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
I'd like to add that negotiating is not something to be avoided or feared - it's an everyday part of life.
When it comes to holdouts, there's a presupposition that the player is some angry rebel who's defying authority and only cares about the money.
The Super Bowl is like a movie, and the quarterback is the leading man.
Forty years ago the chances of journalists reporting - or the authorities even prosecuting - a pro athlete were practically nil.
In reality, we can prove that the incidents of drug, alcohol abuse and violence have dropped dramatically among professional athletes - but the problem is it would be impossible to convince than fans, because of what they read on the AP wire.
Then I went to UCLA - so of course I became a huge Bruin basketball fan... and later came to football.
Well, my favorite sport as a kid was clearly baseball.
But the equipment to protect the players hasn't developed along with that, so now you have more players out with worse injuries, for longer periods of time.
But the truth is, growing up in California, we knew nothing about hockey.
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.
Challenge yourself, its fine not to be a totally finished person.
Hey, our Founding Fathers wore long hair and powdered wigs - I don't see anybody trying to look like them today, either... But we do look to them as role models.
I have to say that it was a very strange experience when, later in life, I represented Byron Scott and was negotiating with West - whose picture I used to have over my bed! That took some getting used to.
I ran track, and basically played every sport.