Paying a player is like losing your virginity. You can never get it back.
Kanavis McGhee was the first player I ever paid. But not the last. (I would later learn, you don’t “pay” players; you “loan” them money, a big difference but not one I knew at the time.) Kanavis was a big pass-rusher, touted to be a high draft pick in 1991. Somehow I convinced myself, and Mike Trope, that Josh Luchs, the boy-agent, could connect with him. I parked my somehow-rented SUV outside Kanavis’s apartment, waited half a day, and practically followed him in the door, reeling off my pitch, barely taking a breath. “Kanavis, I’m Josh Luchs, a sports agent, and I flew in from L.A. and then drove here just to talk to you because you’re a great football player and I can really help you, and I’ll tell you how if you’ll give me a few minutes, okay?” He said, “Okay, sure, come in,” and I was already in the door, sitting on the couch. I proceeded to say anything and everything to create a bond. After a while, he asked if he could talk to me about something personal. I was thinking, Great sign. He trusts me. “Sure, Kanavis, anything.” He said, “My mom is not well and she just lost her job and she can’t pay her rent. She’s going to get evicted from her apartment …,” dramatic pause, “… unless I can find twenty-five hundred dollars for her.” And he looked to see if maybe the money had somehow appeared on the table across from him. Since I don’t carry rolls of hundred-dollar bills and since I didn’t know what to do, I said, “Let me think about it tonight. I’ll come see you tomorrow and let you know.” I was thinking that, no matter what, this would give me another chance to meet with him. But I had no idea what I was going to do. I went to my hotel room and made a list of why to do it and why not. I knew it was breaking NCAA rules to give money to a player before he’d played his last college game. But I also knew it would help a young guy and his mother. What if my mom was sick and needed money? What if I couldn’t help her? But what if someone found out? And where would I get that kind of money? I called Mike Trope to ask for the money but he told me that whatever I did was up to me; he wanted no part of it, and didn’t even want to know about it. I had to decide on my own. I had some money in a bank account, from my bar mitzvah. My parents had said to save it for something really important. Maybe this was it—an investment in my career. But it was wrong. Or was it? I went back and forth all night.
The next morning I went to the local bank, pulled the money from my account, went to Kanavis, and handed him $2,500 in cash. He shook my hand, put his arm around me, and said, “Thank you, Josh. Thank you so much. You’re my boy. You really came through for me.” I felt good, as if I’d helped somebody in need and created a relationship with a future client.
I went back to my hotel room and the phone rang. It was a teammate of Kanavis. “Kanavis told me you’re cool, a good man, and I need some help ’cause my pop is sick and losing his home and I need twenty-five hundred dollars …” And—boom—I felt sick to my stomach. I was the sucker. One player tells another that there’s a chump who’s passing out money. How could I be so dumb? I beat myself up all the way home. And I didn’t tell anybody about it for a long time—not Mike, not Neil, and definitely not my father—no one, until I did the Sports Illustrated story on my career as an agent. When contacted by the magazine for corroboration, Kanavis initially asked to be called back the next day, then did not return calls or e-mails, but some time after the article came out denied having taken the money.
Who Paid the First Player?
I was hardly the first to pay a player to win him over. The first time somebody tried to buy a college player with money? If Adam had played football in the Garden of Eden, an agent would have beaten Eve to giving him an apple … and some spending money. Here’s an excerpt from an ESPN.com Commentary article by Patrick Hruby.
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2010
COLLEGE FOOTBALL, AGENTS GO WAY BACK
The Heisman Trophy winner checked into a Philadelphia hotel under a false name, the better to keep things hush-hush. The agent handed him a contract, along with two bonus checks totaling $10,500. The young man signed.
Roughly a month later, the same Heisman Trophy winner placed a call with another agent, this one promising a more lucrative contract, along with a $20,000 bonus, ownership of five gas stations, half-interest in an as-yet-unformed eponymous oil company and, just because, a Cadillac for his father. The young man eagerly agreed.
Oh, and two days after that, he played his final college game.
The Heisman Trophy winner in question was LSU’s Billy Cannon. (The alias in question? Peter Gunn.) The first “agent” was Los Angeles Rams general manager Pete Rozelle, who later became commissioner of the NFL. The second “agent” was Houston Oilers (now Titans) owner Bud Adams, who tells the story in his own words in “Going Long,” an oral history of the AFL. (The whole case ended up in court, and Adams won.)
The year this all went down? 1959.
