In 1992,
a super-agent named Scott Boras set up Atlanta Braves all-star pitcher Greg Maddux with a record five-year, $28-million contract—the largest in baseball history at the time. It was neither the first nor the last time Boras would set a contract record.
Two years later, Boras’s unlikely future nemesis, a drug trafficker—full name: Shawn Corey Carter—was, as the story goes, pulled over on the I-95 on his way to Baltimore with a large quantity of raw cocaine hidden in the sunroof of his Maxima. Maryland state troopers suspected he was transporting narcotics, but the drug dog was busy elsewhere, so Carter was turned loose. Or, as you likely know the tale: “We’ll see how smart you are when the K-9 come/I got 99 problems but a bitch ain’t one.”
Twenty years later, that drug trafficker is Jay Z, the most powerful artist in music, and soon—through his agency Roc Nation Sports, which has already inked Robinson Cano, Kevin Durant, Geno Smith and Victor Cruz—perhaps the most powerful force in athlete representation. To agents like Boras, Jay Z is the biggest challenge since salary caps. Or, in Jay Z’s words: “Scott Boras you over baby/Robinson Cano, you comin’ with me.”
With those words, lyrics on the appropriately titled “Crown,” Jay Z turned his business plan into a pop-culture touchstone, and that transformation is itself a part of the business plan. Rappers in general—and Jay Z in particular—have always positioned themselves as underdogs, even after they’ve become part of the establishment they decry. Declaring Boras “over” is the kind of statement that sounds like a revolution, like Roc Nation Sports is primed to take the power back from the old, white cabal of uncaring agents making easy money—even if the reality is the far-less-incendiary scenario of a new player joining a crowded corporate game.
By publicly going after the biggest names in sports, Jay Z has turned the average fan’s eye to the boardroom—which is important, because the clashes that matter most to the future of sports are currently being fought in suits, not unis: former players vs. the NFL, Bettman vs. Fehr, Adidas vs. Nike. Forget about the Ken Burns–narrated, sepia-toned fairy tales. That’s theatre, hyped-up heroism, an antiquated notion that professional athletics are character-revealing, myth-making fables of good vs. evil. Yankees vs. Red Sox? Sure, in the ’50s, maybe even 10 or 20 years ago. But there are far too many millions at stake now for Cano and Red Sox second baseman Dustin Pedroia to really hate one another—every homer Pedroia hit in the days before signing his brand-new, eight-year, $110-million deal is set to put tens of thousands more into Cano’s soon-to-be-free-agent pockets. In the big leagues now they play for cash, not runs, and a rising tide fills all boats with bills—as long as you’ve got a good agent.
Jay Z has cultivated and championed the kind of socioeconomic narrative that many athletes can both easily identify with and deeply admire—he’s been where they’ve been, where they are now, and is today beyond even that. The late Notorious B.I.G. (a friend of Jay Z’s) rapped, in a 20-year-old lyric that still resonates, that there were only two ways for a young African-American man to escape poverty: “Either you’re slinging crack rock or you got a wicked jump shot.” Jay Z did the first, and now represents the men who have the second. And the cultural cachet of his rocks-to-riches success story does more than just resonate with his clients. It also sells. Like crazy.
We’re talking about a man who in 2003 became the first non-athlete with a sneaker deal, when Reebok created the “S. Carter” line. The athletes Jay Z recruits have also, more than likely, worn his Rocawear clothing and sipped on his Armadale vodka. And of course he’s on all their iPods, and the president’s. His representation offers the hope of a mega-brand, a transition to a lucrative world beyond sports. Jay Z’s name rings out—it sells the notion of an athlete’s picture in Us Weekly and Esquire as well as Sports Illustrated; on MTV as well as ESPN; he’s the only agent who could conceivably appear in a shoe commercial alongside his client, and steal the show.
“I’m going to do more for the athlete than they’re going to do for me,” Jay Z said in what was something of a mission statement for his company, delivered live on New York hip-hop radio station Power 105.1. “I do this because it’s an extension of the bigger goal…for all artists to get their just due. Not to get half-assed agents or people who rob them, or people who don’t care about their finances.”
Scott Boras’s name doesn’t connote anything except huge contracts. But at a certain level—the level the athletes Roc Nation has targeted play on—the money and branding opportunities available outside a traditional player-team contract start to outstrip those provided by weekly paycheques. And Jay Z knows that. Agents make their money there, too, around 15–20 percent on endorsement deals as opposed to around three percent for team contracts. The rapper’s brand simply offers more opportunities in that area.
Here is where the rivalry really starts, because agents have egos, too. “The biggest mistake rival agents can make is to focus on Jay Z and Roc Nation Sports rather than just speaking about what they do,” says Darren Heitner, a former agent who works as an attorney representing both agents and athletes, while covering sports business for Forbes. But Boras, tired of being mocked on wax and scorned on the radio, couldn’t hold his tongue, telling USA Today: “To suggest that somebody is going to walk off the street and say, ‘I am a fan, I enjoy sports, so I can do this,’ is no different than somebody watching the Discovery Channel and saying, ‘I’m a fan of medicine, I like surgery, so I’ll start operating on people.’”
And if there’s one thing drug dealers turned rappers turned music moguls turned fashion designers, CEOs and super-agents aren’t very good at, it’s dialing down combative rhetoric. “It’s insane to even say that: ‘What does he know about sports?’” Jay Z scoffed. “Everything. More than you.”
Game on.