EmailPrintOpen Extended ReactionsAS CASH HAS flooded college and high school athletic recruiting through NIL deals and direct payments from schools, coaches and other observers say they see a growing need to regulate the middlemen who carve out a profit by putting themselves between the money and the athlete.So-called "street agents," who typically aren't certified agents or even attorneys, recruit players around the edges of the game and promise to represent them in pursuit of college scholarships or deals for their name, image and likeness.Street agents existed under the table in the pre-NIL era, but their prevalence, and the dollar amounts involved, have grown exponentially in the new college sports era, according to coaches and sports administrators interviewed by ESPN."I think it's almost at a crisis, to be honest," said Joe Martin, executive director of the Texas High School Coaches Association. "We've got situations where we ... have the street agents moving kids from place to place and representing them, that are charging them a lot more money than they should be charging them."Coaches say high school athletes are more at risk of being exploited than college athletes because they lack the support and structure of a university compliance office, and they are sometimes the only student at their school weighing an offer, with no points of comparison.Street agents are often former players, trainers, parents, coaches or just people who say they have a connection to NIL collectives, recruiters or sponsors. Coaches say these agents contact athletes through social media, private training facilities, AAU basketball or other non-school leagues.Unlike in professional leagues, where agents are certified by the players' unions, agents negotiating deals at the high school and college level do not have to register with a national governing body."So many of our student athletes have agents that help them with NIL that aren't really agents," South Carolina head football coach Shane Beamer told a congressional committee last March. "Some are being taken advantage of."Because of the largely informal nature of the arrangements and the lack of regulation, it's hard to say how many street agents exist. But in a December survey of 1,000 college athletes, 18% said that someone helped them with NIL deals while they were in high school.About 67% of athletes who responded said they agreed to give the person who helped them a percentage of their earnings. Just over half said they were completely or somewhat satisfied with that person, according to the survey, which was conducted at ESPN's request by Bill Carter, founder of Student-Athlete Insights, an NIL consulting and education firm that operates the NIL Research Poll.In an unscientific survey of Texas high school football and basketball coaches, conducted by the Texas High School Coaches Association in cooperation with ESPN, about a fourth of coaches said they had athletes who had been approached by agents.Some of these middlemen make money by charging parents an upfront fee, while others negotiate a percentage of any NIL or college offers, according to the responses.Among the coaches whose athletes had been approached by agents, 70% said that they did not believe the agents were acting in the athlete's best interest."There are some people that are in this industry that are doing the right thing," said Tim Prukop, co-founder of Eccker Sports Group, which provides athletes and their families with NIL guidance. "But for every one of those, there's 10 that are out there just trying to make a buck the fastest that they can on anybody that they can."Coaches described agents who jeopardized offers the athletes already had received or were not qualified to advise on such decisions. One football coach wrote that an all-state running back switched high schools because of an agent, lost out on playing time and "went from having college interest to nothing.""They don't know enough to act in the athlete's interest," wrote a different coach. Another noted, "All these 'agents' are a money grab for themselves."ONE STREET AGENT story that circulated in national football coaching circles recently involved text messages a Texas man sent to a high school player he represented.Tony Jones started working with Terrell High School football player Draden Fullbright during his freshman year. After Fullbright committed to Oklahoma State and an NIL deal of about $36,000 a year, he said Jones texted him demanding 25%."He's going to try to get in my son's pocket before he even gets a pocket," Fullbright's stepfather, Richard Wimbley, said.When Fullbright responded that he had not agreed to this, Jones wrote an expletive-laden series of messages, which ESPN has reviewed, saying the player was ungrateful and indebted to him."Just go graduate from college and don't waste my mf time that I put into you," Jones wrote.Jones spoke to several OSU athletics officials regarding Fullbright's deal, and one person at the university with direct knowledge of the negotiations told ESPN that the agent did not improve Fullbright's offer and OSU almost passed on the player because of Jones' demands.Fullbright said he felt that Jones steered him away from his top-choice programs and that he stopped talking to him after the text exchange. "I told my coaches I don't associate with him no more," he said.Fullbright sent the texts to school administrators, who then passed them on to officials in Texas. The texts also reached Craig Bohl, the executive director of the American Football Coaches Association."They made my skin crawl," said Bohl, who shared the texts with U.S. lawmakers during meetings in Washington and discussed them with a top NCAA enforcement official."They just shook their heads," he said. "They couldn't believe this is out there."The University Interscholastic League, which oversees Texas high school sports, called Jones' texts "inappropriate" in records reviewed by ESPN.In multiple phone and text conversations, Jones told ESPN that he's easily owed 20% of whatever deal athletes make, considering the time, money and effort he puts into helping connect them with college coaches. He said he treated Fullbright like