LRC Investigates: How To Turn Pro In Track & Field

You missed the criticism. You are exactly right the article is "fine." Nothing really earth shattering and certainly not worthy of calling it an "investigative piece." I think gault must have missed that class in j school. This is just a simple article with little to no new information.

Typical of letsrun and gault. They prop up their stories as these great pieces of journalism that provide insight into the sport when really they are just pieces of information anyone who follows the sport already knows.

Like their ridiculous salary story - that had NO facts in the story. Just a bunch of pros who guess on salaries or heard rumors. Nothing was double or triple checked. That story (and this one) would never be publish by reputable media.

I never said it was horrible, but it's certainly not worthy of any hype.

BOHICA wrote:

i read it wrote:

Phoebe Wright trashing everyone, as usual.

She's so dumb.

New rule: at least on these boards, we refer to her as Phoebe Wrong from now on.

I think she makes some valid points in a couple of areas.

But her story about how her agent misled her on her first contract is garbage. Take some ownership for your own failures. You don't sign a contract that impacts your financial future without reading it and understanding it. Millions of people sign job offers each year with no help from an outside party. Maybe an athletic contract is a little more complex but it is not hard to read and see if there is one reduction or multiple. These stories of athletes trusting agents and then finding out the agent was not completely honest don't get a lot of sympathy from me. When it's your financial future you need to take control.

A lot of these athletes live in a fantasy world disconnected from the responsibilities everyone else in the world have. If you leave your finances in the hands of someone else blindly trusting them there's a pretty good chance you'll get screwed.

I've had many DMs with Phoebe over the years.

She is kinda clueless and tends to blame everyone else.

being a pro in track is a very stupid thing to do.

unless you love the sport.

i mean as a distance runner, you're not going to make much more than a dukin donuts manager.

with a 28 minute 10k, and probably more like a waiter.

personally at 21 years old with a 14 minute low 5k and injured, everything would have to go right to get to the pro level, where a handful make as much as a really bad lawyer.

what this post is about is the phenom, who made it to the next level, like the chosen few, like rupp, centro, hall, etc.

meanwhile hundreds of local phenoms bite the dust day in and day out.

i'd say get a side hustle that pays a lot, and put 30 hours per week into that, and do the track thing 70%, and if you can't win something significant off that, then it's a fun thing, not a pro thing. on the other hand if you score something like say a 214 marathon, and you're no where close to maxing out in training, then you can take a stab at it.

at the end of the day, running, should be for those that love it, the personal challenge to improve, compete, win a few races, running well, properly, breathing, doing it for the sake of doing it,

but if you make it to the pros, and get a couple of hundred K per year you still need to have that side hustle in the back pocked. work it like a hobby, while you're [rp.

wiser words never spoken .

longjack wrote:

being a pro in track is a very stupid thing to do.

unless you love the sport.

personally at 21 years old with a 14 minute low 5k

I haven't part II and III of LRC's how to be a pro. My first post was sarcastic.

I truly believe you can excel in this sport by virtue of hard work and dedication.

To run a 14 low 5k at 21 is very very good. National class in my mind. Shows real potential. There's got to be a shoe store you can get some support from.. Ask around, keep marketing yourself.

Hi!

I do take ownership over that decision. It's made me better at contract negotiations in Pharma.

And I'd generally agree with you in that 21 year old me was DUMB. As are most 21 year olds. But also, I was absolutely lied to and manipulated, as are a lot of athletes. I don't expect sympathy, I just want to help other naive athletes not get taken advantage of.

Anyways. Glad I could be something for you to feel better about yourself today!

Happy training,

Phoebe

OoOoo! DM me! I'm so curious to see who thinks I'm clueless and dumb!

Got her!

-Phoebe WRONG

Lol.

Just a reminder to other posters, though: pro athletes do read these boards. It's fine to criticize them, but just remember that they are real people!

I can see both sides of going pro, and I'm not talking about the true Olympic superstars, but the guys and girls just getting by, and hoping for a break through at the right race, or season.

