Leigh Steinberg has spent over four decades immersed in his passion for athlete representation and being an agent of change. His client roster has included a multitude of premier athletes and “Hall of Famers” spanning over multiple professional sports, including Steve Young, Troy Aikman, Warren Moon, Ben Roethlisberger, Erick Karros, Dusty Baker, Lennox Lewis and Oscar De la Hoya. He has pioneered the convergence of the sports and entertainment industries and is credited as the real life inspiration for the lead character from the film “Jerry Maguire.” During his forty plus years in the industry he represented the #1 pick in the NFL draft a record setting eight times and has negotiated well over three billion dollars in contract deals for his clients.
SZ: In the early stages of your career representing players you had a unique perspective. In your representation of athletes you encouraged that every contract negotiated for the player include clauses that required the athlete to give back to their hometown, high school, university, national charities or foundations. What in your background inspired you to ask the athlete to step up as a role model for social responsibility?
LS: My father had two core values. One was to treasure relationships especially family. The second was to try to make a positive difference in the world and to help people who couldn’t help themselves. The corollary to that was that when there was a problem in the world that needed fixing that was especially disturbing, that looking for “they” or “them” to solve it was not the right answer. My father used to say, “The they is you son.”
When I was at U.C. Berkeley in the late 60’s the same philosophy was reinforced so I was hard wired to believe that I had a duty to try and effectuate positive change in the world which I thought I was going to do through politics. But then the fortuitous circumstances of Steve Bartkowski asking me to represent him occurred. I remember leaving Berkeley to sign his first contract with the Atlanta Falcons, which was the largest rookie contract in NFL history at the time. When we arrived at the Atlanta airport the night prior there were huge search lights flashing in the sky and a crowd was pressed up against a police line. The first thing we heard was, “We interrupt the Johnny Carson show to bring this special news bulletin. Steve Bartkowski and his attorney Leigh Steinberg just arrived at the Atlanta airport. We switch you live for an in depth interview.”
I looked at Bart and it was really then that I saw the tremendous idol worship and veneration that athletes were held in for communities across the country. The athlete was equivalent to a movie star or celebrity and I saw them an an avenue to trigger behavior change, trigger imitative behavior and good values. If they could emphasize a sense of self respect, nurture family in being a part of a community where people cared for each other they could permeate the perceptual screen that young people erect against authority figures. Young people don’t particularly want to listen to their parents, teachers or authority figures but an athlete because of their celebrity and elevated profile can get through and make an impact. So I asked of each athlete I represented to retrace their roots and go back to the high school community that had helped shape them and set up a scholarship fund, at the high school or do something with their church or set up a program with boys and girls clubs. Something to root them back in.
SZ: Was there buy in for the idea from the athletes? Did they get it?
LS: I learned how to try and profile those athletes that might be most open to this approach. It took me about a year to realize that this was not a universal aspiration (laughing). Player’s like Troy Aikman and Erick Karros, endowed a scholarship fund at UCLA, as did Steve Young at BYU, as a way to reintegrate into that alumni community.
I also challenged the athletes I represented to find some cause in their life that they would like to try and tackle. We then set up foundations in the city that the athlete was playing in that had on its advisory boards leading business figures, political figures, and community leaders as resources to be able to deliver a fund raising program around their particular cause. Rolf Benirschke, a place kicker for the San Diego, Chargers participated in one of the first programs, “Kicks for Critters”. For every field goal he kicked he donated money to a fund for endangered species at the San Diego Zoo. He then challenged people in the community to match at their own level. There was a poster of him kicking a field goal off the flipper of a sea lion one year and the next year off the hoof of a baby elephant. Those posters proliferated around the city. In addition if we had the head of Southland Corporation (7-Eleven stores), or a bank president on the athlete’s advisory board the posters would appear in all those locations. “Kicks for Critters” spun off an ancillary program called, “Cans for Critters,” where school children collected aluminum cans and donated the money. Those programs generated millions of dollars that actually led to the saving of endangered species and raised community awareness.
These type of programs were the genesis for hundreds of later programs you’ve seen that attach an athletes performance on the field with a matching program with a business or the public. Another example, Warrick Dunn, who was a running back for Tampa Bay and the Atlanta Falcons. His program, “Homes for the Holidays” enabled single mothers to buy the first home they ever owned by making the down payment and having Home Depot outfit it. These programs allowed the athlete to discover other talents and abilities that they had that would lead them to satisfying second careers and to defeat the concept of self absorption. It also allowed players to network through-out the community which could ease the transition into a second career.