a son."I don't understand this narrative," he said. "I'm actually kind of sick of it. I never took anything from anybody. And these people that I've worked with, they don't come with anything except expectations."According to Jones, he and Fullbright had an understanding that they were going to work hard, get in a position to make some money and then "you're going to take a portion to your family, and I'm going to take a portion to my family."Jones declined to say what deals, if any, he had negotiated for Fullbright.Jones stressed that he has worked with many athletes from whom he has never received any payment. JaQwondis Burns, who played at Minnesota and Southern Methodist, told ESPN he met Jones in middle school and never "encountered a problem with Tony. He never asked me for nothing.""If it wasn't for him, I wouldn't have went to college," Burns said. "I wouldn't have got the opportunity that I've gotten."Burns graduated from IMG Academy in 2020, before athletes could sign NIL deals.Jones, who told ESPN he is considering becoming a registered NFL agent, said he and Fullbright are back on good terms since the texts, and he was with the player when he transferred from OSU to UAB in January. Fullbright, who spoke with Jones after his interview with ESPN, has since declined to answer questions about his UAB deal.Jones said he never made any money off Fullbright."What my business is does not matter to you," Jones said to ESPN. "It don't matter to you. There's nothing you or nobody else can do about who I work with. I don't have to explain a ... thing to anybody else."FORMER OAKLAND RAIDERS safety Derrick Gibson, now coaching at Miami Central High School, said high school athletes are losing money by using agents because colleges offer NIL deals based on the market rate for players they recruit.A street agent can't affect that, he said, certainly not enough to merit a 20% or 25% cut. NFL agents, by contrast, typically earn 3% on salaries and 10% to 20% on endorsement deals. "But when it comes to your NIL money, he should not have 20% because that's your number, and your number is not going to change," Gibson said. "I can give you a lot of examples where agents pretty much messed up a deal."Prukop, who runs an NIL education company, said he sees agents trying to sign young athletes to lifetime marketing agreements that grant them 15-30%. The survey of college athletes found the median cut for an agent was about 20%."I have street agents hustling my kids all the time," a Texas coach wrote in the survey. "I have a real conversation with the kid and the parent when I find out. I tell them they are stealing your money."Though the NCAA and coaches' associations agree that street agents should be addressed, the path to regulation is unclear.The NFL's and NBA's players' associations require their agents to pay a registration fee, have a college degree, undergo a background check and pass an exam. College athletes do not have a union, though two groups pushing for collective bargaining in college sports include rules on athlete representation in their proposals.The NCAA, which has largely stayed out of NIL enforcement issues, told ESPN in a statement that it has limited ability to regulate agents. (The association has rules for agents working with college basketball players who are trying to enter the NBA draft.)The College Sports Commission, created by the House settlement last summer to regulate NIL deals and payments to college athletes, is just getting off the ground. Agents are not included in the House settlement provisions, and a spokesperson for the CSC did not say whether the agency would tackle the issue.Bohl said his organization, the AFCA, has considered addressing the issue but would be limited to football. He said some states have laws regarding NIL and agent representation, but they are difficult to enforce without uniformity and clear oversight over high school athletes, especially with colleges and agents interacting across state lines.What's clear, officials say, is that solving this problem will require them to work together. Martin, who leads the Texas High School Coaches Association, said he met with NFL representatives attending the 2026 combine in Indianapolis about the issue to solicit possible solutions.Martin said many Division I colleges in Texas have agreed to involve athletes' high school coaches in the recruiting process in part so that they can watch for unscrupulous middlemen. His group is also trying to develop training for athletes and their parents about NIL.In December, U.S. senators Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., and Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., introduced a bill that would require agents to register with a state before representing athletes in NIL deals.The legislation also would require athletic associations, such as the NCAA, to maintain an online registry of agents and cap agent fees at 5%. The bill is currently in committee.In January, the Federal Trade Commission announced that it was requesting information from 20 Division I schools in an investigation into whether agents who work with student athletes are complying with a 2004 law. That law requires agents to provide athletes with disclosures before signing contracts and to notify schools about contracts with athletes. It also prohibits agents from making false promises or giving athletes or anyone associated with them anything of value before entering the contract.An FTC spokesperson declined to provide further information, including whether the inquiry would include high school agents.In an open letter to the FTC, Bohl applauded the federal agency's investigation and urged Congress to update legislation regulating agents for the NIL era."Over the last few years, since the long-overdue compensation of college athletes began, our coaches have seen a dramatic increase in unprepared, unethical 'agents' exploiting young athletes in financial negotiations," Bohl wrote Feb. 5. "Any additional enforcement actions the FTC can take to rein in the excesses of unqualified, unethical agents would be greatly appreciated."ESPN researcher John Mastroberardino contributed to this report.
