10-30-2023, 02:28 PM
(This post was last modified: 11-01-2023, 08:37 AM by lemonoppy. Edited 3 times in total.)
No. I | No. II
ON AGENTS.
Baron1898, Lecturer in History
Few ideas in league history have ever captured the fascination and indignation of users, for as long a period of time, as much as player agents have.
The first idea to arise with a legitimate claim to be a spiritual ancestor of the player agency was the player union. On July 27, 2017, right before the start of Season 2, @Destroyer proposed what he called the NSFLPA, or Players Association. This sought solidarity between all players to counterbalance team and league management, with the express aim of giving voice to community suggestions, managing issues in the league, and "allowing players to be treated fairly" in terms of salary compensation. Destroyer saw this as a great vehicle both for pushing back against the league's power structures and for increasing the activity and cross-team unity of the userbase.
Discussion around Destroyer's suggestion, of which there was quite a bit, focused at first not on the merits of the idea itself but on Destroyer unilaterally appointing himself to be NSFLPA CEO. Beyond that, the notion of an agency received some initial support from the community. Yet many others expressed skepticism. What exactly was the PA meant to be protecting players from? How would it push compensation when players value winning above fake money? Membership for the sake of membership, or for pursuing some sort of role-playing purpose, seemed trivial and pointless, and the idea fizzled out without taking off. It did, however, provoke discussion from some members (notably @kckolbe) that other changes might be needed in the near future to prevent the rise of minimum-contract-fueled dynasties loaded with underpaid superstars.
Some other users have attempted to resuscitate the idea of the players union. @ValorX77 proposed one such idea in 2019 in order to impose standardized contracts, lower the salary cap, create a draft lottery, and craft a CBA deal. This received next to no traction, in part because the fourth proposition was meaningless and two of the other three would actually go against the union's stated purpose of preventing dynasties. A year later, an Ultimus Week submission by @37thchamber proposed another union idea. This one's principal conceit was to have votes at the league rules summits held by the union's representatives.
Quote:Digression: The ISFL Union
The one unionization attempt with any serious sticking power was the ISFL Union. The Discord server exploded into activity on February 8, 2021, billed as a place where ISFL players could group together to discuss rules proposals and create agency separate from HO members and GMs. Their principal driving goal was to gain a seat at the table, some form of voice through a chosen union representative and a vote at any future rules summit. By March 6, they formalized their first attempt at gaining power. Be prepared to zoom in, it's a long read.
This proposal went through a lot of discussion in the union Discord, but their hopes were dashed when it was thoroughly shot down by voters at the Season 28 rules summit, ten in favor and 23 against. They then had to figure out a path forward, debating how crucial their ability to vote was and whether they might possibly pivot towards having a union rep in HO. Others argued that the union actually hindered the rule from passing, since it muddled whether it was meant for wider community voices or for the union in particular. Many GMs and HO members saw it exclusively as "the union vote" and likely voted against it just for that reason.
Meanwhile, the reaction to the rules summit itself sparked a wider debate around the gulf between league management and the league at large, centered around a tone-deaf joke proposal in the summit about forcing @SDCore to stay in Head Office for life. Many users saw this and some follow-up comments as evidence of a serious disconnect, though this seemed less about that specific rule and more about long-standing grievances. Some deplored the lack of transparency in the rules process, noting that the union had had to rely on leaks to even know what would be proposed at the summit. In this, they achieved their first tangible win. Every summit from Season 29 onwards has had its rule proposals announced well in advance of the ballot to receive community feedback.
@iStegosauruz's announcement of this change on April 2, despite his allusions to a way forward, heralded the end of the ISFL Union. Having lost steam, the movement just fell apart. It ultimately succumbed to the same life cycle as any grassroots movement of the disenfranchised: a sudden upswell in advocacy at a time of institutional vulnerability, a push for representation, the gain of some modest concessions, and a dissolution as institutions reassert their power, usurp the movement, and return to a near-identical status quo. C'est la vie.
