[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 64 (Thursday, May 1, 2003)]
[House]
[Pages H3620-H3621]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




    H.R. 361, THE SPORTS AGENT RESPONSIBILITY AND TRUST ACT (SPARTA)

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Osborne) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. OSBORNE. Mr. Speaker, last weekend, the National Football League 
draft was conducted. Over 200 players were selected in the draft. Each 
player eventually will be represented by an agent. The difficult thing 
is that many of these people who call themselves agents have no special 
qualifications.
  We find that many of them have no legal training, no expertise in 
writing contracts, some misrepresent themselves, some offer illegal 
inducements, particularly to undergraduates, such as cars, cash, 
clothes, and sometimes even drugs, to get young people to commit to a 
contract while they still have eligibility, which makes them 
ineligible, of course. A few even have criminal records. Most of them 
will tell a player that they will get them drafted higher.
  The NFL committee will say, well, you are going to be a fourth-round 
pick; and these agents say, well, if you come with me, I will get you a 
trainer and a nutritionist, and we will make you a first-round pick, 
which obviously does not happen. And then some even get the power of 
attorney, which sometimes bankrupts these individuals.
  The National Football League Players Association currently says that 
roughly one-half of the players leaving the National Football League 
have no money. The minimum salary is several hundred thousand dollars. 
Some guys make millions of dollars; some sign for $10 million or $11 
million. Yet at the end of their career, nearly one-half have no money 
left. A lot of that is due simply to the issue of the way they are 
treated by their agents.

[[Page H3621]]

  Every coach and athletic director that I know says this is a huge 
problem and that we need some type of uniform standards and regulations 
to govern sports agents. One of the biggest problems that we have is 
these people come on the campus and nobody knows they are there. They 
see the players in the dorms; they harass them and call them on the 
phone. Some of the better players end up having to get unlisted phone 
numbers because of all the harassment.
  Currently, Mr. Speaker, there are only 15 States that have tough laws 
regulating actions by sports agents. There are 17 States, including my 
home State of Nebraska, that have no laws at all regulating sports 
agents, and then there are 18 States remaining that have some laws. It 
is kind of a hodgepodge, a patchwork; and there is no consistency and 
no teeth in the regulations. So the majority of young people coming out 
of college really are not protected by any laws that would govern 
sports agents.
  With this problem in mind, the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Gordon) 
and I have introduced H.R. 361, the Sports Agent Responsibility and 
Trust Act, which is also known as SPARTA. SPARTA protects student 
athletes by making it illegal for sports agents to entice student 
athletes with false or misleading information, promises, or 
representations in order to lure them into a contract. SPARTA would 
protect student athletes when they travel to other States.
  Some student athletes are in States with some laws, but once they go 
home for the summer in another State or go to a bowl game, sometimes 
they are preyed upon by sports agents in those areas. So this provides 
a uniform Federal backstop. It does not supplant State laws, and we 
feel it is a very sound piece of legislation.
  As of April 2002, the National Football League Players Association 
reported 1,200 certified football agents. Eight hundred of those 
represent no clients. Now, those are the guys that are really not very 
well qualified, and they are particularly dangerous because they are 
desperate to represent somebody. So they will make almost any kind of a 
deal, any kind of a promise to get someone committed.
  We think, of course, that this is obviously a huge problem. But let 
me just cite two cases from my own experience. One: we were getting on 
the bus to go to the Orange Bowl, and I could not find my quarterback 
two hours before kickoff. I finally located him in one corner of the 
lobby cornered by two agents that he had never seen before, I had never 
heard of before, and were obviously unscrupulous; and they are 
hammering this guy to try to get him to sign a contract right before a 
kickoff. Well, of course, this did not do the quarterback any good, and 
it did not do me any good either.
  In one other case we had a young man who was contacted at his home 
during the summer and he signed a contract. He did not really 
understand what he signed, but buried in the fine print was a 13 
percent commission for the agent. So the agent got several hundred 
thousand dollars from this young man. Fortunately, the agent was from a 
State that did have some laws governing agents, and this agent had not 
registered. So we were able to recover $300,000 of this young man's 
money because of some sports agent legislation.
  So what we are saying is we need this kind of protection for all 
athletes in all States. It is a Federal backstop. We think this is 
sound legislation, and I urge my colleagues to cosponsor H.R. 361, the 
Sports Agent Responsibility and Trust Act.

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