The second aspect of it is role modeling. When I had Lennox Lewis, the heavy weight boxing champion do a public service announcement that said, “Real men don’t hit women.” It could do more to influence rebellious adolescent attitudes towards domestic violence then a hundred authority figures could.
SZ: In 1998 you along with Michael D’Orso wrote the outstanding book, “Winning With Integrity.” How has the role of representing athletes shifted since that time? What are the aspects of the rules of negotiation that remain the same?
LS: My motivation for writing that book was to refute the concept of situational ethics. That somehow it was acceptable to have one set of morals and standards at home and another in the work place. That being a good parent or a good neighbor or a good friend and then going out in the work place and using social Darwinian tactics because after all it’s just business and the ends justify the means. This behavior creates a type of soul death for the person using those tactics and disastrous consequences for society. I was hoping to show, by writing the book, that there are effective methods where people can be successful in their business and their own lives without resorting to unethical tactics.
The field of sports agentry has dramatically changed partly because of the economics. When I started out in 1976 each team in the NFL shared the national television contract and made two million dollars per team per season. This year those teams will make one hundred and seventy million dollars. The two expansion franchises that came into the league in 1976, Tampa Bay and Seattle had a purchase price of sixteen and a half million dollars. A year ago the Cleveland Browns, not perhaps the most successful franchise in the NFL sold for a billion dollars. The economics are on a different planet. The NFL has taken over as America’s passion and behind that is college football. Even baseball where the owners used to complain about losing money has basically quadrupled it’s gross receipts in the last ten years.
So money has changed dramatically but the principles of win/win negotiating haven’t, because they revolve around the fundamentals of human psychology. I used to tell my kids when they were growing up that the one course I wanted them to master was psychology. They could pick up math, language and a whole series of skills but if they could understand what actually motivates people to act the way they act and be able to understand that and influence it, that would take them through every situation in life. The key is to be able to put yourself into the heart and mind of another human being. Understand their value system and see the world as they see it. Only then can you construct a mutually satisfactory conclusion to any set of negotiations.
SZ: Are players more focused on the end result of what they want financially?
LS: What player’s want when they hit veteran status is to be paid what similarly situated peers are being paid. The money is so colossal that it’s not as if they were evaluating the difference between ten and twelve million dollars. They aren’t thinking how the money will allow them to fix the roof on their house, buy a winnebago, or take an extra vacation the way that most people do. They are far past that economically. What motivates them is the comparison between their performance and another players and being equally or better compensated. That hasn’t changed. What has changed is attention span. Young people growing up in the world of big screen high definition surround sound television and a computer screen that allows them to you-tube, e-mail, text, play video games and have the illusion that they can control every millisecond of stimulus is subversive to attention span. It is necessary to compress information to a younger generation into much tighter bites.
SZ: You mean when you are talking to athletes trying to explain ideas?
LS: Yes, so if you are asking me about differences of this generation of athletes one of them is attention span.
SZ: I notice that a lot as well. (laughing).
LS: The point is that you may have five minutes of focus instead of twenty.
SZ: In “Winning With Integrity” there is a wonderful segment on “facing your fear” in negotiating. Where did you learn the psychology of “facing your fear” in negotiations?
LS: Fear is the most paralyzing of all emotions and steals from people the ability to exercise free will and to achieve their objectives. When we are young if you are a male we fear being hit or beaten up in a fight. Once you are in a fight and you realize the worst thing is temporary pain and some bumps and bruises it takes the fear away because fear tends to be apprehension and anxiety about a result that can alter one’s approach.
I was on a trip to Mexico when I was young and I got very ill. We were at the Aztec pyramids and I happen to be fascinated by Egyptology and the anthropology of the Aztecs and I wanted to climb that pyramid, but I felt very, very sick. What I said to myself was that I would forget whatever the pain was of that day but I would always remember the view from the pyramids. I went ahead and climbed the pyramid. So first of all there’s the whole concept of actually playing out and facing fear and anxiety and realizing that in most cases the anxiety is worse than the actual result.
SZ: To engage in the process versus focusing on the fear.
