This week’s SI Cover story centers on former sports agent Josh Luchs and it’s going to cause quite the stir

SCOTT JACOBS

It is sure to cause a firestorm. A flurry of controversy in an already controversial, backwards world, but former sports agent Josh Luchs is coming clean: he paid college football players (lots of them) and it wasn’t always his fault.  That’s the main message that comes from George Dohrmann’s fabulous piece on Luchs, who became a sports agent at the wildly implausible (at least nowadays) age of 20.  No college degree.  Still living at home with his parents.  He didn’t even dream of becoming an agent, he simply wanted to work for the Raiders, his favorite team.

But an unpaid internship he had with a radio station eventually led to his repayment as a ball boy with the then Los Angeles Raiders.  Relationships with players were formed, and one day, three years after he started with the team, star cornerback Greg Townsend proposed what would nowadays be considered a crazy idea: he wanted the 19 year old kid to represent him as his agent.

Well, that was the start of Luch’s rocky career as an agent, one which saw many highs, and plenty of lows.

In the piece Luchs divulges paying off both small amounts, and quite handsome amounts of money to players all over the West Coast.  College players that were looking to make it big in the NFL, whom he saw a golden carrot at the end of their college careers.

But plenty of times he paid them (My mom’s sick, can you help us with rent?, one player allegedly said) and then a teammate of that player would contact him propositioning him for money too.  And round and round we go.  He knew it was wrong, but the players were the ones coming to him, and he wanted to get an “in” with them, in addition to helping them out.

And it all raises a fascinating debate, one that has raged on for years and decades.

Whose at fault here?  The agent or the player?  Or is the system so unreasonably absurd that it creates this toxic atmosphere where the further the NCAA cracks down on agent payments to players, the further underground, and less-directly connected the agent gets– while still ultimately getting money over to a player.

For years we’ve painted the agent as the bad guy. He knows the rules.  He does this for a living.  He’s the one putting unfair pressure on some talented athlete whose still just a kid.  He doesn’t know any better.

But doesn’t the game change when it’s the player coming to the agent with that Twinkie attached to the end of a stick, saying help me out, and maybe you can sign me.  Signing me equals a life-changing pay day for you.  Signing me could put you on the map.

O these games that athletes and agents play.  Off the field major level sports is nothing more than politics wrapped in shiny jewelery and presented as entertainment and fun.  Ask agents who have to fight off ruthless competitors (one reason why I myself could never survive in that kind of cut-throat world).  Now I’m not saying that agents are blame-less in all of this.  The NCAA blatantly states that it’s illegal to pay a player while in school with the exception of a free education (one Luchs says many don’t take seriously), but as has been argued forever, you’re still talking about guys, many of whom come from the ghettos and poor areas in bad neighborhoods.

The whole system is at fault for this mess.  Players should get stipends because they are practically employees of the school, and the school and the NCAA greatly benefit for the jobs they do and the work they put in.  Instead you have great athletes getting good educations, while still being just as broke generally as they were before.  So what to do?  Can you blame them if they seek out some money to help themselves out?

I have a problem when a college athlete takes extravagant gifts, like a beautiful car or even a house.  But an agent paying a player money so that their sick mom can make rent?  Is that such a terrible thing?  And the kicker in all of this is that there is no guarantee whatsoever that the agent will ever even get that player as a client.  Which is hilariously brutal, because the agent can take an epic fall if they get caught, and it more than likely may be a player that never even became their client.

So in reality these agents are breaking a rigid rule with the hope that maybe it will work.  As I said, there is no guarantee.  According to Luchs, many players will take large sums right away and never talk to an agent again.  Amazing.  The trick he said is to pay in small, but important enough amounts (like $500/month) to keep them in close contact.  Of course the other key to remember is that players don’t take the fall for this when they get to the NFL.  They don’t have to pay back the money an agent gave them if the NCAA finds out about it later on.  But the agent gets suspended, their reputation takes a nose-dive, and many get fired, losing their jobs for a player that they never even represented.

So how do you fix this whole mess?  Would a stipend do it?  Hard to say.  And if there was one, how do you allocate what goes where, so that players aren’t burning their stipends on hookers and booze?  More regulations then.

I just think that this whole thing is not as black and white as we make it to be.  Agents are to blame.  Players are to blame.  Even the rule is to blame.

Expecting these players to be angels when they’re getting thrown around money, the likes they’ve never seen before is a little ridiculous don’t you think?  And to expect agents to be perfect in the dog-eat-dog, step on your opponent’s back world of their profession, is just as absurd.

This kind of thing goes on everywhere.  Some just don’t get caught.

Read the entire SI story here

Photo: AP

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