're doing to affect our players, then I'm not sure that that same hospitality will be welcomed in the future.”

At one point, Saban compared unscrupulous agents to pimps, which drew howls of protests from agents.

The problem, as many of the coaches conceded, comes down to the players themselves. They are educated from the minute they step on a college campus that they must avoid accepting anything from agents or runners until they have used up their collegiate eligibility.

“The players and their families are very savvy negotiators and they play the agents against each other,” said Sam Farmer, NFL writer for the Los Angeles Times on the Dan Patrick Show Monday. “The players and their families have their hands out.”

Farmer struggled to find an answer to the problem, which he calls a simple matter of supply and demand, but did agree with Saban that the NFL should help shoulder some of the responsibility.

“Do you pay the players? Do you penalize them before they get to the NFL? Do you suspend them for eight games if they are caught taking money in college? Is that even possible?” said Farmer. “There are a lot of things I think the NFL should do to help college football because they are essential to each other.

“There isn’t an easy solution. College coaches are making millions of dollars on the back of unpaid players,” he said.

It smacks of hypocrisy for coaches, who are making millions of dollars a year, to cry about a player taking whatever he can get from agents or their runners.

“If you crack down on the certified agents, someone is going to fill that void,” Farmer said.

He did point out that NFL commissioner Roger Goodell is willing to help find a solution.

“The commissioner would do whatever he could to help college football,” Farmer said. “College football is a free farm system for the NFL. Not only that, it promotes these players. It is a multi-billion dollar marketing arm so that guys like Reggie Bush and Tim Tebow are superstars before they ever set foot on an NFL field. That is worth a lot to the NFL. The NFL was able to give up NFL Europe because it has college football.”

“So it is essential to the league to do what is in the best interest to protect the integrity of college football, what integrity exists,” said Farmer. “I think the league should be proactive in this case and do what it can.”

Saban has first hand experience when it comes to bad situations with agents.

“We had an issue a couple years ago with Smitty (Andre Smith) who got suspended for the Sugar Bowl. You know, we probably could have prosecuted the guy,” he said. “But in prosecuting the guy that did wrong, we would have put our institution in jeopardy —possibly — from an NCAA standpoint. We didn't do it. But then the same guy is standing in line trying to give our players money this past year and nothing gets done about it.

“It's not a good situation.”

No, it is not a good situation. The NCAA rules regarding amateur athletes and their eligibility virtually unenforceable. So the NCAA is reviewing the rules, what good will that do? Coaches can’t monitor their players 24/7 and players have been given a sense of entitlement since they were in high school.

So here is a logical solution. Allow players to take the money. If an agent wants to invest in the chance for future earnings for a particular player, allow the agent to assume the risk. If he pays a player and the player doesn’t get a chance at NFL riches, he doesn’t have to pay it back. Don’t put the players’ eligibility at risk, put the agent’s bankroll at risk. This solves another problem — the idea of paying players. The schools can’t do it, but the agents can.

Not all players are good enough to play in the NFL and those who don’t get money from agents might think it is unfair, and it probably is. But life is tough; all those remaining players get is a free education for their efforta. And that’s not all bad either.

It is a win-win for everybody.