The Rise of the Undrafted Rookie: Agents new market to tap.

The Jewish New Year begins this week on Thursday and the NFL season starts Thursday as well. As Jew combining the two for me is the ultimate New Years. Sadly I cannot watch the game until after the Sabbath. This is just a side note I wanted to share with my followers.

            Lets talk about the recent change with NFL rookies making the 53-man roster of an NFL team. This change is affecting smaller NFL agents whether they choose to see it or not

            Most teams draft about 8-10 players every year.  It used to be that most of the drafted Rookies made the 53-man roster of the team that drafted them.  Not anymore. There has been a rise of undrafted rookies (UDR) making teams. Rookies drafted in rounds 4-7 are nolonger sure locks to make a team or their practice squad.

“Last year, 37 percent of the 622 undrafted rookies signed by the 32 franchises won Week One jobs, either on the practice squad (131) or the 53-man roster (98).” Per Profootballtalk.com

Flash forward to this year, and lets look at some of the teams that kept undrafted rookies over the drafted ones and veterans. The New England Patriots have 14 rookies ontheir team this year and half of them are undrafted. Six UDR’s made the New Orleans Saints roster. The Houston Texans had four make theirs. These are not lowly teams just trying to find a way to win. These teams are all predicted to make the playoffs this year and are among the most known teams in the NFL.

Here are some names of undrafted players that are in the Hall of fame, still playing or headed there. There is Arian Foster, Vontaz Burfict, Joshua Cribbs, Tony Romo, Jeff Saturday, and London Fletcher.

You can watch a great video of Arian Foster and why he is so amazing. (There is some music used and if its not your taste just mute it.)

Why is this so significant?

            Drafted players sign bigger contracts than undrafted players. Most of them sign about 2 million-dollar contracts for 5 years of their service. Undrafted players sign a league rookie minimum, which is around $375,000 a season. These deals are short term. These UDR’s receive little in signing bonus or guaranteed money; both were between $4000 and $6000. This is one of the contributing factors as to why drafted players made teams over them. A drafted player has way money guaranteed, so the organization rather keep the player they have to pay rather than cut that player and still have to pay him as well as the undrafted player.

            This recent change does not affect big name agents like Drew Rosenhause, but for smaller known agents who have maybe 5-30 clients this is a big deal. A lot of these smaller agents make money on their late round draft picks making the 53-man roster. If a drafted player signs a 2-5 million dollar contract over 3 years and then gets cut and goes to the practice squad the contract changes completely. A practice squad player makes around $5,700 a week. That is a huge drop off for an agent who can only take up to 3% off the top of each month’s salary. When an undrafted player makes the 53-man roster his contract is changed and he is given more money thus the agent benefits from this. There used to be a philosophy in the agents circles about only representing players that were for sure going to get drafted and after that might get drafted. Most undrafted rookies did not have an agent up until recently. Now suddenly the undrafted rookie market has become a new pool for smaller agents to tap into.

The true nature of an Invasive ad or sponsorship

            There has always been a saying in the media “Bad news is still news” or is it “Bad news is good news” either way that logic seems to be abused and over applied to sponsorships. In the sports media world sponsorships have become increasingly invasive and downright annoying.

            What is the difference between a good sponsorship and an invasive sponsorship? A good sponsorship can be defined as being successful if it reaches its target audience, target goals, and target market. All three can be mutually exclusive.

            What is an invasive ad or sponsorship? When logging on to ESPN.com or another sports website, have you been bombarded by a huge flash video trailer, or some flash video advertisement for something you don’t plan on buying? It has happened on numerous occasions, and I actually think to myself, I don’t want to buy this product. I don’t want to have to go and find out how to disable the ad option; it’s annoying and tedious. I’m on this site to read about sports not see an old spice ad. Unfortunately those ads and sponsorships are what keep these sites going. Despite the ad being annoying, they are getting full exposure. I’m even discussing it right now on my blog. That’s free press even if it is negative press! This is still not invasive sponsorship.

            Invasive sponsorships and ads can be seen mostly in social media. Facebook is a good example. The program actually fishes through your Internet cookies and history and sees what you have been doing lately. It then posts ads to you, and from you to your friends.  Let me give you an example, I was writing a scene in a book and it had to do with a ring. I did some web searches on engagement rings for visual aid to describe the ring in the book. Next time I went on Facebook all my ads were geared toward getting married or getting engaged.

Recently,Facebook lost Coco Cola as a sponsorship partner because of these practices, and was forced to change their tactic. Now a user must “okay” Facebook posting ads on their behalf.