LZ: Right. The second thing is that in many, many situations people don’t have leverage. They don’t have a choice. In every athletic negotiation unless a player is in free agency the rules restrict him so he has no alternative. For example a draftee in any sport is sitting at their college campus living on scholarship. If they are trying to sign a contract for x millions of dollars rather than x minus 25%, x minus 25% is a fortune compared to what they are making. The alternative if they don’t sign with a team that drafts them is to go back to their college campus. If Steve Bartkowski didn’t sign with the Falcons was he going to go back to Cal Berkeley and work in the Lawrence radiation lab and develop a new theory of super conductivity? Or is he going to play cello for the Philharmonic? Whatever the drafting team is offering the players is eons better than his choice. Which really is no choice but to sit out. So under that premise it would be impossible to do anything other than take the best last offer from a team or the first offer and sign it.
It takes compartmentalizing that threat, that fear, that reality and changing the conversation from the players ultimate fear and weakness to what the teams needs are are, what they do without that player, and what the players market value is. Unless someone is able to make that flip from the fact that perhaps they don’t have another job, perhaps there’s not a single other house that’s in their price range that will meet their needs, whatever it is, the inability to put that fear on hold and reality on hold will distort and paralyze someone in negotiation.
SZ: Do you believe that there are parallels between an athlete facing his/her fear in negotiations and the athlete facing his/her fear of playing up to their potential in their sport?
LS: Absolutely. Let’s take another situation. The most valuable position in sports right now is a franchise quarterback. What defines a franchise quarterback? It’s a player you can build a team around. But ultimately it’s a player who can elevate his level of play in critical, adverse situations to lead his team to victory. For example let’s say in a game a quarterback has thrown three interceptions. He’s having an off day. He’s put his team in harms way. The crowd is booing him mercilessly. The team is down by a score but there really isn’t enough time to comeback. They are undermanned, every adverse situation you can think of is happening. So is that quarterback able to block out all the negativity, the reality that he’s on the edge of the apocalypse and attain a quiet mind and elevate his level of play? The key is that faced with multiple negative stimuli and discouragement can someone perform by blotting those things out and focus on the moment at hand?
SZ: You were an early advocate and one of the first to shed light light on the concussion issues in professional sports, calling it a “ticking time bomb” and an “undiagnosed health epidemic.” How were you so far ahead of the curve regarding this issue?
LS: In the 90’s some weekends I was representing half the starting quarterback in the NFL. Players like Warren Moon, Steve Young, Troy Aikman, Drew Bledsoe and Mark Brunell. When they would get concussions I would often go with them to doctor’s and ask the question, “How many is too many?” What’s the number of concussions that might lead to long term consequences?
SZ: How did you know that though?
LS: Intuitively. There was a game in 1989 when Troy Aikman was a rookie in Arizona, where he got hit and was lying on his back for what seemed like an eternity. I don’t think that one needs training as a neurologist that being knocked unconscious probably wasn’t therapeutic for brain function. Yet, my alarm was raised more by the fact that experts couldn’t answer basic questions. How many is too many? What are the long term consequences? They had no answers. I started to hold concussion seminars back in the early 90’s and got the leading neurologists from across the country to come and make presentations. We approached it from the stand point of prevention. Could we alter the playing surface? Get rid of astro turf? Find better helmets? Change the rules so there’s no blocking and tackling with the head? Could we get better diagnosis like having a neurologist on the side line? Could there be a regiment of standardized diagnosis and then sit out periods?
I wanted to make sure that at least my clients got to hear this. We had the athletes attend the conferences and issued a white paper but not much changed. Then in 2006 we held a conference with the Sports Concussion Institute in Los Angeles and by then we had the studies from neurologists like, Dr. Julian Bailes, Dr. Kevin Guskiewicz, and Dr. Robert Contu where they were able to say that three was the magic number. It appeared to be a turning point in that an athlete with three or more concussions had an exponentially higher rate of alzheimer's, ALS, dementia, pre-mature senility, elevated rates of depression and a new syndrome called chronic traumatic encephalopathy (ECT). That’s when I made those statements about an “undiagnosed health epidemic.” I then gathered all the press I could and from the New York Times, to the Washington Post, and every major regular news and sports outlet to make sure that they all broadcasted it.
SZ: These doctors had been collecting data.
LS: The doctors already had studies that showed these results. After that the NFL convened their first doctor’s conference and the Berlin Wall started to fall. They issued a whistle blowers edict asking players to report on other players that they thought had concussions and eventually adopted baseline testing. The program which was the first objectified way to measure cognitive function and how cognitive function had been degraded, tracked cognitive function. The players were given a test when they began playing and a test after receiving a concussion which pushed things forward to create changes. The problem is that the size, strength and speed of athletes, training techniques and nutrition have out run any protective developments. The basic physics have changed. The players have bigger, faster bodies. A 320 pound offensive tackle can run a 4.640 at the combine, no one conceptualized this could happen.
