March 17, 2004
Pioneer Press
If you asked me to say nice things about sports agents, the cat would catch my tongue for the first time in my life. Been there, done that, got nothing.
Agents are the dark side of the attorney business. Definitely a Catch-22. You can't be a big name without an agent. But if you're not already a big name with offers showering on you from the heavens, an agent wants nothing to do with you. They want to swoop in for the contract kill, collect their percentage and go on to the next deal-in-waiting. Rainmaking is too time-consuming with no assured financial return.
"We'll market your brand," said one sincere-sounding guy whose fee was 20 percent on all deals. Funny how he could only meet me after 4 p.m., when his regular legal daily work was completed. That day did apparently not include pitching and packaging the things I already did, like a syndicated radio show, eight books or speaking appearances.
The excuses and drivel went on and on. "We don't have the time needed to promote you," said a sports-marketing firm exec. "C'mon, cut to the chase," said another agent, eager to shuffle me out of his office after a promised, perfunctory meeting.
So when I heard about the National Collegiate Scouting Association, what it promises to do for high school athletes moving on to higher education and its connection to Northside Prep star Rob Eschmann, I raised my eyebrows Mr. Spock-style.Then Chris Krause, association president, told me about his money-back guarantee.
The eyebrows almost were at a 90-degree angle now. "The most a family will invest with us is $1,495," Krause said. "You ideally would start in your freshman year. If we take a student-athlete on, we better have success and help the kid. We have about a 98 percent (satisfied customer) rate. We've given back $250,000 (in representation fees), about 2 percent."
There is something to be said for a middleman like former North Chicago football player Krause's firm. More potential college athletes fall through the cracks than get recruited by big-name schools with quality programs. Either the school does not have the money to follow-up on an initial recruiting contact or the athlete and his/her family does not realize financial aid packages that float around. National Collegiate Scouting Association's function, for that fee, is to bridge these gaps and match kids with schools and scholarship dollars. I wasn't the only one with a contorted face at the thought of kids paying a fee to get to the right school and athletic program. Eschmann's coach, Tom Horn, is not a big fan of the concept.
"If parents are realistic, there's a place for every kid to play," he said. "But unless a player's family has a ton of money, I would not suggest a family pay. Maybe it would be reasonable to pay $500. A $1,000 or more seems steep."
Actually, Eschmann's family is not paying. Krause's firm wants to make further inroads into the Public League to drum up business, so he's a kind of local demonstration case. The scouting association's time for such cases and players who are deemed financially needy through other funding sources, including corporate grants.
"We never turned down a kid who cannot afford it," Krause said.
Eschmann, whose 31 ACT score and straight-A grades could net him a slew of academic scholarships, apparently still wants colleges to recognize him for his basketball talents. He is a big endorser of the scouting association.
"If someone really has a desire to play basketball and not heavily recruited, it's something that definitely benefits people," Eschmann said.
Krause started his downtown-based firm in 2000. A college chum at Vanderbilt of former Bulls center Will Perdue, he remembered how he did not get follow-up contact from schools which had sent him letters.
"There are over 700 college football programs," he said. "Everyone knows about the 120 Division I programs, but they often don't think of the others."
But if students aim for Division III or the Ivy League, they cannot get athletic scholarships.
Krause responded that if a school - and the athlete's prospective coach - get interested in him/her as a potential campus "leader," they'll come up with scholarship funds. He cited one Mt. Carmel product who gets $32,000 a year to attend the University of Chicago. Another goes to Georgetown for only $2,500 out of pocket.
Then there was the case of a female golfer and certified non-academic achiever. Through the association's help, she raised her grade point average to acceptable levels. "We found the 50 worst (college) golf programs and 19 were interested in her," Krause said. Results are the only things that count in the end.
"The average family working with us got more than $14,000 in scholarship aid for first year in college," Krause said. "To invest $1,495 to get $14,000 is a pretty good deal."
But I've learned the hard way if something sounds too good to be true, it usually is. In the scouting association's case, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt to prove that axiom wrong.
