Huddling With GM and Agent

There is no better way to get up to date on the National Football League than to spend a couple hours with two astute insiders.

George Young and Tony Agnone are such men. Lunch with them Thursday was a combination debate, seminar and comedy hour.

Young is the general manager of the New York Giants. Agnone is now an agent for a stable of NFL players.

Though agents and general managers are not supposed to get along, Agnone and Young somehow have remained good friends. Agnone represents two of Young’s players--Sean Landeta and Dave Meggett--both of Towson State. Despite that, the Giants’ general manager will be a guest at Agnone’s wedding next week.

The conversation started with the usual general manager vs. agent rhetoric.

“Free agency would kill our business,” Young said. “The players are getting all the money now.”

“Free agency is what America is all about,” Agnone said. “Each team is getting $32 million a year from TV.”

“Twenty-six,” Young said.

“Thirty-two,” repeated Agnone. “It’s 26 now, but it goes up to 39 in the last year of the contract. The average is $32 million a year.”

The agent said that the NFL needs a CBA. At first, it seemed as if he meant that pro football needed to work with the Continental Basketball Assn., perhaps to sign some of its players as defensive backs. But CBA stands for collective bargaining agreement, which the NFL and its players have been without since the strike of 1987.

“We don’t need a CBA as much as Tony thinks we do,” Young said.

Oh, well, let them fight that out. What some people really want to talk about is what chance their city has of getting an expansion franchise.

“The expansion committee met last Friday and seven of the eight members attended. (Philadelphia Eagle owner) Norman Braman was in Europe. That’s a good turnout. I hear they had a good meeting.”

Said Agnone: “Baltimore will go in in the next expansion, when the league takes in four teams.”

“Two,” Young said. “The league doesn’t want to cut up the television money 32 ways. It doesn’t even like the idea of cutting it up 30 ways.”

“The fee for each franchise will be 80, 90 or $100 million,” Agnone said. “That’s why the owners will take in four. I think it’ll be Memphis, with Mike Lynn going there to be part-owner and run the team; St. Louis, the Carolinas and Baltimore. Oakland you don’t know about because nobody knows where the Raiders are going to be.

Then the conversation took another turn, and the topic was former Indianapolis Colt quarterback Bert Jones.

Jones, 39, has been out of the game for eight years but finished first among old-timers and fourth among all quarterbacks in a competition recently staged in Hawaii for TV. San Diego Charger General Manager Bobby Beathard has talked with Jones about playing this year.

“I think Bobby is looking for publicity,” Young said. “Nothing a quarterback does counts unless it’s against a pass rush.

“Bert Jones was a great talent but he started going downhill the day he got married,” Young said. “After that, he flinched. The second coming of Bert Jones is John Elway. Elway has the same great arm, he can run, he’s a leader. He even wears the same number.”

It was one of those sessions you hate to see end.