Agent's influence

Be warned, not a Jaguars post.

Pro Football Talk had a post last night regarding the influence of agents on broadcasters and on the potential consequences leading up to the draft. Leaving aside the fact that members of the media have little to no influence on NFL GMs (the smart ones at least), how much influence do agents have over clients?

Longtime readers of PFT know they generally overstate the influence an agency or agent has over a client. They see agents as having tons of influence in the league. They may be right, who knows, but I've been around a few NFL front offices and lets just say they're not respected much. PFT draws an analogy to their relationship with NBC but to me that is fundamentally different. NBC pays PFT but the situation is reversed for agents and clients. I don't see what incentive a client has for complying with an agent's request to promote another client (assuming they're not paying him under the table to do so). The agency can threaten to drop the client or negotiate a weaker contract for them but then the client could simply choose another agent who would better represent their interests.

Now if the agency is paying a broadcaster or member of the media under the table then that is a legitimate problem but there's nothing that says an agency needs to have a broadcaster as a client to pay them under a table. Also, lets be real, those relationship are clearly ethical violations and aren't going to easily come to light regardless of the expectation for disclosure.

As for disclosure, you don't want to imply through disclosure that there's bias when in fact there isn't. That's an unnecessary threat to the trust between a media member and their audience (to the extent that such trusts exists, which I believe it does). It also would detract from times when a member of the media has a more legitimate conflict of interest.

To the extent that agents matter, its in that they may facilitate or guide their clients to teams who they have a more natural relationship with. If an agent is on good terms with a team, that team may have an advantage in getting that agent's players to sign. As for client to client, I don't see the evidence or the incentive.

Now a more interesting question may be what influence does a client have over an agent? A scenario, Client A is a declining superstar. Client B is a young buck who hits the free agent market. They share the same agent. If Client A has enough stature then its not inconceivable that they may be able to dissuade their agent from having Client B come to their team. An agent would also have some incentive to guide Client B to a team where he wouldn't compete with his clients. The gains in this scenario mostly go to Client A, with the losses being some marginal loss to Client B (both in salary and best team fit) and with the agent losing some in commission and risking their reputation for getting their client the best deal. How likely is this scenario? I'd say not very. You need a perfect storm with just the right balance of interests. Also, sports agents are ruthlessly competitive and I think an agent who tried to consistently pull this move would lose out eventually but that doesn't mean it can't happen once in a while, especially with superstar clients.

Conspiracy theories are fun and some of them are bound to be truish but I don't think agents are puppet masters.

-A.Q Dub