It was @dropbear who first took the leap to the idea of player agents. These were not the same as how the term is commonly understood nowadays. These agents could be created by anyone in addition to their existing player and get paid to write media or complete point tasks on behalf of other users. Dropbear was enthusiastic about the idea, but few others were; members like @ADwyer87 and @iamslm22 did not like the concept of users getting TPE for the work of others. It also threatened a large can of worms for exploitation by allowing GMs to force-feed TPE to semi-inactives and work around contracts by generating money. Overall, the concept went nowhere.
The First Wave of Agencies
Then everything changed on August 28, 2018. The user @ErMurazor, whose name automatically conjures mention of the infamous multi scandal, released a media statement announcing the "return" of Roc Nation Sports to the league. For context, Roc Nation Sports is a real-life sports management agency founded by JAY-Z that represents a number of athletes across a wide variety of sports leagues. The first mention of it in relation to the NSFL actually came all the way back in July of 2017, when not-banned-but-definitely-an-Er-multi @MattJames claimed his player, the creatively named Matt James, to be a client.
Roc Nation Sports, as it existed in the 2017 league, was not a player agency. It was one of many agents, real and fake, that users often have employed for role-playing to separate themselves from their player. There was one other player who claimed Roc Nation representation, poor Nicholas Pierno, but because of its real-life notoriety the match is almost certainly a coincidence. But this go-around was different. Er explicitly mentioned that Roc Nation Sports' goal in the NSFL was to provide players with representation in contract negotiations and get them fairer deals. This was the inception of the first modern player agency.
The genesis of this idea came from @Muford, a long-time friend of Er, who tried to convince him of its merit for months alongside other members of the Second Line. When Er finally took up the idea, a long-term solution to the league's economic issues was far from his mind. In fact, the entire project was not much more than an extended joke, a way to have some fun and mess around. If it wasn't obvious enough already, Roc Nation's new ISFL agent was one of Er's old multis, the dubiously fluent Tim Pest.
Quote:hi friend, i return to u all today.
"Today", August 29, was a doozy. Muford's new rookie player, D'Pez Poopsie, was the first announced new client. Er then came out with media detailing the new contract he negotiated for Poopsie, worth a total of $19 million dollars. Considering that Poopsie's real contract came out a few hours later and totaled less than half of that sum, it becomes clear that Er, Muford, and San Jose GM @ckroyal92 were all in on the joke and essentially shot the shit throughout the course of the "negotiations".
Poopsie was the only announced contract, but he was far from the only new client. Media piece after media piece revealed Er's ever-growing list of player clients, including heavy hitters like Vladimir Fyodorovich (@majesiu), Juan Atatyme (@Keyg_an), Ryan Applehort (@Daybe), Chad Pennington (@caltroit_red_flames), Bobson Dugnutt (@Bzerkap), Felix Hasselhoff (@DELIRIVM), Jerrod Canton (@Sweetwater), Arbin Asipi Jr. (@DeathOnReddit) – actually, Asipi Jr. was rejected because he asked to be tampered – Borkus Maximus III (@bovovovo), Achilles Hondo (@HalfEatenOnionBagel), Wallace Stone (@Evok), Danny Methane (@DannyMethane), Lucari Felix (@Official DT), Benson Bayley (@Bayley), and, most strangely, sportswriter Stephen B. Smitfter (@AdamS). Blackford Oakes (@Beaver) also ambiguously asked to join. The gap between the first and last of these announcements spanned around six hours. Things got so crowded in the offices of Roc Nation that Matt James was hired as an additional agent to bear the burden.
Er wasn't taking this agency seriously, and although most of his clients have been inactive for years, it is doubtful that many were not of a similar mind. But there was one party here taking the agency deadly seriously: Head Office. Six days after the tenth HO session began with @ADwyer87's promotion to league commissioner, and less than an hour after the last batch of new Roc Nation signings, they handed down a seminal ruling whose reverberations have affected the history of player agencies ever since.