SZ: More mass hitting objects at high speeds.
LS: Yes, it’s just physics. We’ve now learned that every single time that an offensive lineman hits a defensive lineman on a football play it creates a low level concussive event. No-one is knocked out. It’s not charted. It’s a very, very minor degree of brain impact but it is a brain impact injury. When you think about it, it could well be possible that offensive linemen who play in that position if they played in high school and college and a long pro career by the completion of their career have taken 10,000 sub-concussive hits. None of which were diagnosed. The aggregate of those hits potentially cause many more problems than the three diagnosed concussions I mentioned before.
This is not just an NFL problem it’s a college and high school football problem. It’s a AYSO soccer, field hockey, ice hockey, lacrosse etc. problem. Anywhere that there is collision in sports. It’s especially devastating to an adolescent brain which is still in development. Adolescents take three times as long to recover and those kids are having to go to school with concussions.
SZ: You would think tennis and golf participation would be on the upswing.
LS: Well I think this poses a threat to sports like football. I am pleased that there are starting to be the first developments in helmets that actually could make a difference, and there’s a series of research scientists and doctors racing to find a new pharmaceutical solution that could heal the brain post concussion. But without that you will have mother’s telling their kids they can play any sport but not football. There are liability issues coming out of the college and professional player law suits that are currently in discovery.
SZ: Are you saying there is a medication coming out that a player would ingest?
LS: Not yet. But there is a race going on to see who can deliver something like that.
SZ: Your career as a sports agent has been extraordinary. Presently you have been writing columns for several on-line sports mediums including, Forbes Magazine, and The Huffington Post what will you be doing professionally going forward?
LS: When I was eight years old I edited my first neighborhood newspaper. I’ve written all my life. I had taken this time to write an autobiography that will be published by St. Martin’s Press in January of 2014. I have a second book coming out on advice for parenting youth athletes, trying to change the culture and talk about the values for doing that. But I’ve always written and we are just about to relaunch within the next month a new platform where we will do representation in major sports including, football, baseball, basketball, hockey, soccer, tennis, martial arts and that will power a marketing arm that can market teams, leagues, coaches, and high profile individuals.
There will be a studio, which the way our business is moving, can consult with or own part or produce sport theme projects in motion pictures. Similar to what I did as a consultant for the movies, “Jerry McGuire” and “Any Given Sunday” and “For the Love of the Game.” Our studio business will include dramatically scripted new internet projects, aps, video games and other ways to enjoy sports. We will offer health and safety products that can be introduced through sports. Lastly, we will be part of the“The Sporting Green Alliance,” which is where aggregated, sustainable technology in wind, solar, recycling, field resurfacing, and recyclable water technologies are being introduced to stadiums and practice fields at the high school, collegiate and professional levels. It offers a platform for millions of fans that come to a game to see how to incorporate those practices into their own homes and businesses.
SZ: Are there any upcoming events that you are hosting or speaking at that you would like to mention?
LS: I speak about once a week. We haven’t done this yet but we are about to launch a new foundation called, “Athletes Speak.” Warren Moon and Earl Campbell are the first two board members and the leading experts on the advisory board, so stay tuned.
SZ: You’ve traveled an incredible professional path. In many ways you developed the role of sports agent that has transformed the profession. Do you have any quotes, tips or stories that have guided your career path?
LS: There’s a very famous Teddy Roosevelt quote that I used to have up in my office which has sort of been, my father used to have it, it’s sort of a guide post. The net/net of it is, get out there and get involved and give it your best effort. Don’t allow fear and doubts and critics stop you from acting.
“It’s not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” Teddy Roosevelt.
SZ: Anything you would like to add?
LS: Just that when things get tough I think perspective is critical. There is no excuse other than to keep striving and trying to be of service to people. What’s left at the end is the quality of relationships, being a good parent, a good spouse, a good friend and what you did to make a positive difference in the world. That’s it. The rest is ephemeral and it fades like sand castles on the beach.
SZ: Leigh thank you for taking a generous amount of time out of your day for this interview.
*Featured guests are not current nor former clients of Susan Zaro
*This interview may also be read @ examiner.com
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