Regulating the Modern Sports Agent

Regulating the Modern Sports Agent

The allure of life as a sports agent has served to attract many people who want to be part of the sports industry. Movies such as Jerry Maguire only serve to further idolize the life of the sports agent. In the modern day of the growing sports agent business, up and coming industry giants, to include IMG, Octagon, and SFX along with the unscrupulous and unethical conduct by competing sports agents, have led to the enactment of new legislations. “To designate certain conduct by sports agents relating to the signing of contracts with student athletes as unfair and deceptive acts or practices to be regulated by the Federal Trade Commission,” the Sports Agent Responsibility and Trust Act (SPARTA) was introduced on January 27, 2003 and was signed into law by President Bush on September 24, 2004. The evolution of the role of the sports agent has created ethical issues along with an inequality between the lawyer-sports agent and the non-lawyer sports agent.

The concept of the sports agent, in its infancy, has been around since the early 1900’s. In 1920 the Sports Agent Charles "Cash and Carry" Pyle negotiated what is considered one of the first contracts negotiated by an agent. The contract was for "Red" Grange of the Chicago Bears, and was to play in eight games for one hundred thousand dollars. Due to the reshaping of the economic landscaping of professional sports in the late ‘70s, professional sports and the role of the sports agent has become a big business. The end result of this boom has lead to an average NBA player salary of 4.9 million dollars, a huge jump from the 1967 average of twenty thousand dollars. A recent example is the 252 million dollar, ten year contract negotiated for Alex Rodriguez by Sports Agent Scott Boras (Geisel 2). Massive commissions related to contracts like this one has attracted new agents to the business creating fierce competition within the industry while leading to such acts like SPARTA due to...