Quote:From here on out:
Agents are not allowed to have any affiliations with teams in the NSFL or DSFL
Agents can not have any players in the NSFL or DSFL
Any such agency relationship will be terminated
Having these things along with being an agent creates a conflict of interest, which would clearly fall under tampering.
Like most dictums from Head Office at the time, the agent decision sparked commentary from all corners of the community. Many applauded the restrictions as sensible and necessary to prevent tampering and conflicts of interest from an agent whose player was on a specific team. Others made the usual complaints of HO ruining the fun for everyone on what was clearly an instance of community memeing, while still others questioned what the point of agents were. Notably, some responders like @7hawk77 defended Roc Nation and player agencies not from a position of fun but from what would later become a central claim of proponents: that agencies could prove to be the solution to the domination of team-friendly minimum contracts.
Er himself seemed miffed at the new rules but followed them regardless. In Jayce Tuck's retirement post, he confessed that the agency started mostly as a joke but that he hoped it might inspire some new activity and interest in the league. In fact, he signed Antonio Summer (@
As quickly as it had flared into life, the first ever player agency was extinguished. Er credited Head Office for giving him a second chance and apologized for the fervor he had caused, but many other voices laid the blame at HO's feet for strangling the idea of an agency right at its inception. The idea of the agency as a tool for player empowerment and unity, and of HO as a conservative force that would impose reactionary restrictions on the concept should it ever resurface, began to take root even as the league moved on into a particularly discontentful winter. All it might take to reignite the conflict was a second attempt.
AdamS, commenting in the Head Office decision thread, forecasted this in a remarkably prescient response.
Quote:I think the "you cant have a player or be a GM" thing can work as long as that's what it actually is.
If this turns into a fun thing people do and they actually use agents and it turns out to be a "we wrote this because we figured no one would actually want to do it if it cost them the ability to have an active player" and then suddenly the rules get shifted again....there will be words.
So I'm putting this out there..if you're going to kill it in its 100% entirety..then write the rule that does that NOW. Make your call and take the result. Don't move the goalposts later.
The Second Wave of Agencies
May 10, 2019, was the last day of preseason games before the NSFL started its fifteenth regular season. It was also the day that slm decided to announce the creation of his very own player agency, known as Sim League Management (SLM, do you get it?). Slm felt frustrated at the stagnation evident in the league – no one explored free agency, and almost everyone felt compelled to take a minimum contract by default. He wanted to use SLM to advocate on behalf of players who perhaps lacked the longevity and resume to feel confident standing up for themselves.
Quote:There's a lot of reasons personally why I want to, but from the league perspective, even look how much attention the media has gotten. It's fun and something people want. And if the agent is reputable/ hasn't broken rules/ had 8 players in the league at once, why not?
His sales pitch was simple, offering an extensive record of negotiation skill from his time as GM. He also promised that his clients would receive exclusive articles written by him to hype their players up. The announcement was meant to be a test drive to gauge wider interest and see if enough players would be on board; at the time of writing, slm mentioned that he was already in talks with ForThe Brand (@Renrut), Edmond Beaver-Dantes (Beaver), Brave Ulysses (@PaytonM34), and Ben Tu'inukuafe (@Ben). Responses were split. Many users, especially newer ones, were all for the idea, while a sizable number immediately groaned that agencies just weren't necessary and carried no upsides for the players involved.
A big enough crowd must have been in favor, because slm formally retired his player, Charlie Trout, eleven days later. He could not officially get SLM up and running until after the season ended but invited anyone interested to reach out and chat. He also reached out to HO member @Trautner the day before retiring to see if he was in accordance with all the rules.
