So, Sue Me!

Once, Drew Rosenhaus was not a wunderkind agent for NFL players. Once, he was just a kid living in Miami. No, that is an understatement, and to understate anything about Rosenhaus is to slander him. Rosenhaus won't stand for that, he will shout at you, WON'T STAND FOR IT! (The shout is his normal speaking voice.) He was never just a kid. Rosenhaus, 29, has been in training for his profession practically all his life.

As boys, Drew and his younger brother, Jason, were MANIC Miami Dolphins fans. They went to every home game and many practices. Their father, Robert, who sold real estate and manufactured boats, befriended some of the players, played tennis with them, had them over to the house for meals. As a 10-year-old, Drew asked these NFL players questions such as, "What do you guys really say when you're lining up?" and "Do you curse?"

One day when Drew and Jason were teenagers, they had the family's housekeeper drive them to watch the Dolphins practice. A security guard stopped the car and asked the passengers how they were affiliated with the Dolphins.

"We're Reggie Roby's nephews!" Drew said.

Roby, then the Dolphins punter, is black. The Rosenhaus brothers are not black. They got in, and Drew has been coloring the truth ever since.

Deceit is a part of his job. He will not only lie, he will also scream, cajole, threaten and whine to defend his clients' interests. For Rosenhaus, clients' needs come before the needs of a team, the league and even Rosenhaus himself. Which is why he is the hottest young agent in the NFL. He represents 49 players, 19 of them Dolphins—nearly half the team's roster. Only three other agents, all much older, represent more NFL players than Rosenhaus. His success has had its costs. Other agents despise Rosenhaus, and some team executives are loath to do business with him. He has been described as slithering and blindly ambitious. Rosenhaus knows what people say, and he LIKES it. But he urges you to see the good, too. "I'M A LIKABLE GUY!" he bellows.

Likable or not, agents are a force to be reckoned with in the NFL. When unfettered free agency was instituted in 1993, it altered the balance of power in the league by giving players' representatives more leverage when negotiating with teams. Now, as agents seek free-agent riches for their clients, they don't hesitate to flex their muscles. And no one puts the squeeze on clubs like Rosenhaus does.

He is a piece of work long in progress. He graduated at 19 from the University of Miami, where he befriended football players by tutoring them. Next he attended Duke Law School. In the summer after his first year at Duke he worked for a prominent Miami sports agent, Mel Levine, who later served 2½ years in prison for fraud in connection with a bank loan. On one of his first days in the office, after doing some cursory research, Rosenhaus suggested that Levine go after a Syracuse football player named Tommy Kane, a likely third-round draft pick who didn't appear to have an agent. Levine said he didn't know how to get ahold of Kane. Rosenhaus did: "I called up the football office and said, 'I'm Joe Blow, Tommy Kane's tutor. He's got an exam. Can you give me his number?' They said, 'Sure, no problem.'

"I'd pretend to be a classmate, an NFL scout, a family member to get phone numbers," Rosenhaus says. "I impressed Levine. But I soon found out that I was teaching him, he wasn't teaching me."

His methods haven't changed. "I am not 100 percent honest with teams," says Rosenhaus, who struck out on his own in 1989, a year before graduating from Duke Law. "It's my job to represent my clients and use EVERYTHING I can to do right by them. I'm not going to lie constantly. I'm not a pathological liar. But in some instances I'll bluff. Teams are not supposed to believe agents."