Lessons From a USC Golf Cart: Why NFL Student Agents Are a Bad Idea

Yesterday, Los Angeles Times columnist T.J. Simers reported on a chat he had with Teague Egan, the NFLPA-certified agent and USC student who (in)famously gave USC tailback Dillon Baxter a lift across campus on a golf cart. 

The whole affair could be right out of Punk’d, except it’s no joke. Rather, it’s a cautionary tale about the pitfalls of certifying current students as NFL player agents. 

It all started when USC Athletic Director Pat Haden, aka Eagle Eye, saw a guy tooling around campus in a golf cart emblazoned with "1st Round Enterprises" on the front and called his compliance department. Is this what an AD has to worry about now? Golf carts?

Sadly, yes. 

Since the long arm of the NCAA is never very far away from anything silly, the nation’s largest university compliance office tracked down Egan and told him to stay away from the athletes lest they wind up in the NCAA’s cross hairs again. 

The very next day Egan offered Baxter a ride in his golf cart.  

Egan and Baxter claimed to have been friends before Egan was a registered agent. Still, because he’s an agent now, the ride was considered an extra benefit in violation of NCAA rules, even though Egan claims to give 15-20 rides a day to his (lazy) friends.   

Baxter was suspended for one game and subsequently donated the assessed value of the ride, $5, to charity. It’s really more like five cents but that might seem like a stingy charitable donation. 

Which brings us to the central problem of allowing students to simultaneously be registered as player agents. A certified agent on campus actively promoting his business is an untenable situation for the student-athlete with potential eligibility-ending consequences. 

We all know that when you’re in college you mooch and borrow from your friends all the time; a few bucks, a car, laundry at your roommate’s parents’ house. I even went on vacation with a friend’s family. 

When you’re living on your own (probably) for the first time and you (probably) don’t have a lot of money and resources, you rely on your friends to help you out. And friends of friends become your friends.

You can see where this is going. 

If the NCAA can suddenly define a booster as a guy who hires a couple of interns for the summer—as they did in the Reggie Bush case—then it doesn’t require much more creativity to redefine friendship. So even if your now-agent friend didn’t give you two Lakers tickets for your birthday, if the friend who did was originally the agent’s friend the NCAA could call him an associate acting on the agent’s behalf, which means you’re in violation of the rules. 

Suspension. Loss of scholarships. Probation. 

Egan does not disguise his intentions to be the west coast version of Drew Rosenhaus so it’s easy to disassociate from him. 

But what about the next Egan who decides to keep his agent status to himself? Or what if he (or she) decides to become an agent after several years of friendship with football players? Will the NCAA consider past acts of friendship a current violation? Are athletes just supposed to stop talking to everyone on campus except each other?

The current system already forces players, their families and associates (cousins, girlfriends, close family friends—it’s really a catch-all) to play by a different set of rules than the rest of the student body, even those on academic and need-based scholarships. 

It turns out that “full” athletic scholarships are not in fact full rides (no pun intended). A recent study by Ithaca College and the National College Players Association concluded that the average athletic scholarship falls $3,000 short of the actual cost of attendance per year. 

But unlike other students, athletes aren’t allowed to work year-round to try and make up the difference. As if they’d have time. 

They can’t leverage their talent to make any money by, say, selling one of their game jerseys either, though non-athletic scholarship students are not prohibited from financially benefiting from whatever talent they have. 

Student-athletes also can’t transfer as easily as regular students. They can’t live with roommates whose parents are paying the rent. They might not even be able to borrow a car. There are more examples, of course, but you get the point. 

To be sure, we have come to this state of affairs largely because of past transgressions by teams, players, agents, alumni and boosters. Or, some might argue, because players aren’t paid. 

Nevertheless, allowing on-campus student agents is a step in the wrong direction, toward non-compliance by accident and with consequences only for the student-athlete. Remember in our example Baxter was the one sitting on the sidelines, not Egan.

Some may say you can’t prevent a person from pursuing his business. It’s a free country. 

Except we’re not dealing with a free country, we’re dealing with the NCAA and the NFL. Both of which make up rules all the time that are patently unfair. Why can’t a player declare for the NFL draft as a sophomore? How is that fair? 

The NFLPA should immediately disallow student agents. And they should beef up a system that considers running a party limo, which Egan did, as relevant negotiation experience. 

For its part, the NCAA should at least adjust its scholarship formula to allow schools to provide for the full cost of tuition, even if that means allowing an alumni-funded trust to provide monthly stipends to athletes to help close the gap. 

No question it’s a tricky issue.

One thing’s for sure: allowing students to register as agents benefits one party only, the agent. It’s about time someone stepped in and did something to protect the interests of the players who are making everyone—but themselves—rich.