Leigh Steinberg doesn’t represent any of the Los Angeles Rams or New England Patriots playing in the Super Bowl.
But good luck finding anyone in Atlanta—players, fans, media types or business executives—with as much to smile about on Super Bowl Sunday as the famed Newport Beach-based sports super-agent.
“I am happy these days,” said Steinberg, speaking while en route from Orlando, home of the just-completed Pro Bowl, to the big game in Atlanta.
Part of that happiness is personal: Steinberg said he’s approaching 10 years of sobriety, after a series of well-publicized incidents put his life and career in jeopardy.
“I’ve been pretty public about my issues,” Steinberg said. “I hope my experiences can help others.”
The other reason to smile: his Steinberg Sports & Entertainment represents the hottest player the NFL has seen in a decade—Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes II.
He’s the league’s presumptive MVP this year (the announcement was made on Feb. 2 after the Business Journal went to press), the offensive MVP in the Jan. 27 Pro Bowl, and a 23-year-old player that pundits suggest could command the NFL’s first $200 million contract.
Steinberg was coy about the state of those negotiations while speaking with the Business Journal last week; noting his client still has at least one year left on his rookie contract, depending on team options.
He also emphasized that Mahomes and his representatives were still focusing on many of the same short-term issues they were addressing when his client first came into the league in 2017, namely ensuring his progress to elite quarterback, establishing ties to the local community in Kansas City, Mo., and giving back.
“People are going to speculate,” he said. “But we’re still saying ‘let’s just keep proving it on the field.’”
That said, expect to see Mahomes—whose norm-breaking skill set has drawn comparisons to the NBA’s Steph Curry—take a more visible role now that the offseason is here.
He’s about to get much more exposure through a variety of national endorsements, including Hunt’s ketchup and a yet unreleased Wheaties-like cereal brand being touted by Steinberg as “Patty Flakes.”
“We don’t want him to be overexposed,” he said. “But you will see him this offseason.”
“Life’s exciting right now,” said Steinberg.
In general, NFL agents get about 3% of a football player’s earnings, and typically command somewhere between 10% and 20% of a player’s endorsement contracts, according to trade industry reports.
QB Guru
The NFL is “a quarterback’s league,” said Steinberg, noting that his client’s contract dealings will likely be influenced by other big-dollar agreements that need to be addressed soon, including Rams QB Jared Goff.
In terms of salaries, “quarterback [salaries] are now rivaling those” of superstars in the National Basketball Association or Major League Baseball, he said.
Green Bay Packers QB Aaron Rodgers earned about $20 million last year; the Patriots Tom Brady picked up nearly $15 million in base salary; and the Los Angeles Chargers veteran Philip Rivers collected about $15 million from the Costa Mesa-based franchise.
Mahomes signed a four-year deal worth $16.4 million in 2017, according to news reports.
Goff, also on a rookie contract and the No. 1 pick in the 2016 draft, earned about $7 million this year factoring in prior signing bonuses, according to reports.
Not too many other agents know more about quarterback contracts than Steinberg, who got his start in the business in 1975 with Steve Bartkowski, a college friend at University of California-Berkeley, that he helped turn into the No. 1 overall pick of the Atlanta Falcons.
Steinberg said he plans to honor his first client during his 29th annual Super Bowl party held in Atlanta just before the game, a 5,000-person, celebrity-heavy shindig that’s become a must-attend event.
Bartkowski was the first of eight No. 1 overall picks, and 62 first-round picks, in the NFL that Steinberg represented.
His client list includes a host of franchise quarterbacks like Dallas Cowboys Troy Aikman and San Francisco 49ers Steve Young. At one point Steinberg represented half the starting quarterbacks in the league.
Steinberg is said to have secured more than $3 billion over the years for 300-plus clients.
He’s widely credited as the inspiration for the “Jerry Maguire” movie, which stars Tom Cruise.
Steinberg’s prior business ventures include an 18-year partnership with former agent-turned-team owner/executive Jeff Moorad in the legendary representation firm Steinberg & Moorad—they once had athlete client lists in the triple figures, including athletes in other sports like baseball, basketball, and figure skating.
He’s since been supplanted in the local agency scene by Newport Beach’s Scott Boras, whose Boras Corp. is the only athlete agency in the world with more than $2 billion in active player contracts, according to Forbes.
Family Ties
Steinberg’s been steadily rebuilding his client list ever since his personal issues put a halt to much of his work a decade ago. He now represents about 30 players, he said.
He’s also adding new business lines to his practice beyond athlete representation, including digital and online products that help connect fans to sports, and investments in products designed to reduce player concussions and their impacts on the brain.
His connections to prior generations of players in other sports—and longtime connections in Texas, a hotbed of quarterback and football talent over the years—helped him land Mahomes, who starred collegiately at Texas Tech University.
He knew the quarterback’s father, Pat Mahomes, and his stepfather, LaTroy Hawkins, who both played baseball in the 1990s.
Several meetings with the two ex-players and Patrick’s mother, Randi, were held before he met his soon-to-be client. “We immediately bonded,” he said.
What stood out at the introductory meetings?
The younger Mahomes “had a compassionate heart,” recalled Steinberg. And, “he was freakishly gifted,” in athleticism and the ability to remember detailed play calls.
Mahomes was initially projected as a likely second-round pick, with questions over the player’s unorthodox throwing style, which often resembles that of a baseball pitcher like his father, and exposure to a free-flowing offensive style in college that doesn’t always translate to the pro ranks.
The path to a higher pick was to make sure that Mahomes showed off his ability to thrive in other types of offenses, Steinberg said. Eventually, it was Kansas City—with whom the agent had personal ties going back years—that saw the possibilities of tailoring its offense to the player’s once-in-a-generation skills, not the other way around.
“They knew what they had,” he said.
The Chiefs traded up to take Mahomes with the 10th pick of the first round in the 2017 draft. After one season of understudying for the starting role, he got the nod beginning this season and Steinberg tried to keep expectations low.
“We spent the whole offseason spinning down,” Steinberg said.
So much for that. Mahomes threw 10 touchdowns in his first two starts, an NFL record.
“After two games, they took his jersey to the Hall of Fame,” Steinberg said.
After 16 games, Mahomes had tallied 5,097 passing yards and 50 touchdowns, tied for second-most TDs thrown in a single season with Tom Brady.
His inaugural season as starter was arguably the biggest breakout year for an NFL player since Brady first emerged for the Patriots 18 years ago.
Representing Mahomes “is as good as it gets,” Moorad said. “Leigh and his entire organization deserve huge credit for navigating a path to the top of the industry.”
Mahomes’ season was eventually ended by the ageless Brady in the AFC Championship Game.
New endorsements have been lined up for the quarterback, including deals with Adidas, CommunityAmerica Credit Union in Lenexa, Kansas and jet-sharing company Executive AirShare.
Mahomes’ popularity has opened up many product categories where he can profit, Steinberg said.
Visions of a Super Bowl run next year are already being planned, according to the agent, whose partner at Steinberg Sports & Entertainment is Chris Cabott.
One of the most famous lines in movie history was when Steinberg’s doppelganger had an exchange with his star athlete involving the phrase: “Show me the money!”
After what he’s been through, Steinberg has a different mantra because he knows it’s not only about the money.
“The mantra is: stay in the process,” Steinberg said.