I did finally recruit a player, Latin Berry, an Oregon running back who became a defensive back in the pros. I had originally been after him, and a couple of other guys from Oregon, but didn’t land any of them. Latin signed on with another agent, Bradley Peter in northern California, and then got drafted by the Rams in the third round. He was right in our backyard so I went after him again. There’s a rule that you can’t solicit clients once they’re under contract to another agent, but that didn’t stop me, or Neil, or most agents. It’s one of the most flagrantly ignored rules in the business. Thou shalt not steal thy neighbor’s players … unless you want to and can. If you lose a player to another agent and you think he was poached, you can file a grievance with the union. But guess who’ll be the star witness in that case. Right—the player you just lost. And that new player isn’t about to turn against his new agent, or he wouldn’t have switched. He’s going to swear he got to you on his own, not that you solicited him. That’s why agents are able to raid competitors’ client lists with little fear of NFLPA discipline.
Neil and I were out to win Latin over, after the draft but before it was time to negotiate his deal, through mini-camps, in April and in May, until July or early August, up to training camp. We told him we were local, we could do more for him in L.A., and we would be there when he needed us. He was young and I was young, and we could relate; I’d go to his hotel, take him out on the town, and have him over to my parents’ house in Beverly Hills. Neil could be charming and persuasive, suggesting to Latin that he’d made his initial agent choice without all the information needed—what city he’d be playing and living in … and partying in. And since I was dating a Rams cheerleader, she and her girlfriends made his head spin to help make our case.
Latin jumped to us, a big score for me, my first negotiation. Neil did the negotiating and I watched and learned, and tried not to giggle out loud with excitement. Because I was sitting in the Rams office on Pico Boulevard with Jay Zygmunt, second only to the general manager (and later president himself). I was making a deal for an NFL player with the VP of the Rams! Un-fucking-real!
Okay, I wasn’t making the deal personally. But I was there. I signed the player. I got the call from the agent he fired, Bradley Peter, screaming and swearing and threatening to break my fingers. I got the next call from Mark Levin of the NFLPA, the first of many I’d get over the years, this one to scold me for behavior that was “not becoming” of an agent. I had a pretty arrogant attitude, almost dismissive. He didn’t understand the reality of winning over a player. He sat in an office in Washington, D.C., and pushed paper around. We were in the trenches. And I wasn’t too shaken by a finger-wagging from NFLPA since it was decertified at the time anyway—part of an ongoing labor dispute with the NFL during which it was legally advantageous for the Players Association to dissolve itself as a “union” (not unlike the one that happened in 2011). Once the disagreement was settled, the organization re-formed as a union for collective bargaining. But in the interim, ironically, more power with the league meant less power over agents. If you wanted to be a member, you had to follow their rules, but the penalty was more like a parking ticket than a moving violation. I appeased the union rep a little and got off the phone. I had players to pursue. I was an agent.
Kind of. Was I more of a runner than an agent? A recruiter more than a player rep? And what was the difference? I tracked down the players, made friends with their friends, or girlfriends, or found their home addresses or sat by their cars, or knew where they hung out. I was a runner on my way to being an agent. A lot of agents start that way. Like Gary Wichard, one of the biggest agents in the business, who was the other inspiration, along with Leigh Steinberg, for Jerry Maguire, and who I later worked for. According to Tom Friend of ESPN, “He entered the agent business at the urging of NBA star Julius Erving, a friend from Long Island, who introduced him to his own agent, Irwin Weiner. Wichard recruited players for Weiner, bringing in Colts running back Don McCauley and hockey player Jean Potvin from the New York Islanders. He eventually branched off to start his own agency …” Running, recruiting, bird-dogging, whatever you want to call it, can be an apprenticeship. I was in Agent School, learning about contracts, deal points, bonus structures, endorsement deals. And I was an equal partner with Neil Allen, getting an equal share of whatever we earned. So it was like a scholarship to Agent School.
It’s a Lot Easier to Pay Players than Get Paid by Them
In fact, getting paid was one of my early lessons. Get the money when you can. Agent commission was still 5 percent at the time and as soon as we consummated the Latin Berry–Rams deal, Neil got in the car with our new NFL player, went to a bank, opened an account for him, and deposited his signing bonus. The rule is the player has to pay you. You can’t get your commission straight from the team. Neil said, “Once you do these deals, it’s hard to get paid. When you have the opportunity to get paid, take it.” He took our cut that day in cash and handed me a stack of one-hundred-dollar bills. I went home, to my bedroom, and threw the money all over my bed and rolled around in it—$6,500 in hundreds. My sister walked in and looked at me like I was nuts. She was on her way to USC, to be a double-major in political science and communications, and all I could think was, “Go ahead and kill yourself in school. I’m gonna make some real money in football.” I was probably the only NFL agent rolling around in money in his bedroom in his parents’ house.
