At some point in time, NFL players realize the game of football is going to leave them behind. However, they could still be in a position where they’re financially stable, they’re of sound mind and body, and they’ve got opportunities after football. Craig Domann, CEO of 360 Sports, says these can all be provided for. Craig’s company represents NFL players when they come out of college. They’re basically career counselors and negotiators, and help players through their journey through the NFL. Craig talks about the many hats they have to wear in assisting clients with all aspects of their NFL career and shares the process it takes for an NFL prospect to be in the league.

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360 Sports: Through NFL And Beyond with Craig Domann

We’re with the CEO of 360Sports, Craig Domann. Craig, thank you for taking time out.

I appreciate it, Bob.

Tell me a little bit about what you do in 360Sports and who you serve?

What we do is we represent NFL players when they come out of college. We’re basically career counselors, negotiators, we wear lots of hats. We help them through their journey through the NFL. At some point in time, the game of football is going to leave them behind. At that point in time, we want them to be in a position where they’re financially stable, they’re of sound mind and body and they’ve got opportunities after football.

The whole agent world, there are many misunderstandings about what you do. I suspect the Jerry Maguire movie had a great deal to do with that. Let’s walk backways, what did you do before you became an NFL agent?

First, you’ve got to look at the fact that I love sports. I love competition and I played college football. When I got out of college, I was in tax accounting. I was bored out of my mind. I went to law school to pursue something in sports and I found my way into the athlete representation business back in 1990. It gives me an opportunity to mentor young men, coach them. I love coaching. You are the ultimate coach when you’re an agent.

In my impression and I’m willfully ignorant, is that we have a notion of what an agent does. The coaching aspect, now that you say it, makes incredible sense. They have the coaching on their sport side, but you’re a life coach for them.

Absolutely. The person that besides the players that have fathers, the person they respect the most is typically a coach. The vernacular, the nomenclature, everything that goes along with the player-coach relationship is the one that they hold the highest. If you can communicate with a young man from a coach perspective, you can make more of an impression with him.

Looking at what you do for the athletes, you’ve been doing this for a long time. How many athletes do you think you’ve worked with through the years and securing them a place in the NFL?

Probably over a couple hundred.

That’s a couple of hundred folks and the audience is in a couple of different camps. You have the audience that may have either a friend or somebody that’s trying to get in the NFL as a college player. You have the folks that are sports enthusiasts and trying to understand the process of going from an NFL prospect to being in the league. Let’s talk about the typical things that are processed for an NFL prospect from college coming up to what’s important to them to get into the NFL?

There are a lot of myths involved in what it takes to be an NFL player. When guys come out of college you have to look at where they started. These guys were talented athletes, probably multisport athletes from when they were knee high. They were probably the best player in their middle school, certainly the best players in their high schools. They come to play college football and then they learn that it’s a business. That’s a big separator for players because there’s five stars, four stars, three stars but not all of them rise to the top.

The ones that are NFL prospects are the guys that have survived all that screening up to that point. This is the time in their life where they want to cash in. They want to capitalize on the opportunity they have to get paid for something that they’d been playing for free their whole life. When you’re sitting down with the young man and his family and they’re at the brink of becoming an NFL player. They want to make the right decisions, the right choices. They want to be with the right people. They don’t want to leave any money on the table. They want to take advantage of every opportunity they can. They’re looking for people that can guide them through that process.

360 Sports: The ones that are NFL prospects are the guys that have survived all that screening up to that point.

As a kid that gets out of high school that gets recruited, that gets a scholarship to college, you talk about that they go from basically the game to working in the game. What’s that like for a kid that’s extremely competitive and maybe an NFL prospect? Their college work/study life, what’s that like for them?

It’s the first time in their life where they have to learn how to juggle a lot of balls. College football players now are under a lot of pressure, especially a lot of time demands. That college football coaches know that if they keep them in a stadium and they keep them in the building, whether it’s lifting weights, whether it’s study hall, whether it’s meetings, practice or extra film study, they stay out of trouble. Most college football players have to love the game or they’re miserable because it’s a full-time job. My son plays college football in the Power Five and he loves the game, but he has no free time. They pretty much take up about 46 or 47 weeks out of the year. They don’t get any downtime and pretty much most of your day is taken up between academics and the demands of the football stadium.

For the kids in our audience, the collegiate athletes that are the NFL prospects, when should they start thinking about what they need to be doing that will make them different or make them stand out or distinguish their chances or increase their chance to be in the NFL?