As it turned out, Head Office seemed to have those concrete discussions on agents quite rapidly. Only a few hours after Trout's retirement, they announced a new set of rules for agents which were blatantly draconian in their scope. In addition to the previously existing restrictions, agents now needed to include their player clients in all communications with GMs and pay a ridiculous $10 million fee per season. They also were barred from Twitter payouts and limited to receiving 50% from all media and graphics.
Quote:As someone who was HO at that time we set up the agent rules, we just didnt care much for the idea of agents as a whole and decided to put the rules in such a way that it wouldnt be inviting to become one.
Quote:If you want to ban agents just have the fucking balls to do it
Slm, obviously, went ballistic. No reasonable person could possibly view those rules as fair, especially the kneecapping of media money, and he and many others – including retired members of HO from the Er decision – lambasted management for creating these inane regulations instead of just banning agents as they clearly wanted to do. @Trautner and Dwyer, publicly claimed on the contrary to just be giving agents an equivalent cost of operation to players and to encourage activity in the community that made up for not having a player themselves. Given the above quote from @Raven in 2020, though, their position here seems far from the truth even if not a total fabrication. Slm was soon offered the ability to unretire with no penalty and took it.
The decision also provoked Er to chime in with new revelations on his own experience – specifically, that he was told privately by Head Office in 2018 that agencies were going to be banned and "that it would be less painful for head office if I killed it myself rather than make them the bad guys." Essentially, he was pressured into not causing problems. Given that he saw the first set of rules as reasonable protections against abuse, his whiplash-inducing turnaround afterwards from optimism to ending Roc Nation became much clearer.
Entrenched, powerful institutions like Head Office only give in to change when the majority cause too much of a stir to be ignored. In this case, public outcry was particularly effective because a notable segment of the league's power were not in lockstep with HO: team GMs. Having not been consulted at all on the ruling, GMs evidently made enough of an impact alongside the discontented community that Head Office posted on May 24 with a third set of revised agent rules. Agents were now prohibited from war rooms, from hiring GM players, and from being in the league for less than five seasons before starting their agency, but they could now once again earn the normal amount of money from Twitter and media (with the exception of 2x media).
This was very well received by the community, even from the loudest voices of discontent in the original thread. Most appeared to be reasonable safeguards, and with the ludicrous handicap against earning money gone it appeared agencies would be viable once more. Right on cue, a new agency was announced by @adam2552. It was christened the Football Handlers Organization (FHO, do you get it?) and boasted a Discord channel, custom signatures for new clients, and graphics for their players across careers. And once Season 15 ended, slm retired Trout for the second time to officially get SLM up and running.
Adam2552 announced an initial client cap of ten for his first season of operation, while slm considered the same but ultimately decided to forgo any ceiling. Not long into the offseason they both released their starting set of player clients.
- SLM had eleven players: Danny Grithead (Trautner, in a surprising turn of events), Vinny Valentine (@Unicorn), Edmond Beaver-Dantes (Beaver), Brave Ulysses (PaytonM34), Ben Tu'inukuafe (Ben), Forrest Gump (@TomHanks), Rod Tidwell (SDCore), Nacho Varga (@Fordhammer), Mo Berry (@Frick_Nasty), Walt Green (@Duilio05), and Dermot Lavelle Jr. (@White Cornerback). Most of these were S15 players still on their rookie contracts. Tu'inukuafe and Lavelle Jr. were upcoming S16 prospects, while Grithead and Valentine were marquee free agents.
- FHO had four players: Sam Torenson (@Jonny2x), Axel Hornbacher (@PDXBaller), Django Anoa'i (@tlk742), and Lightsout Lewis (@flyeaglesfly29). Hornbacher and Anoa'i were signed through S16 on their existing contracts, Lewis through S17, but Torenson was a prospect in the upcoming S16 Draft and would soon need a rookie contract.