Find the Fat Chick
Next, I was off to Knoxville to go after Chuck Webb, the Tennessee running back. He was a red-shirted sophomore starting to get a name for himself. I had my plane ticket and some cash and I got there, went to the locker room, and couldn’t find Webb. Then I remember something Neil had told me: “Find the fat chick.” He said on every college campus there’s a big girl with a big ass who hangs around the football building and knows every player on the team, everything about them, and is in love with them, and follows them like a stalker. It’s a pretty crude observation but it served me well. There was an overweight girl wearing a Tennessee Vols T-shirt and warm-up pants hanging around the facility, just like Neil said she’d be. I’d dressed in jeans and a T-shirt so I looked like a student, and I struck up a conversation with her. “Do you know Chuck Webb?”
She proceeded to tell me every detail of his life, when his classes were, when he went to practice; she almost knew when he went to the bathroom. I waited outside the weight room when she told me to, and even though I had no idea what Chuck Webb looked like, the school made my job easier by plastering its players’ jersey numbers on their school-issue backpacks, sweatshirts, hats, whatever—so I literally had Chuck Webb’s number. Hello 44, I’m Josh Luchs. I told him I had flown all the way from Los Angeles to see him and wanted a couple minutes with him. He said he had to go in and lift but gave me his phone number and we met for dinner.
I was staying at the University Inn; every campus in the United States seems to have one. And they’re all pretty crappy and overpriced. At this one, there was a big picture of the head coach, Johnny Majors, at the front desk, and it made me paranoid, as if he were looking right into the guest register, following my every move. Over dinner and the next day or so, Chuck and I talked, and he let me know he could use some money. At this point, I knew Kanavis McGhee had spread the word about my having given him money and made me look like an easy mark, but I didn’t yet know that Kanavis was not going to sign with me. So I wasn’t afraid to put up a little more. Just a little this time: $300 to $500. I made it clear to Chuck that if he chose to turn pro after his sophomore year, I wanted him to come to L.A. to meet with me and Mike Trope after the season. And I gave him a full dose of Mike’s credentials—six Heisman Trophy winners, star running backs like Tony Dorsett, Earl Campbell, Johnny Rogers, and Mike Rozier—a legend in the business. I gave Chuck a few hundred bucks with the understanding he’d come see us, no agreement, no loan, nothing formal. And Mike didn’t know I was doing it, just as he still didn’t know anything about Kanavis. If I paid, it was my decision. I was just getting players for him, like a runner, but a runner who’s a certified agent. I didn’t know if Kanavis was going to sign and I didn’t know if Chuck was turning pro and coming to L.A. But I had bet on it—an investment of sorts.
And I kept on recruiting. I went to Champaign, Illinois, for Henry Jones, the safety, and for defensive tackles Moe Gardner and Mel Agee. It’s cornfield country, about as far from Beverly Hills as you can get, and of course, I was staying at the University Inn. I found the fat chick again, this time wearing a Fighting Illini T-shirt, and again, she delivered every detail on every player. I went to Henry Jones’s apartment complex, got him to meet me later at a Burger King across from the hotel. He didn’t ask for money and I didn’t offer. The whole meeting cost me a Whopper (still enough to violate NCAA rules, by the way). Then I camped outside Mel Agee’s apartment for three hours, sitting on the steps, smoking a cigar. He finally showed up and wasn’t exactly cordial but I talked my way into his apartment. He kept asking, “Why do I even need an agent? What for? I’ll give you three minutes to convince me I need an agent.” I had to come up with something fast. I remembered a little word-play riddle I’d learned from a guy in high school. I told him to get a paper and pencil and said, “Now draw me a square with three lines.” He wanted to know what that had to do with anything but I told him to just try it. He stared at the paper and after a while said it couldn’t be done. I kept saying it could. He thought more and got more annoyed. Finally, I took the pencil and drew, first, a square and next to it, three lines. I said, “That’s why you need an agent. Because it’s all in the details. One word can change the meaning of anything. Like in your contract.” And, amazingly, it worked.
I sold him on Mike Trope and he promised to come see us. All together, I had Kanavis McGhee, Chuck Webb, Mel Agee, and Leonard Russell, a running back from Arizona State, all promising to come see us in L.A. Or I had nothing—it all depended on whether they came. I had given money to Kanavis and Chuck (and a hamburger to Henry Jones). Once they were past their eligibility and announced they weren’t returning to school, if they flew out to see us, we could pay for the plane tickets.
In the end, Chuck Webb and Mel Agee both flew out and Leonard Russell lived nearby. We met with all of them. Agee came to Mike’s office in Century City. He said he’d sign with us but he needed money for an engagement ring for his girlfriend, which, according to the NFLPA rules, would be an “inducement to sign” and therefore was not allowed. Even though it was past his eligibility, Trope wouldn’t go for it and sent him home. I couldn’t help feeling frustrated: for the price of a ring, we could’ve had him. Agents were buying stuff for players all the time, especially after they announced they were coming out. But Mike wouldn’t do it.