The best way to make a case for yourself in the NFL is to be an awesome college football player. Understand that you’ve got to be able to connect with your coaches. You’ve got to know your playbook inside and out. Ultimately, on Saturday afternoons you have to perform and be one of the elite players. Between Sunday and Friday, you’ve got to go to class. You’ve got to take care of your studies. You’ve got to take care of your body, you’ve got to take care of your sleep and you’ve got to find the time for your girlfriend, you’ve got to find time to have some fun too. It’s a balancing act for these guys and if they can learn the balance, the demands that they have in college and then perform like a madman on Saturday afternoons, the NFL is going to be there.

If you were going to offer advice to a younger athlete, not yet in college, they’re going, “I’d like to take in and get to college and ultimately play in the NFL.” What are the three or four things that you would explain to them in detail that would give them the opportunity or increase their opportunity?

For a high school kid, the biggest thing is that they have to maximize their physical abilities and they need to listen to their coaches and not go on their own private plan. The coaches have their best interests in mind. Young men in college don’t look like young men in high school. There’s a tremendous amount of physical development and a lot of that is done in the weight room. If a young man in high school really attacks the weight room, that’s going to help him. If he’s a skilled position player, he’s going to want to run track. He’s going to want to do multiple sports. The best way to get to be excellent at football is also to be excellent at other sports. More multisport athletes are successful in college than single sport athletes.

Is there a preferred other sport that these guys played that increase their opportunity to be in the NFL?

I don’t think so. I think basketball, soccer, some of the movement sports is more important than golf. I love golf, but it’s not going to help you be an NFL player. When you play multiple sports, your body gets used to going in lots of different directions, a lot of different movement patterns and you’re less susceptible to injury if you are a multisport athlete.

From what little I understand about the NFL, there’s been a movement toward more flexibility. Maybe it’s always been there, but it seems it’s talked about more. Do you find that the guys are more focused now on flexibility as well as strength?

I find them being more focused on recovery and that includes everything. That includes stretching, it includes hot and cold tub and it includes yoga. There are lots of different disciplines that play into that, but it’s more about recovery. Guys that are elite athletes can do it one time, but the superstars do it every week for the whole season. That’s the dividing line between the superstars and the rest of the rank and files, the guys that can recover.

I don’t know what the average time is for an NFL player to be in the league. For the guys that have long careers in the league, what distinguishes them between the guy with a long career in the league and those that have the two, three or four-year career in the league?

I would say some of it is luck. A lot of it is health and a lot of it is being in the right place at the right time, being a good fit with your scheme. Ultimately, it boils down to what’s between the young man’s ears. What’s his mindset? How does he handle the business of the NFL? For example, if he has a tremendous amount of athleticism and talent, he’s probably going to play two or three years. If he wants to play ten, he has to have the spirit of a rookie in year four. He has to have the energy of a rookie in year six.

He has to have the commitment and the want to of a rookie when he’s in year eight. That’s not easy to do. At year ten he has to reinvent himself because the way the NFL works is they’re always looking for younger, healthier and cheaper. Once you hit 26, 27, you’re not young anymore in the NFL. Generally, you’re more beat up and you better be making more money. They’re trying to get rid of you. If you don’t have the spirit of a rookie when you’re a veteran, you’re not going to be a veteran very long.

We talked a little bit about mindset, and you touched on the mindset of being a rookie and reinventing yourself. When you look across your career of the various players, what were the top one or two distinguishing characteristics that propelled some of these guys into the league? Is it mindset mostly and physical ability? Is there more to it than that?

All of them have physical ability. There are a few that have elite physical ability, but the distinguishing factor is always the mindset and belief. What I find is that you can’t accomplish what you don’t believe you can accomplish. If you don’t have the mindset to do the right things, to put yourself in a position to be successful, you won’t. What I find is that in NFL, regardless of a young man’s draft in the first round, second round, fifth round, no round, if he is committed to becoming a starter, if he’s committed to becoming a contributor as a rookie, he has to have a different mindset. He also has to have a different belief.

There’ll be somebody here that are going to be, “I want to get my mindset right,” and go, “What exactly do I do? What is a proper mindset?” What are the components in your mind of proper mindset?

First and foremost, you have to be authentic. You can’t have a dream and you can’t have a wish unless you’re going to back it up with work. That’s number one. Number two is you have to know who you are. If you don’t know who you are, every man struggles with either trying to accomplish something or trying to avoid something. As a consequence, you have to know who you are and what your propensities are. If you’re going to end up spending too much time playing video games, leave your video equipment at home and don’t take it to training camp. If you have girl issues, you’ve got to make a commitment to put football ahead of girls. Regardless, every man needs to know who he is.

As an NFL player, the guys that have somebody else they're playing for have a tendency to play longer.