Both agencies had Discord channels, but SLM's was far more active. As slm welcomed in four more clients in pretty quick succession – Ryan Leaf Jr. (Valor), Arbin Asipi III (DeathOnReddit), Franklin Armstrong (@moonlight), and Errol Maddox (@PigSnout) – adam2552's channel went dark within a week of his initial client list posting. Hornbacher and Lewis received player graphics, and Anoa'i received a graphic in conjunction with his extension article on June 26. This deal, a three-year gig worth a total of $6 million and mutual options on every year, was the first – and last – evidence of the FHO's work before it seemingly disappeared.
The end of the offseason brought with it the signing of SLM's two rookies. Tu'inukuafe got $4 million annually for three years. Lavelle Jr. got only a single year deal of $1 million, but this came packaged with Dermot's extensive list of pre-draft conditions: immediate call-up to a starting cornerback role, guaranteed kick and punt return duties, and continual one-year deals with no-trade clauses to be paid his fair due and to evaluate free agency. Slm also pulled in seven more clients between the draft and the Season 16 trade deadline: Gekyume Stokeley (@soryantyler), Jordan Andrews (@RaiderNation), Chase Osborn (@cosbornballboy), Action Jackson (@KillaScrilla), Ashley Owens (@run_CMC), Ludicolo Bigby (@TheWoZy), and Borkus Maximus III (@bovovovo).
Quote:I think the first year of the agency has proven my point. We have 22 clients right now, and that is with me barely advertising or asking for clients. The users of this league WANT agents to exist, they serve a purpose and players are better off for it.
There have certainly been hiccups. I have heard from a couple GMs that Free Agent conversations that happened this off season didn't have the best communication so I want to work on that. I didn't do a good job of explaining to teams why they were not chosen as destinations… I should have better explained why decisions were made.
One significant "hiccup", and one which came to blows within that same presser, came with Gekyume Stokeley and the Chicago Butchers. The Butchers traded for Stokeley after the S16 Expansion Draft and inherited a contract worth $3 million in his final year. According to slm, he and sory attempted six times over the span of weeks to talk about reaching an extension to no avail. When sory then decided that Stokeley would try out free agency instead, Butchers GM @'To12143' went to GM chat to accuse slm of being consistently biased against him and to advocate for the banning of agents altogether. Oles' previous disdain for the concept, and the pair's mutual bad blood going back months, hardly helped to cool tensions.
Otherwise, slm struck a pretty optimistic tone in his presser, saying that he was happy where the agency stood and willing to take on even more clients should more desire representation. The start of the Season 17 offseason promised to be another fruitful time for SLM. In addition to adding Lennox Garnett (37thchamber) and Bubba Thumper (@woelkers) to the ranks, the upcoming S17 draftees and Grithead, Valentine, Stokeley, Garnett, and Mason Brown (@Toasty, a mostly inactive user whose status with SLM is vague) were all due new contracts.
They all made out like bandits. Grithead received another deal with $11 million in value for one year, while Valentine got two years for the same total money and with the same incentive condition as before to ensure his usage as primary receiver. Brown got a handsome one-year, $6 million deal. Most crazy of all, Garnett got a two-year contract worth $24 million and Stokeley pulled in $34 million over three. All sans Brown were in their primes, obviously, but none took anywhere close to the minimum. Two S15 players also extended, though Armstrong's $6 million extension for three years was much more conservative than Leaf Jr.'s $13 million over the same period, and Asipi III received a $6 million two-year extension before the offseason even started.
For the rookies, salaries worth $9 million, $9 million, $9 million, $7.5 million, and $13 million (with up to $3 million in bonuses for earning TPE) were given to Andrews, Osborn, Jackson, Owens, and Thumper. And right before Season 17 began, SLM added its 25th (maybe 26th) client in the one and only Johnson Harding (@adam2552 of FHO fame). Unfortunately, though, the wheels were beginning to come off. It wasn't due to client fatigue, and it certainly wasn't due to lackluster results as the offseason had shown. Being an agent was simply starting to become too taxing to maintain.
