Agents once drove OU's Tommie Harris to 'nervous breakdowns'
Published: 1/24/2011 11:14 PM
Last Modified: 1/24/2011 11:14 PM
Check out what former Oklahoma All-American Tommie Harris told Synrgy Sports Consulting recently: "People were selling my number on campus to agents. Agents calling your number out of the blue... It became stressful (to) where I had two nervous breakdowns over the whole process because I was trying to do everything myself."
I know that Bob Stoops has done what he can to ward off the infestation of agents/handlers. OU has been as proactive as possible to educate players about dos, don'ts and dangers.
But Harris' quote makes the whole effort equate to tackling Adrian Peterson with your hands tied together.
People selling a player's number? Who, teammates? Classmates? Neighbors?
Nervous breakdowns? From arguably the biggest, baddest member of the best defense of the Stoops Era?
Credit Harris for hanging in long enough to finish his OU career honorably. He helped get the Sooners to the 2003 BCS title game. Played pretty well against LSU, in fact, with three tackles and a sack while occupying his typical handful of blockers.
But you hear his soundbite and you can't help but fast-forward a year, when the starry-eyed Sooners didn't have their full attention on the championship bout with USC and paid a terrible price. How many agents/handlers were getting to OU's '04 future pros by any means necessary?
If you're Stoops, you do what you can within your program. You ask for more help to punish rule-breaking/skirting agents. And you hope your players are as reasonable as DeMarco Murray and Ryan Broyles seemed to be when addressing the topic last July, near the height of the USC/Reggie Bush/agents scandal,
"I don't deal with them. I talk to no agents," Murray said. "I don't give agents my number. I let my family, my dad, my uncle and my mom handle all of that. They can't do anything for me now and I can't do anything for them now."
"You can talk to as many agents as you want. They're not going to catch a pass, so what are they going to do for you?" Broyles said. "You've got to produce on the field to be a great player. All that extra stuff comes later...
"I think you've got to be bigger than the situation. If you're good enough to get the money now, why not wait and get even more later?"
-- Guerin Emig
Written by
Guerin Emig
Sports Writer