Then Chuck came to see us. And he signed a contract for representation. We met at a Hamburger Hamlet, and Leonard Russell was there too, an arrangement I would never have tried once I knew a little more about players and egos. The plan was, Chuck was going to go home to Ohio, get his stuff, then come back to Los Angeles for his training. I didn’t want anyone coming between us—as I had done with Latin Berry and his agent. So I flew back home with him. Like a good babysitter, I took along a toy, a brand-new Game Boy, with a football game cartridge, probably the hottest toy around, and Chuck played the game all the way across the country. We landed in Toledo, Ohio, in the middle of a snowstorm, I rented an Avis car, went to his house, met his mom, and before I left for my hotel, he asked if he could keep the Game Boy to play overnight. Sure, no problem. The next day, I went by to get him and his mom said he wasn’t there and she had no idea where he was.
I drove around, hung out at the hotel for a while, and went back—still no sign of Chuck. On about my fifth trip back to the house, his mother finally said he had gone to visit his uncle Ray. I asked her how to get to this guy Ray’s house and she told me he didn’t live in Ohio. (It turned out “Uncle Ray” was Ray Anderson, one of the most successful agents of all time, and now NFL Executive VP for Football Operations.) So not only did Chuck Webb strand me in the middle of Toledo, he stole my Game Boy. I went to the hotel and fell asleep, and when I got up the next day to drive to the airport, I stepped outside into forty-mile-an-hour wind, sideways snow, a full Midwestern blizzard—and discovered my rental car was gone.
I walked around the lot to make sure I hadn’t parked it somewhere else. But right where I was sure I had parked was a little piece of window glass with the Avis logo on it. Fucked, fucked, and re-fucked. I ended up in a year-long battle of letters with Avis over who owed what to whom. Fucked some more. And, needless to say, I never heard from Chuck Webb again. He had signed with us, but what could we do? Say, hey, we gave you money and you signed? A player could fire an agent at any time, without reason, no questions asked. No, Chuck Webb was gone. He was drafted in the third round by the Packers and played one season. And for all I know, he still has my Game Boy. Ray Anderson was not his uncle, in case you were still wondering.
Out of my big recruits, that left Leonard Russell, another guy we thought we had in the bag but who I never talked to again. When I went to see him in Long Beach, there was this guy, Chuckie Miller, out of UCLA, a one-year defensive back with the Colts, who was training Leonard, but mostly acting as his gatekeeper thanks to Steve Feldman, who would end up his agent. And Miller kept the gate closed. (Later, when I went to work with Feldman, we ended up using Miller to train some of our players. It’s a small world and all’s fair. You go after whoever you can, you get them any way you can, and may the best, most aggressive, man win.) Chuckie made sure that Leonard signed with Feldman and I was kept at bay. Leonard Russell went on to be a first-round pick of the Patriots and was named Rookie of the Year.
Another strikeout. And it was pretty clear by then that I wasn’t going to hear from Kanavis McGhee again. I called him over and over but you had to be careful what you left on a message. I couldn’t say, “I’m the agent who gave you the money …” We had signed Latin Berry and Greg Townsend, but I’d had a lot of near-misses. I figured I was going after the right guys. I was getting in the door. These guys were big NFL prospects, and they were talking to me. I’d had some bad luck, but the glass was half-full. I was still a rookie at this, and still living in my parents’ house, so I had, shall we say, low overhead. I was selling Mike Trope’s history and Neil Allen’s charm, and my mom was making tuna sandwiches for players who came over. It was a lot different than most agents’ approach.
But it was also becoming clear that Mike Trope didn’t have his heart in it and Neil Allen, well, that was an iffy situation, at best. I kept hearing rumors of Neil’s reputation and conduct not being on the up and up but he’d just say it was all rumors. I should have known something. I finally got it when Neil convinced Greg to fire me (the first time). I don’t know what he told Greg, maybe that I was a kid and didn’t know what I was doing (sort of true) or that Neil would take better care of him (not true) or whatever. But I let the fox into the henhouse and he took the chicken—a big lesson lots of agents have learned, or should have learned, over the years. In the meantime, Greg was a holdout and hadn’t signed with the Raiders yet. Neil had this lady friend for years who he had a tendency to cheat on regularly, and he was trying to salvage his relationship with her … again. So he took her to Hawaii, right in the middle of Greg’s holdout from training camp. If you’re holding out, you’re not getting paid; you’re not practicing; you’re losing ground and you’re anxious. And your agent is in Hawaii. But I was not in Hawaii. I was strategizing in my bedroom at my parents’ house in Beverly Hills. This was my opportunity.