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September 9, 2010 |
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| July 16, 2008 |
By: Andy Peters |
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here is only so much Monday-morning quarterbacking a five-days-a-week sports talk radio host can muster—even with such rich subjects as Michael Vick's bankruptcy, the Georgia Bulldogs' effort to win a national title in football and frustrations about Brett Favre's inability to make up his mind.
The need for more voices has created an interesting practice for a small number of attorneys who advise players and coaches on developing careers in broadcasting. The work combines intellectual property, labor and endorsement contracts with traditional sports agent duties, such as sending out feelers for job opportunities and helping a client prepare for appearing on camera or in front of a microphone.
“How a player talks about sports with his friends, that may be slang that the audience won't understand,” said Locke Lord Bissell & Liddell associate Brandon J. Witkow, who works in Los Angeles and Atlanta. Former players and coaches need to receive some type of training in broadcasting, “then put together some demo tapes and have an agent shop it around.”
“Sometimes these jobs can start in a very informal way,” said Atlanta attorney James M. “Jamie” Bendall, whose sports-broadcasting clients include sports-talk personalities Nick Cellini, Chuck Oliver and Matt Chernoff. “A player is brought in as a guest, it's a great segment and it can turn into a regular, recurring role.”
Finding work for the client is easy if the player or coach is already well-known in the sports world, said Atlanta broadcasting agent Norm Schrutt.
“Guys like Bill Parcells don't have any problem getting a job,” said Schrutt, who works with attorneys in Greenberg Traurig's Atlanta office, including partner Joel A. Katz. “Whether they're good, bad or indifferent, it doesn't make any difference. It's because they're opinionated and larger than life.”
But it's a much more difficult proposition for a coach or player who isn't a household name, even if the client is well-spoken. The pipeline of talent waiting for their chance is overflowing, Schrutt said.
“Every player and coach sees ESPN and figures they can do better than the next guy,” Schrutt said.
The easiest transition seems to be for retired superstars. When Jerome Bettis retired in 2006 after his Pittsburgh Steelers won the Super Bowl, NBC hired him as an analyst for its Football Night in America program. After Emmitt Smith's long career as an All-Pro running back for the Dallas Cowboys, ESPN hired him to work on its NFL pre-game shows.
Similarly, Cassie Campbell, who captained the Canadian ice hockey team that won two Olympic gold medals, landed a trial run as a rink-side reporter for CBC's Hockey Night in Canada, the most-popular sports program in Canada, said Greenberg Glusker partner Ronald K. Fujikawa of Los Angeles.
“She had a six-month tryout, and she did really well. The viewers and bloggers love her,” Fujikawa said. Campbell later signed a three-year contract with The Sports Network to work as a hockey analyst.
Occasionally, the sports lawyer gets the gig himself—especially as professional athletes find themselves in legal trouble. Atlanta attorney David Cornwell represents players and coaches in employment contracts and endorsement agreements and provides litigation consulting. When Los Angeles Lakers guard Kobe Bryant was arrested and charged with rape in 2003, Cornwell had been commenting on the case for a local radio station. ESPN took note of Cornwell's work and contacted him.
“They put me in a car and drove me to a studio,” Cornwell said. “They said they didn't know how they were going to use me, but they would use me” as a legal analyst on Bryant's case.
Since then, ESPN has called on Cornwell to offer opinions on a number of matters, such as when former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell released his report in December on the use of steroids in baseball. Cornwell said he spent more than 10 hours in the studio on the day the Mitchell report was released.
“My contract [with ESPN] says that I must use my best efforts to be available to them” when breaking news emerges, such as driving to a nearby television studio, Cornwell said.
Lawyers also advise players and coaches on protecting the intellectual-property assets that they develop while on the air. A right-of-publicity contract stipulates the rights that a player or coach has over any commercial use of his identity, even in snippets played in a voice-over, said Loeb & Loeb partner Douglas N. Masters in Chicago.
“If you're going to go into broadcasting and create a media persona for yourself, you want people to have to pay you to use that,” said Masters, whose clients include Muhammad Ali and the NCAA.
Negotiating terms of exclusivity is also a task for the attorney. If a network wants to restrict a player or a coach from appearing on a rival network's shows, they'll have to pay for that right, Masters said.
“The more of the player you want to control, the more it's going to cost you,” Masters said.
Andy Peters reports for The Daily Report, an affiliate of the Daily Business Review.
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