Rams’ Receiver Calling His Own Contract Signals

In my sports fantasy, I hire an agent. Nothing unusual about that. Most top athletes hire an agent once they’ve emerged as a bona fide star in junior high school.

My fantasy agent does the usual things--negotiates my contracts, invests my money in ludicrously high-yield stocks, pays my bills, gets me a shoe contract, books me on Letterman.

But he (or she) also follows me everywhere, unobtrusively, and pays for everything. If I want something--a new home, a candy bar--all I do is point.

Never, for the rest of my life, do I ever actually touch, see or hear of money.

However, I recently talked to a pro athlete who tried to convince me this kind of thinking is the height of immaturity and irresponsibility.

Michael Young is a wide receiver for the Rams, a promising third-year man, a UCLA graduate. It’s time for him to negotiate a new contract with the Rams. Michael had some problems with his old agent, so he got a new one.

He hired himself.

He and his wife Jill gathered a stack of performance and salary statistics on National Football League players, fed the information into their home computer and came up with a reasonable salary figure.

Michael and the Rams are currently involved in spirited but amicable negotiations.

He is the only Ram player representing himself, and therefore (some would say) the only agent who has a fool for a client.

“I interviewed a number of agents, and there were only a couple I felt comfortable with,” says Young, who caught 15 passes for 181 yards and 3 touchdowns last season. “They each asked me what I thought I should receive (in salary). I told them and they said, ‘Yes, that seems very realistic.’

“It seemed sort of ridiculous to pay someone 3 to 5% to negotiate a contract. A person in my situation, I’m not a franchise player, the salaries are pretty much set in stone before you go in.

“We (the players) have access to all the player salaries, through the union, the same information that’s available to agents. And nobody can sell yourself as well as you can sell yourself.

“Also, I think a lot of agents get into personality battles with management, battles of ego and pride. Who’s the best negotiator? I think that’s what happened with Henry (Ellard, Ram wide receiver). He’s getting caught in the middle of a personality battle between his agent and the owner.”

Young wants to make it clear that he’s not down on all agents, that many of them perform an invaluable service, especially for the few superstar players with great leverage and convoluted contracts.

However . . .

“I hear all the horror stories. Every day at practice you hear players talking about how they’re not getting along with their agents, how their agents have screwed them up financially. Some of these guys have had three or four agents.”

Eric Dickerson, for instance. Because of money bungling, by Eric or by his former agent or both, Dickerson doesn’t know where his next custom Mercedes is coming from.

Young is negotiating with Jay Zygmunt, the Rams’ general counsel. John Shaw negotiates the team’s superstar contracts. The Rams have a reputation for generosity second only to Ebenezer Scrooge.

“The Rams are very difficult to negotiate with, but they’re not unfair,” Young says.

What the hell do you think he’s going to say?

“I realize I’m not going to get as much money as, say, the Raiders would pay, or the Jets, or . . . “

He could go on and on and on.

“I don’t expect to out-negotiate Jay Zygmunt, hammer on him. What I do expect is to bridge the gap in my negotiating experience by knowing myself better than anyone else. And Jay seems very relaxed, he takes the time to explain negotiating to me. A lot of players sort of stay away from Jay and John Shaw, consider them big, bad management. But I find they’ve been very helpful.”

So are car salesmen.

But Young is serious about this stuff. He even does his own financial investing.

“I think a lot of players are shorting themselves, missing out on a part of the fun of making money,” he says. “I think everyone owes it to themselves to educate themselves on the basics of investing and business. If they don’t, they have nobody to blame but themselves.”

Personally, when things go wrong, I need someone else to blame.

But I’m not a do-it-yourselfer like Young. He even mows his own lawn. Most pro athletes hire people to hire people to mow their lawn.

Young doesn’t even spend all his money. He drives a pick-up truck, probably a stripped-down model without a cellular phone or wet bar.

Michael sounds like a guy who would make a great agent, even for other players.

“I would say no (if anyone asked),” he says, laughing at the thought. “The only reason I’m negotiating a contract now is because it’s myself, and I’ve taken a deep interest in it.”

Young’s goal, beyond surviving the current negotiations, is to become such a monster wide receiver that it will take five agents to wrest the appropriate amount of loot from the Rams.

“I hope some day I will need an agent,” Young says.

Just the thought of all that money and negotiating and haggling and psychological warfare gives me a massive, throbbing headache. I’m going to dash to the drugstore and point at a bottle of aspirin.