Funnily enough, Valor was the one to break the news on September 4 in the ISFL general chat that SLM was officially closing its doors. Slm was exhausted. The costs of running the agency, the restrictions on his activity that he viewed as prohibitive, and the constant struggle against an anti-agent Head Office had ground the agency to dust. A few days after retiring as agent, slm re-entered the league as the new co-GM of the Philadelphia Liberty and as new tight end Avon Blocksdale Jr. His run lasted almost four months. The longevity of SLM remains unsurpassed to this day.
The Third Wave of Agencies
Quote:After the first season of the very scary agent experiment I think we can mostly agree that it is a popular service that has considerable demand and that the dangers and concerns were overhyped and mostly have not come to fruition…
With the considerable barriers to entry that HO erected to ensure that it would be difficult to start and maintain an agency and that only site regulars could do so, we saw only two agencies created and one of them has already died off despite having player interest. This may be by design as a backdoor way of banning agencies but if it's not then I would suggest lowering the requirements (or at least restructuring them) to be an agent ever so slightly so that there is a bit more competition in the realm of agents…
…in order for HO to achieve its regulatory aims it needs to reduce or, ideally, eliminate the agency fee and perhaps look at strengthening the tenure requirement as a trade-off.
The quote above, penned in early August 2019 by Beaver, is from a larger article arguing that the concerns held by many about agents would be more dangerous if only one agency existed as opposed to many. To encourage competition, therefore, Beaver proposed that the huge $10 million fee be removed and that Head Office could ensure the trustworthiness of agents in other ways by lengthening the time requirements for league participation. The general response was positive, but in particular, HO member @manicmav36 seemed to think most of Beaver's points were reasonable and viewed the first trial of player agencies to be a positive one.
Quote:There have been a few rumbings and grumblings from a few of the GMs, but it's to be expected with something that makes their job that much more complicated… As time goes on and we're able to gather more data about interactions and feedback from agents, I expect adjustments to occur. I appreciate your concerns, and just know that HO is constantly looking at, and evaluating, the situation.
The Season 19 rules summit's fourth listed proposal was to remove agent fees. It got three votes out of seventeen.
Almost nine months passed after slm dissolved his agency before someone else took up the good fight. This time, it was @TubbyTim69. On June 3, 2020, two days before the S23 NSFL Draft, Tim announced the creation of the TT69 Sports Agency to negotiate contracts for players and make free agency more exciting. He also alluded to having talked with members of HO and agreeing on the need to modify the current rules in the name of fairness. Dwyer obviously took the opportunity to post three separate memes clowning on him for having the audacity to do this, but he wasn't the only one posting his annoyance (for example, mav) amidst a general sea of support from the community and especially from newer users.
Only five days later, Tim received a new competitor. This one was the Ferguson Networking Agency (FNA), founded by @sapp2013. Sapp's goals included the standard desire to get good deals for his clients but also explicitly included direct advocacy and outreach to Head Office to lower the existing barriers regarding agencies. Sapp also directly mentioned the TT69 Sports Agency and stated that he hoped their competition would end up being a mutually beneficial relationship. Like FHO before it, FNA was second on the scene and therefore had a shorter list of starting clients.
- TT69 had ten players: Suleiman Ramza (@Blasoon), Avon Blocksdale Jr. (slm), Zamir Kehla (@
retrospace111), Dorfus Jimbo Jr. (@ScorpXCracker), Fuzzy Dotson (@goodfortunecoffee), Videl-San (Valor), Jackson Kingston (Daybe), Julio Jones (@24redcrayons), Woodrow Brooks (@Garnuk), and Flash Panda (@juniped). Jimbo Jr., Dotson, and Panda were entering the last years on their contracts, but first priority went to Videl-San, Kingston, and Jones, who were to be drafted the very next day.
