DIVERSITY IN SPORTS
More black athletes picking black agents


Published November 08, 1999 :

Soon after San Francisco-based sports agent James Sims negotiated a $32 million contract for Super Bowl running back Jamal Anderson this summer, one of Anderson's teammates approached Sims, saying that he was dissatisfied with his agent and shopping for a new one.

There was one thing that troubled the player about Sims, though: his skin color. The player, who is black, feared that Sims' pigmentation looked too much like his own.

"He asked me flat out whether I thought that general managers around the league deal with me differently because I'm black," said Sims, who represents more than a dozen NFL clients. "This is 1999, now. So you sit back and scratch your head. It's surprising, but these concerns still exist.

"I've got to say that I have never encountered any racism in any negotiation of a contract for a player. But there's a perception among some players and some families that it makes a difference. It's something we're fighting all the time."

That fight appears to be paying dividends, albeit many that will not mature for several years.

In the last three seasons, a swell of black athletes have chosen black agents to represent them, a trend that has changed the face of the negotiating table — or at least the color of the faces on one side of it.

Three years ago, only 12 percent of the agents who had two or more active clients in the NBA were black, according to the Black Sports Agents Association. This season, that number is 35 percent: 49 of 139.

In the NFL, the figure is 42 percent — 103 of 246 — according to the BSAA (see chart).

Neither is close to the racial breakdown that exists between the lines, where 77 percent of NBA players and 65 percent of NFL players are black. But the figures show significant erosion of a puzzling phenomenon that has dogged black agents for years: racial discrimination practiced within the black community, where many athletes have been raised to believe that to get a square deal from white executives, you'd better have a white agent.

"We're only beginning to erase the social stereotype that's attached to African-American professionals that leads one to believe they aren't as smart, as competent, as experienced or have the wherewithal to do as good a job as their white counterparts," said Andre Farr, chairman of the BSAA and a practicing NFL agent. "It's taught by society and no one is immune to it — including African-Americans themselves."

The swing toward parity has been most visible in the NFL drafts of the last two years, when at least half the first-rounders have been represented by agents who are black. Black agents never had landed even one-third of the first-rounders before 1997. Last season, minority agents represented six of the first 11 picks, including two quarterbacks who are black — Donovan McNabb and Daunte Culpepper.

McNabb chose his agent, Fletcher Smith, because of a church connection, an old-school bind that can carry new-age business implications. Culpepper chose Mason Ashe and Bill Strickland after entertaining presentations from both white and black agents.

"Mason Ashe and Bill Strickland were able to go down to Culpepper and get an open, honest business ear to make their presentation and establish that they were better for him than [Leigh] Steinberg or [Tom] Condon [two powerhouse football agents]," said Ray Anderson, a veteran NFL agent who is black. "We've come to the point where we're giving ourselves the chance to make informed business decisions and not relying on skin color."

Perhaps because the balancing of racial scales has come so recently, it barely has nudged the upper echelons of sports economics thus far.

Though the BSAA cites black agents making up 42 percent of the pool of active NFL agents, a Street & Smith's SportsBusiness Journal study revealed that white agents represented 35 of the 50 highest-paid players in the league last year, accounting for 71.4 percent of the $198 million in salaries that the group generated.

A similar look at the NBA showed that, as of Oct. 24, minority agents represented only 10 of the 50 highest-paid players, and none of the top 10. Those in the top 50 who were represented by white agents accounted for 81.5 percent of the nearly $565 million in salaries that those elite players are scheduled to receive this season.

Seven of the top 10 players have been in the league for more than six seasons. Seven of the 10 players in the top 50 who are represented by black agents have been in the league for less than seven seasons.

"It's going to take some time for the economics to catch up with the progress we've made," Sims said. "You look at how few of the top-paid veteran players are represented by African-American agents and it confirms what we know was going on in the past."

Several prominent agents who are black, including Sims, point to the free flow of information between players unions and prospects as an impetus for the turnaround. As players unions in the NFL and NBA have made contract analysis more readily available to potential draft picks, those prospects have seen that minority agents typically deliver contracts similar to those negotiated by their white counterparts.

Word has begun to make its way across U.S. campuses.

"It's just recently that black agents are starting to get recognition," said New England Patriots safety Lawyer Milloy, an All-Pro who is represented by Anderson. "When you're coming out of college, you're always looking toward the people who are making the most money. You see Leigh Steinberg's name or Kevin Faulk's name and you tend to gravitate toward those people. I was a mature person, and I looked beyond the hype. But not many guys do."

As the sports-agent business has evolved to include entertainment, spurred by the arrival of music mogul Master P, a handful of black agents have proved that hype can expand beyond financial scoresheets — and across color lines. Some players — not all of whom are black — are attracted to black agents not because of their records as negotiators, but because of the record labels that they're tied to and the celebrity circles in which they travel.

Only a handful of players actually seek out minority agents as an act of racial conscience, Farr said. More likely, black athletes are choosing black agents because the comfort level they feel with them is supported by a growing track record of competitive contracts.

When Sims recruited Rob Burnett, an elite defensive line prospect, nearly 10 years ago, he met Burnett's parents for the first time at a Manhattan restaurant. The Burnetts, who are black, stared so quizzically at Sims during dinner, he excused himself to check if he had smeared food on his face.

Eventually, they explained that they were expecting a white agent but were "delighted" to find that he was black.

"Quite frankly, I think a lot of my clients feel that way, though it's never expressed," Sims said. "It's not like they say, 'I'm going with you because I'm black. Take my life in your hands, brother.' But I think that they welcome it, and they welcome even more my competence, knowledge and success in the business."