After a college football season blemished by charges of rule-breaking agents and athletes, legislators from New Jersey to Oregon are looking to make it tougher on those who contact players improperly.
Lawmakers in New Jersey and Virginia, two of the eight states that lack sports agents laws, now want to add such legal protections. Six other states are considering proposals to strengthen the Uniform Athletes Agent Act, a model law that suffers from neglect in many states.
That includes Arkansas, where 89 House members voted unanimously on Wednesday to make violations of its agent laws — previously a misdemeanor — a felony offense.
Those pushing for changes on the state level aren’t waiting for either the NFL or the NCAA to act. Four months ago, both entities joined the NFL Players Association, the American Football Coaches Association and several prominent agents in forming a 22-member panel tasked with cleaning up the situation.
“Up to this point, we’ve had laws on the books, but there hasn’t been much interest or effort from the enforcement side,” says Oklahoma state Rep. Todd Thomsen, a Republican who was the punter and kicker on the University of Oklahoma’s 1985 national championship team.
An August 2010 review by The Associated Press found that more than half of the 42 states with sports agent laws didn’t revoke or suspend a single license, or invoke penalties of any sort. Neither had the Federal Trade Commission, which in 2004 was given oversight authority by Congress.
The proposed Oklahoma measure broadens the definition of agent to cover financial planners — player reps who don’t negotiate contracts but still have a financial stake in a college athlete’s future earnings — while increasing the minimum fine for violations from $1,000 to $10,000 and the maximum from $10,000 to $250,000.
