So, Sue Me!

In March 1995, after the Dolphins had topped all bids for Pittsburgh free-agent tight end Eric Green with an offer of $1.88 million a year, Rosenhaus led Miami to believe that another club had upped the ante at the last minute. Without bothering to confirm the agent's claim with the NFL's neutral verifier (the clearinghouse for such information), the Dolphins raised their offer to $2 million a year. The following day Green signed with Miami for $12 million over six years, which made him the highest-paid tight end in the NFL.

Rosenhaus is sitting in his house in Bay Harbour, Fla. He's wearing cowboy boots, black pants, a white shirt, suspenders and a belt. Jason, 27, stands nearby, cellular phone in hand, dressed nearly the same. They are partners—Batman and Robin, they tell you. In 1990 the Miami athletic department banished Drew from the football practice field and parking lot, where he relentlessly courted Hurricane players. Conveniently for Drew, Jason, then a Miami undergraduate, had unlimited access to the athletes his big brother coveted. Jason befriended linebacker Jessie Arm-stead and cornerback Robert Bailey, among others, and they eventually became clients. In all, Rosenhaus represents 15 former Hurricanes now in the NFL.

Jason, a Miami Law School graduate and a certified public accountant who prepares tax returns for some players, is more reserved than Drew, more cautious. He supplies the little facts that Drew, in his modesty, overlooks. When Drew tells you he graduated from Miami in three years, Jason contributes, "With a 3.89 grade point average." When Drew says that as a boy he once escaped with a football from a Dolphins practice, Jason chimes in, "By jumping over a six-foot fence, I might add."

Later, as Drew answers a question about the risks of lying, Jason looks on approvingly, as if to say, Only a fundamentally honest person like Drew will admit to being a liar! "They're not going to catch me in a lie," Drew says. "I am an expert in dealing in the gray area with NFL teams.

"I take pride in my ethics. But I am a relentless, ruthless warrior. I am a hit man. I will move in for the kill and use everything within my power to succeed for my clients."

Pity the poor Dolphins executives who must do business with him regularly. Several agents have told SI that they are afraid to have their players sign with Miami, for fear that they will lose the players to Rosenhaus. About all that team officials say in response is that they hope it's not true. They barred Rosenhaus—and, as a result, all agents—from the players' parking area last year, furious that he was using the gated lot as a recruiting spot. But they did so politely. They silently suffer preposterous public boasts from Rosenhaus, such as this one to The Miami Herald in 1994, when Don Shula was the Dolphins coach: "Don Shula knows that I know this business. He calls me just to pick my brain." (Shula, through a team spokesman, says he won't dignify Rosenhaus's claim, which Rosenhaus himself regrets, with a response. Shula's successor, Jimmy Johnson, also declined to discuss Rosenhaus with SI.)

The most significant worry the Dolphins have about Rosenhaus is one that only others, outside the team, will give voice to: the notion that he has undermined the esprit de corps of the Dolphins, a team that was expected to be a Super Bowl contender last season but finished 9-7 and was knocked out in the first round of the playoffs by the Buffalo Bills 37-22. David Ware, a veteran NFL agent, says Rosenhaus will stop at nothing to recruit players from other agents. He will demean not only a player's representation but also his coaches, general manager and teammates. "Drew tells a player that he's worth more money, that his agent is not doing enough for him, that he's better than the guy starting in front of him," Ware says. "Now the player is not only mad at his agent, he's mad at the team management. He sees the guy starting in front of him as a co-conspirator. That was the problem with the Dolphins last year. If the only thing players are concerned about is their next deal, it's not going to produce winning football. Any time an agent is more important than his players, [a team] is going to have chemistry problems."

Rosenhaus responds, "I consider myself to be an ASSET to the teams," he yells. "I take these guys and encourage them to work out and diet and watch their lifestyle because that's the ONLY way they're going to make it. That's the only way I'M going to make it. I DON'T blow smoke up their butts."

Agents' stealing clients from one another has accelerated in recent years as agents' working lives have become more regulated. Under players' union rules enacted in 1994, NFL agents may take, as their cut, no more than 4% of a player's contract. Free agency has increased agents' importance in the contract negotiations of veteran players but diminished their role in bargaining sessions for rookies, because first-year salaries are largely determined by draft position. The competition among agents for veterans is now so fierce that the union's disciplinary committee is devising a grievance process to handle agents' complaints about thieving competitors. The agents have a nickname for the proposed regulations: the Drew Rules.

"When you look up sleazeball agent in the dictionary, there's a picture of Drew with his slicked-back hair," says Craig Fenech, who represented Dolphins kicker Pete Stoyanovich before he turned up on Rosenhaus's client list. Another agent, Peter Schaffer, who lost onetime Dolphins lineman Eddie Blake to Rosenhaus, says, "Drew is the biggest scumbag in the business." A third agent, Steve Weinberg, who used to represent Dolphins lineman Jeff Cross, now a Rosenhaus client, says, "Drew is out of control. He doesn't know how to take no for an answer."