Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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UNDER THE DOME Notre Dame. He has worked with former Irish stars such as Carlyle Holiday, Anthony Den- man, Shane Walton and Robert Hughes. In 2003, he decided to leave his law firm and start his own agency called ETL Associates. Last year, Lee and his agency were featured in a documentary titled "The Dotted Line" which aired on ESPN as part of the "30 for 30" series. With the NFL Draft looming, Lee sat down with Blue & Gold Illustrated to talk about the process of making it in the NFL and how Notre Dame is perceived by professional scouts. Eugene Lee first started representing NFL players while he was finishing law school at Five Questions With … PLAYER AGENT EUGENE LEE busiest time period for you and your clients between the end of the sea- son and the draft? Lee: "March is just a madhouse. Blue & Gold Illustrated: What's the of approximately 650 in attendance for the Notre Dame Club of Chicago's 54th Annual Rockne Awards Banquet. During his half-hour speech, he made the following statement: On April 13, Irish head coach Brian Kelly spoke in Chicago in front EIGHT ISN'T ENOUGH "We think we can win eight or more football games this year, and if that happens it would be the first time in 18 years that Notre Dame teams have won at least eight games in three straight seasons. "We've got to start by achieving that sort of consistency." The backlash in cyberspace was swift and rampant because the comment was then interpreted as Kelly lowering the bar to eight wins after posting 8-5 records in 2010 and 2011. When asked the following day after football practice about his statement, Kelly laughed off any notions that he would be pleased with eight victories again in 2012. "When you shoot for eight wins around here, you won't be You have college pro days all across the country. Scouts from every NFL team are getting from college to col- lege just to work out players. March is filled with those pro days. "If you have clients you go to every pro day and look for opportunities to network and to answer any questions that scouts or coaches or team rep- resentatives might have about your player." In 2003, Lee left his law firm and started his own agency called ETL Associates. PHOTO COURTESY EUGENE LEE players at which position in which round is incredibly important. "If we have players that are not drafted and will be free agents, we've got to know which up to April? Lee: "Apart from the 40 [-yard dash], I think positional drills are the most important test Blue & Gold Illustrated: Where can potential draftees help themselves the most leading a player will take during his workout, whether it's at the combine or at his pro day. Looking smooth while playing his position means a great deal to NFL teams. "You'll have workout warriors every year. You'll see them in Indianapolis and all around the country, but at the end of the day football is played in between the white lines, and teams want to see athletic ability translate in football-related drills." names in the public sphere during that time? Can that help them get picked up by a team? Lee: "The answer is no. The NFL teams really don't care how much a player is being dis- Blue & Gold Illustrated: Do you tell your clients to market themselves and try to get their cussed in chat rooms or how different draft prognosticators grade a player. "They really do their own scouting. They pour millions of dollars every year into scouting in terms of film review and scouting for the draft, and they're going to rely on their process." Blue & Gold Illustrated: In your experience, what kind of reputation do Notre Dame play- ers have with general managers and scouts? Lee: "Scouts know the rule rather than the exception is that he's going to be a young man of character. He's going to understand how to perform at a high level on the field with the rigors and demands of being a professional off the field. That's because of the academic and off-the-field demands they get at Notre Dame." — Dan Murphy 10 MAY 2012 Lee: "We chart the draft every year for our guys. Just knowing which teams took which must be nerve-wracking. What do you do during the draft? Blue & Gold Illustrated: Draft day teams give our player the best opportunity to make the team. That's an essential part of the draft as an agent." around very long, believe me, trust me," he told the media in Isban Auditorium inside the Guglielmino Athletics Complex. "My boss is up there [pointing to Notre Dame athletics director Jack Swarbrick], he already told me that. There are no eight-win seasons around here. "Now, we can build toward that, and that's part of what we're doing, the building blocks of putting together a football program. We want consistency. The point of that whole statement was you need consistency, you need stability. Consistency is you can't have a 10-win season and then a three-win season. You've got to build consistency and that's what we're all shooting for." Under Kelly's predecessor, Charlie Weis, Notre Dame was 10-3 in 2006, but then dropped to 3-9 in 2007. The last time the Irish won a minimum of eight games in three consecutive seasons came during a seven-year stretch under Lou Holtz from 1987-93. In fact, the 1991 (10-3), 1992 (10-1-1) and 1993 (11-1) teams all won at least 10 games, the only time that stretch has occurred in the program's history. — Lou Somogyi lege football coaches, and Notre Dame's Brian Kelly is no exception. Whether it's trivial team information like Bennett Jackson's Social media has proved to be a regular thorn in the side for col- ONE STRIKE AND YOU'RE OUT tweeting his position change to the world last spring, or more seri- ous meltdowns like the reaction to his "my guys" versus Charlie Weis' recruits comments last October, Kelly wishes his players would steer clear of sharing their innermost thoughts with the Internet. This spring, junior nose guard Louis Nix told his 5,000-plus followers that he was boarding a plane and might never return to South Bend. Nix was just blowing off steam, but it created more questions for Kelly to answer. At the same time, Kelly has an account himself. Twitter can be a great way to share some insight about your team if used properly by a coach and/or his players. It's also a tough sell to tell future prospects that social media, a main avenue of communication for that generation, is off limits. Kelly said he thinks that most coaches will eventually institute a "one strike policy" with Twitter and Facebook. "We're not going to go in there and ban it for everybody, but I think we're at the point where we're probably going to with one strike," Kelly said. "You've got one shot. You make a mistake with it, and something is inappropriate then we're probably going to deal with it." The coaches have met with team leaders, and while there's no BLUE & GOLD ILLUSTRATED official edict at this point, Kelly expects that will be his policy go- ing forward. — Dan Murphy