Street Agents in College Football

INTRODUCTION

Meet Will Lyles. A former personal trainer turned college football scout is now the common thread is several ongoing NCAA investigations. Paid for his services as a player mentor and as a an “usher” of football talent, Lyles is the latest “street agent” being linked to football programs across the country by major media outlets and college football chat boards alike.

Lyles has admitted to actions that lead to some athletes playing for the University of Oregon football team. Specifically, “he counseled the family of current Ducks’ star LaMichael James on how to avoid a Texas standardized test required for high school graduation. ” His counseling took the form of suggesting to the player and the player’s family that the athlete transfer to Arkansas for the last semester of his senior year, as Arkansas did not require standardized testing. Lyles also assisted a player in petitioning a court to appoint the grandmother of the player as his guardian. The player’s mother, it turned out, had voiced opposition to her son playing for Oregon and could have prevented the player from signing a letter of intent to play for the Ducks.

Lyles is the latest in a long line of “scouts” or “mentors” who have been cast as the forbidden agent to collegiate athletes. Whether alleged to have secured improper benefits for clients or implicated in self-dealing activities such as steering prospective players to the highest bidder, these street agents have brought agency law to the front page of every sports magazine and website.

AGENCY

The Second Restatement of Agency provides: "(1) Agency is the fiduciary relation which results from the manifestation of consent by one person to another that the other shall act on his behalf and subject to his control, and consent by the other so to act. (2) The one for whom action is to be taken is the principal. (3) The one who is to act is the agent. " Therefore, the law of agency deals with contractual, quasi-contractual, or non-contractual relationships when a person, is authorized to act on behalf of another.

The fiduciary nature of the principal-agent relationship imposes several duties upon the agent. Among those is the requirement to abstain from self-dealing or acts that benefit the agent to the detriment of the principal.

REGULATION

There exists, in the world of college sports, an ongoing attempt to insulate student athletes from the agency relationships and/or the dealings that are created by these relationships. Whether spearheaded by academic institutions, athletic associations or legislatures, these efforts constitute a very pointed and driven campaign to keep agency law at bay.

The Sports Agent Responsibility and Trust Act (SPARTA) was enacted by Congress in 2004 in an effort to protect student-athletes