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The second thing he needs to know is why he does what he does. As an NFL player, the guys that have somebody else they’re playing for have a tendency to play longer, because once you get a little bit of money in your pocket, NFL’s too hard. You can make that money doing other things. You have to have a big why. Generally, as a man, you have to have whys. Something you’re trying to get or somebody you’re trying to prove wrong. Sometimes it’s that middle school coach, high school coach, college coach that told you, you couldn’t do it. Maybe it’s the media that told you, you couldn’t do it. Maybe it’s your dad that told you, you couldn’t do it. That is a motivator for a lot of NFL players.

For guys that didn’t have nice things when they were kids, you have three siblings sleeping in the same room, they wanted to have nice things. You have to know why you’re doing it. The last thing you have to know is what impact can you make as an NFL player? What impact can you make on your family? What impact can you make on your community? What impact can you make on a cause? Something that’s near and dear to your heart. As an NFL player, it’s a three-dimensional thing. When you’re in the NFL, you’re on a stage and you’ve got an opportunity to make an impact. When you put those three together, your mindset’s going to come together.

Shifting gears a little bit. At some point there’s a reach out by you or by the athlete to you at some stage of their collegiate career. How does that process work? Let’s say that you’re a freshman or sophomore and I don’t know when the NFL starts to look at the prospects, but what are the proper steps for somebody that’s an NFL prospect? What should they expect from their years in college and how do they select an agent?

Those are a couple of different questions. Let’s go first with how do you even put yourself in a position to be in NFL prospect? That is doing what your coach is telling you to do, being excellent. The NFL is not for everybody. You’re going to have to be a superstar at your college to have an opportunity to play in the NFL. It’s doing all the right things to put yourself in a position so on Saturday afternoons, you’re the guy. You’re making plays, you’re the leader and you’re the guy that everybody looks to you in tough situations. That takes time. Some guys are fortunate that they stepped in as freshmen and they’re superstars from the jump. For most guys, it takes time, especially the guys it takes longer. Once they put themselves in a position to be marketable, be attractive to NFL teams, they can’t go to the NFL and can’t be drafted until they’re three years removed from high school.

Registered sophomores after that season, they can go to the NFL. True juniors, obviously seniors can go to the NFL. It’s either the NFL or get a real job. At that point in time, the second part of that question was, what can they expect? How do they get contacted? First and foremost, you have to look at what’s legal. What’s appropriate in the NCAA, with the state statutes and everything that’s in place now. In some cases, the schools. The NCAA does not prohibit any contact. They do prohibit giving players anything of value. You can’t give him a pencil. You can’t buy him lunch. You can’t give him a ride but you can communicate and give materials and you can answer questions.

At the end of the day, the contact that players get from agents after they are ordained as an NFL prospect, is pretty heavy. They’re getting direct messaged on social media. Their coaches tapping them on the shoulder and saying, “I want you to talk to my guy.” Some schools like the University of Oregon have a process with an interview. Basically, an interview system where agents submit interest in certain players. The director of compliance takes those agents to the players to find out which ones they want to meet. There are a lot of schools that do that. There are zillion different ways these players are contacted; the parents are contacted.

At the end of the day, I feel the NFL prospects that are the most successful have the ability to block out all that noise, eliminate, minimize the distractions as much as possible so that on Saturday afternoons, they’re balling out. What I see happening over and over again is that during the summer, before the season, guys are projected to go high in the draft and they get approached by 30, 40, 50 agents. It takes up a lot of time and then they don’t have time to do the things they need to do to be successful. When the draft comes, they’re disappointed.

It’s a very difficult challenge for these players to maintain focus through this process. We are distractors. I represent a lot of coaches. Most coaches don’t like agents because they’re distractors. The reason why is because an agent can tell a player, “You shouldn’t play because you’re dinged up.” That coach wants them to play. They’re playing the arch rival next Saturday. At the end of the day, it’s very challenging for players to manage this process and funnel it down so they can get it to the people that they’re interested in and not be distracted from keeping the main thing. The main thing is playing ball for whatever school they play for on Saturdays.

You’ve worked with many NFL players and if you were to offer advice to an NFL prospect, here are the key things that you must consider before selecting an agent. I’m sure you have key advice. What would that be?

If you had a son, then you asked me what criteria you should use to assist your son in picking an agent, certainly integrity, experience, want to. Everybody has different levels of interest in clients. Everybody’s going to say that you’re going to be a priority, but you have to see through that and find out if you’re really going to be a priority. I would go with a firm that doesn’t take on too many guys because you will get lost in the shuffle, just the way it works. It’s a numbers game. I would go with somebody that’s a good fit for your son. If you’re an NFL prospect, go with somebody who’s a good fit for you. This is a critical relationship for these young men because we act as their key advisor. If you don’t feel comfortable, don’t feel confident, you’re probably not going to listen to their advice. Why would you pay somebody if you’re not going to listen to their advice?

One of the bigger decisions of their budding professional career and I think about the pressure to get it right....