The practical side would say take that degree you earned and enter the world of work like your peers. Running paid for school so you are already a few steps ahead of a lot of your friends because you aren't starting out with as much debt. You don't want to be 32 having never had a job and your only experience with anything is through T&F where your concerns now are the same as they were when you were 13. The time for sport is over, time to be a grown up.

However, I can't imagine passing up even a small stipend from a shoe company and getting to race all over the country, maybe the world; and take that chance to see IF you can really compete with the best. All high level athletes are wired that way. It would just be too difficult to pass up.

Maybe you need to give yourself a certain deadline/race/age or whatever where you say, "If I'm not doing X by Y then I'm out" but chances are age and circumstances will dictate when that time is any way.

Her saying that she thought the agent was her boss in negotiations with shoe companies is pure bunk, either she's lying or she's stupid. The agent WORKS FOR YOU, YOU HIRED AND PAY the agent. How could that ever be at all unclear??

+1

Give yourself to your goals, the things that contribute to your happiness, but stay above the petty hustlers and hustles.

As for Ms. Wright's testimony, for what it's worth, I hope and expect mentors in the position to advise an athlete whether to go pro wouldn't be needing to consult fan media sites.

Primo Numero Uno wrote:

i read it wrote:

Phoebe Wright trashing everyone, as usual.

I think shes right on this one.

Agents are part of the whole system that has prevented track and field athletes from being more prosperous.

Read Symmonds comment, shoe companies only want to work 5 or so agents in these negotiations.

That means shoe companies will only allow these individuals who play by their rules to be apart of this circle. If an agent were truly doing what's best for the athlete at the shoe companies expense the shoe companies will cut them out of the circle pretty quickly. They are not the individuals who are most qualified or knowledgable. Just those who can be the shoe companies pawns and convince the athletes they're acting in their best interest.

I agree; Phoebe offers the best advice in the article:

“Kids need to pay the $500 or whatever it is to go spend three hours with a contract lawyer, going line-by-line describing each specific scenario and what that sentence is going to look like for your life in three years,”

In fact, people thinking about going pro should find a lawyer even before finding an agent, because they'll be signing a contract with the agent.

longjack wrote:

personally at 21 years old with a 14 minute low 5k and injured,

You lost all legitimacy right here.

Interesting read overall. Summary of my post: lots of problems in the contract process are magnified for internationally based athletes, and while some solutions exist theoretically, in practice they are unlikely to ever be implemented.

As someone who has been involved in these negotiations before both closely and more second hand, I think athlete contracts is one of the foremost areas of track and field crying out for modernisation and reform. The opportunity for exploitation is not only high but multi-faceted; you could be taken advantage of by your agent, you could be taken advantage of by a shoe company and your agent, and heck shoe companies can still have you over a barrell even if your agent is on your side.

Couple of things that come to mind from my experiences, many of which carry an international point of view.

Pro tip #1 to getting a good contract: be American. Guaranteed there are world top 10 athletes and world finalists not just making less than their American counterparts, but making very little generally. There are countries where the only shoe company willing to pony up cash is Nike, and as this article points out if you want to make money in this game you need to have multiple offers on the table. The result of this is Nike being able to pick up quality athletes on the cheap, and the athlete has little choice but to accept because there literally isn't any other player in the game where they live. You might say "ooo well that's just the free market" and sure, that's exactly what it is. Doesn't mean it doesn't suck to be an international pro from a smaller market, knowing that you have to be twice as good as an American competitor just to even get a base salary.

Related international problem. Contracts will follow the jurisdiction of the home state of the parent company HQ. Now there is nothing really wrong with that, but say you are early 20s about to sign a contract and the shoe sponsor says "here's the text of the deal, you have a week to get back to us." You now have 5 business days to find a lawyer you can trust based in Washington, Oregon, Maryland, whichever jurisdiction the contract is going to be interpreted in. There could be language barriers, time zone issues, difficulties or delays getting payment internationally through to the firm, or simply timeline/cost issues.