Why is it important to know about Facebook’s methodology? Well, I foresee a day when Sports Media websites begin to employ the same technique. Instead of going after just standard sponsorships and ads, why not have a bunch of little companies pay to have their ads on ESPN.com. You are ring shopping for your girl friend, and you log on to ESPN.com and see Jared’s, or Kay Jewelers in the background.  This is the true nature of an invasive sponsorship or ad. It will be coming to a website near you, the near future.

I’ll leave you with one last thought. In a study done recently on Internet ads, consumersresponded that online ads were “annoying” (US 68%, UK and Germany 62%).

Sadly it is only going to get worse.

A-Rod Sponsors are surprisingly quiet

I’m sure if you watch ESPN, you’ve been spoon fed every insignificant minor detail of the Alex Rodriguez PED scandal. For those of you who know nothing about it, whilst I envy you, I’ll give you a quick run down. A-Rod as he is called, admitted to using PED’s(Performance enhancing drugs) in 2009. He had signed the biggest contract in MLB of over $275 Million with the Yankees in 2007.  Now 4 years later, A-Rod is at it again. He’s been suspended by MLB for this entire season and next season. He is still playing because he appealed the suspension. He was linked to the BioGenesis scandal for player doping. Furthermore, it came out a few days ago, that A-Rod’s people leaked documents to Yahoo, about other players who were using PED’s. So not only is he a liar and a cheat, now he’s a NARC.

Now that I’ve caught you up on Planet Alex, I want to dive into something more troubling A-Rod’s sponsorships. Before the recent, scandal A-Rod had endorsement deals with majorbrands like PepsiCo, Kraft Foods, Nike and Colgate. You’d think that after A-Rod’s big scandal these people would drop him. Let us examine who has, who hasn’t and who I couldn’t find out if they had.
            Nike has dropped Alex Rodriguez since. They really have a hard time picking athletes to represent them, first Tiger Woods, than Lance Armstrong, now A-Rod.

I searched all around but could not find anything to show that PepsiCo, Colgate, or Kraft Goods has withdrawn their sponsorships of A-Rod. It could be they have but I’ve yet to find anything. As of March 2012 they were still sponsorship partners with him according to Forbes.

How do these companies stick by these athletes? In the case of Tiger Woods and Nike, I can understand them coming back together. Redemption stories are top sellers next to the fall of a hero. Until Woods messes up again, I assume Nike will keep him. A-Rod has now messed up twice so Nike has cut ties. The other companies still baffle me. The guy is everything you don’t want your kids to look up too. When Rodriguez is making an extra 2-10 million on year on endorsements, I believe that is a problem.

Dino Laurenzi Jr. Do you know that name?

Dino Laurenzi Jr. Do you know that name? Do you have any clue who Laurenzi is or why he should be suing different media outlets? 

Let us go back a year, to when MVP Ryan Braun star baseball player for the Milwaukee Brewers was accused of using Steroids by MLB. Braun lawyered up quickly and appealed the suspension handed down by MLB.

What was his defense? The specimen collector did not send the specimen out right away, rather waiting a night. This according to Braun’s lawyer was cause for reasonable doubt that the specimen was not tampered with. The courts ruled inBraun’s favor. After the whole incident Braun came out and made a statement. In this statement he acted self righteous, a man wronged, and he said something that would ruin the collectors life.

“There were a lot of things that we learned about the collector, about the collection process, about the way that the entire thing worked, that made us very concerned and very suspicious about what could have actually happened.”

You can even watch his press video and see how self righteous he sounds.

Flash forward back to the present. Ryan Braun signed a huge $128 million contract before the season and now has been found guilty of using Steroids and settled with MLB on being suspended for the rest of the season. He was linked in the Bio-Genesis scandal that rocked MLB, the same scandal that Alex Rodriguez is dealing with right now.

Why is the name Dino Laurenzi Jr. so important? He was the collector of the first sample. He lost his job and all credibility in his field due to Braun’s first case and remarks there after. I can only assume he probably got a lot of hate mail as well from fans. His life is ruined. Despite the fact, that everyone knows Braun lied and ruined this guy’s life, he’s not suing. Good guy.

Why am I spending so much time talking about this guy? Well, only one other media outletreally has taken the time to write an article on him. The media instead is choosing to go after Braun and talk about how he lied to us all. After he “proved his innocence” the first time, the media gave him all the coverage in the world to lambast the collector and speak his piece. Now after he’s lied, the media is only talking about him lying. Why aren’t they going after him for ruining some guy’s life? Laurenzi has refused interviews since, but the media could do a better job. The media is so fickle with how it chooses to portray the story. I assure you, when Braun shows back up for training camp next season; it will all be behind him. There will be no mention of the fact that Braun ruined another mans life and profited off it.