The world of college athletics was rocked Tuesday afternoon after former NFL agent Josh Luchs gave the most stunning exposé on the business in recent memory.
In an article posted on SI.com that will appear in this week’s edition of Sports Illustrated, Luchs explains how he and many other agents befriended potential clients in college, took them to parties and concerts and paid them thousands of dollars.
Luchs’s account is the first time an agent has spoken so openly about the profession openly. He reveals many of the business practices that he and his partners and mentors used to attempt to convince college football players to let the agents represent them.
While some of the activities at the time were illegal, both under NFL Players Association and NCAA rules as well as state laws, most were not, such as paying off student-athletes’ massive credit card debts. Luchs also posted bail for at least one of his future clients.
When Luchs once questioned how agents could get away with this, his mentor, legendary agent Harold ‘Doc’ Daniels told him, “We ain’t members of the NCAA. We didn’t agree to follow these rules.” Even as states began to pass laws limiting student-athletes’ contact with agents, many continued to break the law anyway. They would hide their payments to student-athletes by using middlemen and other techniques.
If you didn’t know, it is very easy to become a certified agent in any one of the four major professional sports leagues.
The most stringent regulations come from the NFLPA, which requires prospective agents to hold a degree, attend a weekend-long seminar and complete an open-book test.
Other leagues simply require applicants to fill out an application and send in a fee. The MLB Players Association only asks prospective agents to contact them if they start representing a player on a team’s 40-man roster.
At best, these application procedures are a joke. Once they have been certified, many agents will not take any more classes or have any refresher training to make sure they understand updated rules.
Doc Daniels’s quote makes clear that agents don’t feel any need to follow NCAA rules, especially when there will be no punishment for them. While a school or former student-athlete may lose records and titles, an agent at worst might be fined. When you make large commissions, a couple of thousand dollars doesn’t matter.
In total, Luchs admitted to paying at least 30 players, some big-name, some small-name, during his nearly 20-year career as an agent. He even goes so far as to name almost all of the players who took money from him. Many of his early clients were from Southern California and were from schools with rich football pedigrees, such as the University of Southern California and the University of California, Los Angeles.
The article is being published as colleges and universities across the nation are being reviewed by the NCAA for violations similar to those Luchs admits to having committed. The review comes in the wake of the Reggie Bush scandal, when an NCAA investigation uncovered that the former USC running back had accepted money from an agent while in college.
Luchs’s exposé should serve as yet another major wake-up call to all parties involved in the transition from college to professional athletics. As I wrote in this space three weeks ago, it’s important for the NCAA to continue to enforce the concept of amateurism in college athletics.
While it was widely known that there were some student-athletes who were taking money, we had no real idea just how many of them were until now. The answer, at least among sports with major professional leagues such as football and presumably basketball, hockey and baseball, is the majority.
As Mark Emmert begins his tenure as president of the NCAA, it is now obvious that there are bigger problems on his plate than improving the academic performance of student-athletes.
Emmert needs to start his tenure by putting the association’s money where its mouth is. Emmert told the AP last month, that under his leadership, the NCAA would continue to work “with the universities and colleges to try to correct behaviors that are not in the school’s best interests.”
While some major schools with high numbers of student-athletes who go pro are currently under investigation, that is not enough. These violations are not limited to schools with prominent athletic programs and national followings. As Luchs writes, “It goes on everywhere.” The NCAA’s investigation needs to go everywhere as well.