In the most extreme situation - imagine being a teen star coming out of Ethiopia, crushing a road race and being offered a contract by Nike with say a 2 week timeline on the offer. You think that kid, who speaks English as a second language, is going to be able to do due process on finding a respectable lawyer with sports contract law background, based in Oregon, be able to afford to pay the hundreds of dollars the contract review will cost, and have a method of paying that lawyer? Absolutely not. The only hope that athlete has is that they have an experienced agent with their best interest at heart who does the due diligence on the athlete's behalf. Ultimately that's it, that is the only meaningful barrier between getting screwed by a contract and an athlete - that you have signed on with a good agent.

So I've seen that before - an athlete not from the US, had a contract with a limited review period, didn't have time to actually get it reviewed by a lawyer but were also told "If you want to have a lawyer look over it, sure, but we aren't changing anything in it anyway." Their agent said it looked alright so the athlete signed it.

In terms of ways the situation could be improved, I think step one is following the other big North American sports leagues and making shoe contract salary public. The free market forces that drive shoe sponsors to offer smaller contracts to smaller markets would exist, however a PR motivator to pay the smaller markets better would exist. In other words, Nike is doing a lot of PR these days to come across "woke" - think their Colin Kaepernick endorsements and how much they feature Serena Williams and Caster Semenya in their ad campaigns. It would be a bad look for them to be paying athletes $20,000 USD who are kicking the ___ out of those making $100,000 +. It won't result in a totally meritocratic distribution of funds, and you're still going to see big market athletes get bigger market money, but I think it would reduce the extremes of the exploitation on athletes.

I've toyed with the idea of banning reductions - I admit I am a fan of the Brooks approach of no reduction clauses, lower bases, but more bonus targets. .

Now the issue with trying to force any regulation of contracts is under what jurisdiction and authority do you do it? That is the million dollar question, because frankly I'm not sure it can be done. Lobbying governments in the US to try regulate it would both be costly and unlikely to succeed. The only way I see it working would be if WA were to try create a fair competition framework around entry into Diamond Leagues and Gold/Silver tier competitions. However that would a) be liable to a legal challenge I imagine b) alienate big shoe money which the sport is dependent on c) take a lot of time and effort to create and this just isn't a priority for them right now.

Got a lot more I could say on the contract process but tbh this is too long and I am tired so maybe later.

Very interesting thank you!

This pet struck me:

For many potential pros, this process — the transition from running collegiately to signing with a shoe company — is shrouded in mystery. For example: How much did Matthew Centrowitz make last year? When does Jenny Simpson‘s New Balance contract expire? How big was Donavan Brazier‘s bonus for winning Worlds? You can spend all day googling, but you won’t find anything. Only a handful of people on the planet that know the answers to those questions, and most, if not all, are bound by non-disclosure agreements.

That isn’t right all. It’s just another way for the apparel companies to keep salaries lower than they would otherwise be, because no one can negotiate for their perceived market value. Major sports would never accept that.

During the running boom of the 70's and 80's, there was a far more diverse array of sponsors on singlets. Pros were sponsored by Bud Light, Diet Pepsi, Ford, etc. Want to break the footwear company / top five agents hold on the sport? Start working other sponsor angles.

Gear is the cheapest aspect of being an athlete. Coaching, medical care, and travel are the big dollar expenses. If you are a talented non-NCAA champion that the shoe makers will ignore, get a good agent with relationships outside of Nike, Adidas, NB, and the like. If you can get your major expenses paid by Tesla, White Claw, or Impossible Burger, why not? If you run 2:10 for the marathon, do they assess a time penalty and refuse to pay prize money because you wore an unbranded singlet with the Chipotle logo on it and in Vaporflys purchased at a local running store?

Think outside of the shoebox!

Would love to see a runner sponsored by Natural Light cross the finish line, wait for the cameras, then crack open a Natch and drain it in a single gulp. “Yep! I owe it all to da Natch!”

Seriously, though, runners should think outside the shoebox.

Perhaps, some type of professional running union is needed to push for some type of labor agreement (similar to other professional athletes and their collective bargaining agreement-NFL, NBA, MLB, etc). It may be a good starting point to create some type of reform to the current system. Problem is that all of the shoe companies have to buy into how transparency can help everybody win. Then again, shoe companies have no financial reasons to want to want to change the current system. They have so much power and control over such a small market of professional runners.