On January 12, the Federal Trade Commission sent information requests to 20 Division I schools asking for every agency contract signed since July 1, 2021.
Not a summary of them. The contracts.
What the FTC actually asked for
The requests went to 20 unnamed Division I universities, covering athletes in every sport, going back to July 1, 2021. The schools had until March 23 to answer.
Each one got a standardized spreadsheet to fill out, and the columns are the part worth reading. The athlete's sport. The date the contract was signed. The date of the next competition that athlete was eligible for. The date the school received written notice. The date the school received verbal notice. Who the agent was and how to reach him. Whether anyone had ever complained. Redacted copies of the contracts go along with it.
Go back over that list. Four of those columns are dates, and two of them are dates your family was supposed to produce.
The law underneath it is 22 years old
The statute is SPARTA, the Sports Agent Responsibility and Trust Act. Congress passed it in 2004. It isn't a licensing system. It's consumer protection law, which is why the FTC is the one holding it. For most of those 22 years nobody picked it up. January was the first federal enforcement inquiry into college sports agents under it.
Here's what it says. I'd bet most families reading this have never been told any of it.
An agent can't recruit your kid using false or misleading information, or a promise he can't keep. An agent can't give your kid, or anyone around your kid, anything of value before the contract is signed. An agent can't backdate or postdate the agreement.
And the contract itself has to carry a warning in boldface near the signature line. The statute writes the sentence out word for word. It tells the athlete that agreeing to representation, orally or in writing, may cost him his eligibility, and that within 72 hours of signing, or before the next event he's eligible to play in, whichever comes first, both the athlete and the agent have to notify the athletic director.
72 hours. Or the next game. Whichever lands first.
What that means at your table
Most of what I write about here gets reviewed after the fact. The College Sports Commission looks at a deal once it's submitted. A compliance office looks at institutional risk. Those are other people's clocks.
This one is your family's clock, and it starts the moment your kid agrees to representation.
That's the part that sits with me. Somewhere in one of those 20 schools there's a spreadsheet with a row for a kid, and a cell where the notice date goes. If nobody made that call, the blank is in his row. Not the agent's.
The boldface warning is the cheapest test I know. It takes ten seconds to look for. If it isn't above the signature line, the agent skipped something that's been federal law since before your kid started playing. I'm not a lawyer, and a missing warning doesn't automatically undo an agreement. But it tells you what kind of operation you're dealing with before you ever get to paragraph fourteen.
What to actually do
Three things, and none of them take an afternoon.
Pull up the agency agreement and look directly above the signature line for the boldface warning about eligibility and the 72-hour notice. Present or missing. That's the whole test.
Then ask the agent, out loud: who notifies the athletic director, and on what date? Get the answer in writing, in a text if that's easier. If your kid already agreed to representation more than three days ago and nobody has called the AD, you want to know that today.
Last, think back over everything that changed hands before the signature. A meal, a flight, gear, cash to somebody in the family. Anything of value before the contract is on SPARTA's prohibited list. Write down what it was and when, while you still remember.
The FTC's spreadsheet is a record of what the schools knew. Your family's copy of the record is the contract in the drawer. Go read it tonight.
Talk soon.
— Keeno