Changing some rules regarding agents

**zaynzk** · 09-24-2020, 01:23 PM

So looking at AdamS recent post about contract made me realize that I, aswell as the rest of the S25 draft class might get screwed over in contract negotiations, so I looked in the rule book for agents and realize that it has been made absurdly hard for an agent to exist. I’m looking at 3 rules that I believe need to be changed since agents are a huge part of real football, and it’s absurd that is has been made so hard for an agent to exist

1. Agents are not allowed to have any affiliations with teams in the ISFL or DSFL, nor have any players in the ISFL or DSFL.

By this logic the only way for someone to be an agent is to not have a player in the ISFL, I do not understand why having a player in either league would hamper their ability to preform as an agent, and it causes agents to not exist due to the fact that no one wants to just do nothing with the league until off-season, it is a silly rule, and the logic of not having a connection to an ISFL team is a bit weird to me since members of the HO are allowed to have players and team affiliations, so I do not see the reasoning behind blackballing agents out of a league

3. Each agent must have a license from the Head Office to act as an agent. License fee is $10mil per season (Ultimus to Ultimus).

This is another thing that I feel like needs to change $10 a season seems too high, especially for a position that is banned from creating a player. By this logic, unless this agent holds a high paying league job, means that agents would need to pick up a boat load of clients before even starting a career

6. Agents must be in the league for 5 full seasons prior to becoming an agent.

Nothing is inherently wrong with the rule, but it does create a weird bias, since we have had member of the league without a full season of experience becoming a GM so why is there a minimum number of seasons for only this role? So many of my S25 bro’s have gotten jobs in the league so u expect us to wait about half a year more before we could potentially become an agent?

I personally do not understand why this league has decided to create rules that basically makes it near impossible for a player to have an agent in this league, but I believe the rules should be changed from this wildly unfair bias against a major feature in all professional sport

**Ephenssta** · (This post was last modified: 09-24-2020, 02:12 PM by Ephenssta.)

I believe you could count the number of agents during my time in the league on one hand. In addition to the strict fines and the 5 season requirements, it's incredibly boring (or so I'm told) to have no team affiliation and no player. I wonder whether HO could allow people willing to be agents to keep a DSFL player to alleviate some of the boredom, so long as they forgo to the ISFL draft and aren't in any ISFL war rooms. Free agency really isn't a thing at the DSFL level, so having a player there shouldn't impact too much, right?

Baron1898 · 09-24-2020, 02:25 PM

Yeah I agree both that the rules regarding agents are unnecessarily harsh AND that being an agent sounds hella boring

infinitempg · 09-24-2020, 02:35 PM

I think it's worth some background knowledge that HO of old really did not want agents to exist. You can ask SLM all about it. I think this current HO is a bit more lax on agents.

(09-24-2020, 01:23 PM)zaynzk Wrote: 1. Agents are not allowed to have any affiliations with teams in the ISFL or DSFL, nor have any players in the ISFL or DSFL.

By this logic the only way for someone to be an agent is to not have a player in the ISFL, I do not understand why having a player in either league would hamper their ability to preform as an agent, and it causes agents to not exist due to the fact that no one wants to just do nothing with the league until off-season, it is a silly rule, and the logic of not having a connection to an ISFL team is a bit weird to me since members of the HO are allowed to have players and team affiliations, so I do not see the reasoning behind blackballing agents out of a league

This is so that there's no bias from agents to demand exorbitant contracts from one team but also then tell his player that min is fine for their team. HO having players is counter-balanced by those players being on different teams, while an agent is just one person. It would also make for a weird gray space in tampering rules.

I think eph's suggestion that agents can play in the DSFL could work out though. That is something worth considering.

(09-24-2020, 01:23 PM)zaynzk Wrote: 3. Each agent must have a license from the Head Office to act as an agent. License fee is $10mil per season (Ultimus to Ultimus).

This is another thing that I feel like needs to change $10 a season seems too high, especially for a position that is banned from creating a player. By this logic, unless this agent holds a high paying league job, means that agents would need to pick up a boat load of clients before even starting a career

I think we tried to lower this fee to $5M in the last rules summit and it failed. I do think $10M is a lot, though it was justified by that number being the amount a max earning player would spend on trainings and equipment, offset by their contract. So, in theory, an agent should be able to make that up by having a league job and making media, just like most users do. This does combine with your next point -

(09-24-2020, 01:23 PM)zaynzk Wrote: 6. Agents must be in the league for 5 full seasons prior to becoming an agent.

Nothing is inherently wrong with the rule, but it does create a weird bias, since we have had member of the league without a full season of experience becoming a GM so why is there a minimum number of seasons for only this role? So many of my S25 bro’s have gotten jobs in the league so u expect us to wait about half a year more before we could potentially become an agent?

This is really to keep inexperienced players from becoming agents. With GMing, there's typically a support structure already in place for new, less experienced GMs to learn the ropes and have help. Agents are all on their own and so in order to keep someone who hasn't really dug deep into the politics and society of the league that's the limit set.

Also that would be 4 seasons of ISFL play and 1 season of DSFL play. I think most of us would agree we came here to be players, and agency is more of a spin on it? IDK.

(09-24-2020, 01:23 PM)zaynzk Wrote: I personally do not understand why this league has decided to create rules that basically makes it near impossible for a player to have an agent in this league, but I believe the rules should be changed from this wildly unfair bias against a major feature in all professional sport

I don't think there's a lot of interest in being an agent. Some of that is by design in the rulebook, but I don't really know if agents will really take off even if given a lot of freedoms. It's a fun thing to pass the time but ultimately your excitement comes for about 2 weeks in the offseason and then disappears again.