As the old saying goes, ‘Iron sharpens iron’ - so it makes sense that premier sports agent Leigh Steinberg learned how to negotiate from former United States president Ronald Reagan.
During his 41-year career, Steinberg has represented many of the most successful athletes and coaches in NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, boxing and golf. He has represented the number one overall pick in the NFL Draft for an unprecedented eight times as well as 62 first round-picks.
A best-selling author, entrepreneur and CEO of Leigh Steinberg Sports and Entertainment Holdings, Steinberg worked tirelessly to build his athletes into iconic brands - and his exceptional career was immortalised in the Oscar-winning movie Jerry Maguire. Ironically, the American’s journey to Hollywood started in nearby San Francisco when he attended the University of California, Berkeley.
Steinberg wasn’t infatuated by the world of sports agency when he attended college - rather, he preferred politics. His moderate political stance drew a following at protest-prone Berkeley amid the Vietnam War and he credits former American president Ronald Reagan with honing his ability to negotiate.
“I was elected [Student] President of Berkeley in the late 1960s and the governor of California was Ronald Reagan, so every time we demonstrated against the war in Vietnam, he cracked down,” Steinberg exclusively told Mirror Sport. “I learned everything I needed to learn about the art of negotiating from then-Governor and later President Ronald Reagan.
“While I was in law school, I was a dorm counsellor in an undergraduate dormitory, and they moved the freshman football team into the dorm. One of the students was Steve Bartkowski. In 1975, he became the very first player picked in the first round of the National Football League draft - and he asked me to represent him.
“There I was, freshly minted as an attorney and as my first case, I had the first player picked overall. We got the largest rookie contract in NFL history with the Atlanta Falcons, and there wasn’t really an organised field of sports agency at that point. Teams could and would just hang up the phone and say, ‘We don't deal with agents’ - but here we are 40 years later.”
It is remarkable that sports agent supreme Steinberg also became the real-life inspiration for the Oscar-winning - and generally iconic - 1996 movie Jerry Maguire. Back in 1993, writer and director Cameron Crowe called Steinberg and asked if he could follow him around to do a film based on a sports agent. As a result, Crowe attended the 1993 NFL Draft where Steinberg’s client Drew Bledsoe was selected first overall by the New England Patriots.
Steinberg told him stories all night, while also taking the director to league meetings, pro days, matches and the Super Bowl. Crowe was also present when Steinberg attempted to show off free agent Tim McDonald following the implementation of free agency in the NFL - and suddenly, Jerry Maguire was born.
“We spent so much time in my office and I told him lots of stories, and then he went off and wrote a script,” Steinberg said, with a photo of himself smiling alongside actors Tom Cruise and Cuba Gooding Jr. propped up on the shelf behind him. “I was technical advisor so I had to vet the script to make sure that the willing suspension of disbelief that holds you in a motion picture didn't get broken.
“Then [Crowe] assigned me actors like Cuba Gooding Jr, who I took to the Super Bowl in Phoenix and made him pretend he was a wide receiver for the week to get into the role. I actually had to show the quarterback, played in the film by Jerry O'Connell, how to throw a spiral because he had gone to NYU and they didn't have football there!
“It’s been 25 years of going through an airport or going out to dinner and someone runs up to the table and says, ‘Show me the….!’
“You’ve got to be gracious and friendly, people mean well!”
Steinberg has an unrivalled history of securing record-setting contracts for his clients. The 73-year-old has had over 300 professional athlete clients, earning them over $4 billion (£3.4bln) while he has also directed more than $750 million (£632m) to various charities around the world with Steinberg striving to help athletes make a difference and change lives throughout his career.
His philosophy was that athletes could and should be role models, and Steinberg was passionate about it. He added: “If athletes would go back to the high school or college community that helped shape them, and set up a scholarship fund and bond with people, that could lay the seeds for second career.
“If they go to the professional world and set up a charitable foundation, then that could have leading business figures, political figures and community leaders on a charitable board. It was all about looking for role model athletes who understood they could trigger imitative behaviour.
“When I worked with boxer Lennox Lewis, we had him do a public service announcement that said, ‘real man, don't hit women‘ - and that could do more to trigger imitative behaviour than 1000 authorities ever could on the issue of domestic violence.”
