Kenneth Shropshire, director of the Wharton Sports Business Initiative at the University of Pennsylvania, has authored a second edition of his invaluable and utterly readable The Business of Sports Agents. The author of six books on sports and bidness today offers a sneak preview of the tome, which has been updated to include details concerning Terrell Owens' severing his ties with the Philadelphia Eagles in 2005 and '06, when he wound up a Dallas Cowboy. Specifically, Shropshire gets Owens' agent and the role model for this role, the infamous Drew Rosenhaus, to explain precisely how he got Owens to Valley Ranch -- and got him a hefty raise in the process:
Rosenhaus "had a strategy all the way," Shropshire noted. His philosophy was that "the relationships I have are with the athlete, [that] I could care less about the public and I could care less about the teams. I want to make sure that athletes realize I can get the best deal for them."You gotta admire the honesty, at least. But, wow, fans don't call him "Drew Rosenpenis" for nothing. --Robert Wilonsky