- FNA had six players: Wolfie McDummy (@infinitempg), Dermot Lavelle Jr. (@White Cornerback), Ismael Sanchez (@Ismael8907), Tychondrius Hood (@Tylus), Ashley Owens (Run), and Mattathias Caliban (PigSnout). Of these, Lavelle Jr. was due a new contract after Season 23, Hood had just been drafted and given a three-year deal worth $3 million, and Caliban was awaiting the next offseason for his own draft. But FNA added four more players to its roster within a day, including Mathias Hanyadi (@CLG Rampage), Korbin Brown (@YoungTB), Cadillac Harris (@Warner), and Action Jackson (KillaScrilla). Brown, a DSFL draftee, was the only one of these four up for a new deal within the next season.
The FNA had no such immediate success. In fact, with none of sapp's clients up to sign anything for a whole season, his agency quickly went the way of the FHO before him. He did add an additional member in Immanuel Blackstone (@nunccoepi), but even the FHO could be credited with at least one actual signing. Sapp went inactive on the forums on July 1, not returning for nearly an entire year, and the FNA seemed to quietly disintegrate in the meantime. Just like last time, the league was left with only a single agency standing.
Tim's agency kept chugging along in the meantime. Dotson extended for two years and $7 million, while Panda added on three years and $14 million with player options and a no movement clause. He also added one more client to the roster, Warren Stephens (@Ephenssta), but otherwise kept his representation rather restrained in comparison to the seemingly constant growth of SLM a year prior. The next wave of free agency, then, would be the next test of TT69 as a number of clients looked for contracts and extensions.
Two of the three players represented by the agency, Stephens and Ramza, exercised player options and secured $14 million and $15 million respectively over three-year deals. Zamir was the last one to leave for freedom, or at least that's how it appeared initially. He actually ended up signing first of the three back with his original team in Arizona, getting a lucrative and frontloaded $15 million bag instead of dipping his toes into the offers of other teams. In the long run, though, I bet Arizona wishes he'd gone elsewhere.
On August 6, though, right before the inactive Woodrow Brooks got a standard post-draft deal, Tim's hopes from two months ago were dashed. This was the day the S24 rules summit results came out, the first one since the agency wave kicked into high gear. This was the chance for those productive chats with Head Office to have materialized into concrete reform. The seventh proposal on the list would cut agent costs in half to $5 million a year. It also, surprise surprise, didn't go through. Only seven of eighteen eligible voters cast ballots in its favor.
And just like those that came before, the TT69 Sports Agency soon faded into the distance with a whimper. Tim was having a lot less fun and a lot less to do as an agent than he had as a player. To add to these social costs, the actual cost of a license was just too prohibitive to deal with. It just wasn't worth the effort. Unlike with SLM, there was no general announcement of the end of the agency perhaps outside of the now-deleted Discord server. Tim simply created a new player at the end of August, and that was pretty much that.
The Fourth Wave of Agencies?
The shuttering of the TT69 Sports Agency marked the beginning of a long three-year drought for the very concept of player agencies. Any user dedicated enough and ambitious enough to seriously contemplate starting their own needed only to see the examples of the past to realize that greater users before had tried and failed to do the same. Agencies are a veritable landmine, a balancing act of severe restrictions and severe commitment that few can manage for long.
Quote:I imagine that agents end up in the Miscellaneous section largely because the league isn’t quite sure what to do with them. It’s kind of like that Christmas gift that a not too distant relative bought for you several years ago, that you don’t want to throw away for fear of them inquiring of it, but at the same time you’ve got no idea what to do with it… we don’t really want to say no, because that might turn some people away from the site; but at the same time we don’t want to say yes, because it challenges several other structures within the league that we’re not too keen on addressing either. See: player contracts, salary cap, tampering, contract clauses, contract negotiations, etc.
