Leigh Steinberg
Leigh Steinberg
Leigh William Steinbergis an American sports agent. During his 41-year career, Steinberg has represented over 300 professional athletes in football, baseball, basketball, boxing, and Olympic sports. He has represented the No. 1 overall pick in the NFL draft a record eight times, a milestone unmatched within the sports industry. Steinberg is later credited as the real life inspiration of the sports agent from Cameron Crowe's film Jerry Maguire in 1996...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionBusinessman
Date of Birth27 March 1949
CountryUnited States of America
It's too irrational not to keep negotiating and conclude in an agreement. Football is too smart not to realize that madness lies in emulating the self-destructiveness of professional baseball, basketball and hockey.
He was disappointed, but he's pretty resolute that he wants to play football. He's only 28. At the end of the year, he'll only be 29. He is still intent on having a career in the National Football League.
Now we're getting a whole generation of kids who have never had a football team in L.A., so they don't miss it and don't ask for it. It becomes self-perpetuating. They don't know what they're missing.
Cameron was able to get an inside look at professional football from the standpoint of athletes and agents and general managers that few people have ever seen.
As for football in L.A., it's going to take a loooong time before another team comes here.
Whatever fighting words you hear from the bargaining table, the reality is that with the new TV contract about to take effect and the incredibly lucrative ancillary revenue streams, both sides know we are on the verge of ushering in the most lucrative payday in the history of professional sports. The history of professional football is that nothing happens until the very last moment.
Then I went to UCLA - so of course I became a huge Bruin basketball fan... and later came to football.
When it came to football there was a certain age where I realized that my future in football was being a grease spot on the side of some bigger player.
I love the values football can teach. It gives young people a sense of how to defer present gratification for future success, it teaches self-discipline, it teaches teamwork, it gives them a bonding experience that can be hard to find somewhere else, it teaches the ability to process large amounts of information and apply it in real time.
The first issue that needs solving is club vs. club. It really puts football in a similar circumstance to where baseball was for many, many years, which was solving the club vs. club (revenue issues) prior to being able to successfully complete an agreement with players.
It's so much the cherry on top of compensation. It's the kind of thing that someone writes into a contract as the least-likely thing to happen.
The cost is minimal compared to the human cost and the enormous investments that these teams make in training and in contractual commitments to contemporary NFL players,
They are not getting hurt in some frivolous hobby. They are hurt applying themselves to the exact task they've been hired to do. This is a risk that ought to be shared in a fairer way.
Early on last season, a love affair was struck between Ben and Pittsburgh. His blue-collar roots, his Midwest values meshed perfectly with that city.