So, Sue Me!

All three men claim Rosenhaus stole the aforementioned players from them. Rosenhaus responds, "If a guy is unhappy, if a guy wants to leave his agent, if a guy is in the process of changing agents, I will strike, and I will go right for the jugular. But I will not call a guy up and say, 'Hey, you ought to dump your agent.' "

His competitors say Rosenhaus writes form dismissal letters to make it easier for players to fire their agents and hire him. (Rosenhaus denies it.) They say Rosenhaus undermines the marketplace by cutting his commission. (Rosenhaus says he may charge whatever he likes. His cut of defensive tackle Warren Sapp's contract with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, for instance, is just 1%, a point below Rosenhaus's usual rate and two or three points below the typical agent's rate.) Other agents say Rosenhaus is a publicity-seeking egomaniac. (He admits to the adjective but not the noun.) They say they hate him. (This Rosenhaus acknowledges happily.)

"They DESPISE me," he shouts. "They hate me because I'm young and I've broken into this business and KICKED everybody's ASS. I LOVE the fact that my competitors hate my guts."

Some despised him while he was still at Duke. During his second year of law school, in '89, Rosenhaus recruited for Levine a cornerback from North Carolina Central named Robert Massey. Later, Rosenhaus convinced the player that he, not Levine, should be his agent. When Massey was drafted by the New Orleans Saints, Rosenhaus invited ESPN to New Orleans to film him negotiating with Jim Finks, the Saints general manager (who died in 1994). Rosenhaus then told the Associated Press and other media outlets about ESPN's planned piece, forcing Finks to go along with it or appear to be scared of a 22-year-old agent and a TV camera.

Watching the ESPN footage is painful. Rosenhaus assaults Finks—who was considered one of the grand, wise men of football and a hard-nosed negotiator—with a barrage of hyperbole about Massey's worth. Talking nonstop for five minutes, Rosenhaus describes Massey as a first-round pick disguised as a second-round pick and deserving first-round money. Every so often the camera pans to the silent Finks, who looks to be in agony. The Saints gave Massey a two-year contract for $600,000 a year. He played well. Then they traded him.

"When the time for a second contract arrived, we weren't going to deal with it," says Bill Kuharich, then the Saints' director of player personnel and now their general manager. "We decided to move Robert not solely because of Drew, but [the agent] was certainly a big factor."

Rosenhaus does not believe that. "If [a general manager] traded players to teach an agent a lesson, I don't think he'd be a general manager for long," he says. "You start teaching agents lessons, you're going to cost yourself a JOB."

As for Massey, he is now with his fourth team, the Jacksonville Jaguars, and he remains a dedicated Rosenhaus client even though he has some regrets about having been traded by New Orleans. "The bottom line for an agent is to get the most money for his client," Massey says. "That's one thing Drew has done."

Well, not always. Rosenhaus has been accused of mismanaging the careers of several clients. The most troubling case is that of the Dolphins' Louis Oliver. By 1993 Oliver was emerging as one of the best safeties in the NFL. The team offered him, through his agent, Eugene Burroughs, a three-year deal at $1.4 million a year. Rosenhaus started whispering in Oliver's ear, telling him he deserved $2 million per year. He promised Oliver that if he couldn't secure such a deal, he would negotiate the contract free of charge. Oliver played another year in Miami at $900,000, fired Burroughs, signed with Rosenhaus and accepted a two-year offer from the Cincinnati Bengals at $1.6 million per year—free of charge. But Oliver missed Miami, disliked Cincinnati and played poorly. He was waived after one year. The following year, 1995, he returned to Miami. His new salary was the league minimum: $178,000. Rosenhaus says he committed no malpractice. He and his player took a risk and lost.

Oliver is still a Rosenhaus client. "Drew's still a friend of mine," he says. "Whatever you need, Drew will do it for you."