That promised reform Tim was so optimistic about in June 2020 never materialized. The S26 rules summit had a proposal to reduce agent fees to $5 million, which got nine votes in favor and ten against. The S30 summit had a proposal to change the annual licensing to a $10 million upfront fee and then a $3 million annual cost to maintain it. This idea went further than the last, supported by a clear majority of 22 in favor and twelve against, but it fell two votes short of the supermajority required to pass it into law. Two years later and counting, no further action to modify the agency rules has come about. The HO that passed the 2019 round of rules seemed to finally have achieved the killing of agencies they desired.
Maybe this was a good outcome, if unnecessarily convoluted compared to simply banning them at the first sight of Roc Nation Sports. The arguments against agencies are as persistent as their staunchest detractors, a large number of whom are respected long-time users with experience in Head Office or as a GM:
- Agents are an unwelcome middleman. GMs don't want to be interacting with agents instead of their players, with whom they try to build a relationship, get to know, and discuss how they fit into the future of the team one-on-one. For most players, this is a haggle-free and painless process. Hiring an agent only removes an element of league interaction from players and introduces a third party where none needed to be involved. They aim to solve a non-existent problem.
- Agents are always biased. Even with no players or formal ties to teams, agents are just as vulnerable to personal bias as every other user. They have history in the league, they have users and teams they like more than others, and no matter how hard they try to remain neutral they will always implicitly push their clients in certain directions. At their worst, they could actively influence the balance of the league by sabotaging specific teams or by ruining their salary cap to the benefit of others.
- Agents have no place in the league. The entire conceit of the league is built around being a player. As an agent, users are cut off from most of the opportunities and experiences available to others and are really only engaged once every two months when the offseason starts. Even that is neutered. The structure of the league economy practically dictates that most players will be perfectly content taking a minimum contract. Agents are dealt a losing deck from the start, and that will never change without serious, comprehensive economic reform that the league is very, very far from achieving. It would be far simpler and cleaner for HO to bite the bullet and sever them completely.
On September 16, 2023, @SchwarzNarr announced that she would be creating her own player agency, known as Armchair Agents LLC. Her pitch promised representation in contract negotiations as well as player profiles for each client on the agency's website. The post inspired a decent number of replies and even a few users inquiring about getting on board. At the time of writing, however, Schwarz has made only one post since that day, a set of pride helmet graphics of which my signature boasts two. The website has not been updated.
The creation of Armchair Agents was the genesis for this article, but it appears far less likely than it did back in September that any significant action will emerge out of it. If agencies are to be revived in the future, it will come from some other source. In the meantime, every issue that agencies' most earnest advocates sought to fix with the league remains intact. Minimum contracts are the norm, free agency is a muted simulacrum of the real counterpart, and countless proposals have been made attempting to find the perfect solution to the ISFL's money problem. To learn more about that, though, you should read the other essay.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.
@iamslm22
@Muford
@Painted
@platanocat
@Raven
@TubbyTim69
@zaynzk
This was a bit of an experiment on my end, but I hope you enjoyed the end result.
Thank you to my contributors, as always. League research is an unenviable task when going it alone.
Transgender lesbian, S15 veteran, and media extraordinaire. Fascists and bigots are welcome to fuck off.
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For Your Reading Consideration:
Before the Butchers | The Jungle
The Giving Tree | Volume II | Volume III
A Winter of Discontent | Volume II
The Rockiest Road | II | III | IV | V | VI | VII | Finale
Two Essays on Unfree Agency: On Agents | On Contracts
Eclipse of the Honey Moon | Volume II
Gemini Media Awards:
S39 | S40 | S41 | S42 | S43 | S44 | S45 | S46
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— — —
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For Your Reading Consideration:
Before the Butchers | The Jungle
The Giving Tree | Volume II | Volume III
A Winter of Discontent | Volume II
The Rockiest Road | II | III | IV | V | VI | VII | Finale
Two Essays on Unfree Agency: On Agents | On Contracts
Eclipse of the Honey Moon | Volume II
Gemini Media Awards:
S39 | S40 | S41 | S42 | S43 | S44 | S45 | S46
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