Shulman now an agent for coaches instead of a coach
The lyrics come from the Irving Berlin song “What Can You Do With A General?” — a witty number from Berlin’s holiday classic “White Christmas.”
The refrain reads: “What can you do with a general When he stops being a general? Oh, what can you do with a general who retires?”
Change the word “general” to “coach” and those same questions might pertain to former University of Tennessee at Chattanooga basketball coach John Shulman, who retired this past spring from a similar position at McCallie School.
“It’s been very difficult and really easy,” Shulman said of his decision to leave coaching to pursue a career as a sports agent for coaches. “As a coach you so often miss so much of your children’s lives. So getting to watch Max play at Alabama-Huntsville this season, and Tanner’s senior year at McCallie as a parent rather than a coach, and John Carter’s games at McCallie will be great. I came to the conclusion that I really wanted to help raise our children.
“But I also know I’m going to miss it, working with the kids, being a part of a team. I was a coach for 32 years. But in a sense I’m still coaching, just in a different way.”
That way somewhat officially begins on the weekend of Oct. 13-14, when the agency Shulman has formed with two friends — 720 Sports Group — puts on the star-studded The Academy coaching clinic for coaches of all levels the region over.
To be held at Praters Athletic Flooring in Rossville, it will feature ESPN analysts and former college coaches Seth Greenberg and Fran Fraschilla, longtime NBA assistant Kevin Eastman, Belmont’s Rick Byrd, new Ole Miss coach Kermit Davis, former Tennessee Tech, UTC, Auburn and East Carolina coach Jeff Lebo, Alabama-Huntsville’s Lenny Acuff, Tennessee assistant Rob Lanier, Furman’s Bob Richey and others.
The clinic isn’t cheap — from $150 to $195 per person, depending on how many coaches sign on from a particular staff — but it’s two days of intense learning from some of the best.
Or as Shulman noted, “We want to help coaches not make the same mistakes I made.”
Asked for a specific, Shulman quickly noted the lack of upward mobility he had despite being one of the few true mid-major coaches in the country to go to the NCAA tournament twice in five years during his time with the Mocs.
“I should have been able to go to a bigger program or gotten a fiveyear extension,” he said. “But I needed to have a guy like me representing me. Very few agents have ever been a college coach. I can help coaches stay away from making bad decisions.”
The Academy clinic will touch on much more than career paths, of course. It will include a large serving of X’s and O’s, player development, recruiting tips, overall program management. In Lebo, Acuff and Byrd you have three of the brightest, most creative offensive minds who’ve ever held a grease board. In Greenberg and Davis you have two of the game’s sharper defensive coaches. In Fraschilla you have a guy who may know the college and professional games combined as well as anyone in the business.
“As coaches, we’re always demanding that our players constantly improve their games, that they get in the gym on their own, that they put in that extra effort to get better,” Shulman said. “But as a coach, are you working on your game? Are you getting better? That’s what The Academy clinic is all about.”
What Shulman and partner Danny Servick want 720 Sports Group to be about — the name came from the fact that both Shulman and Servick figured they knew their specialties from a full 360 degrees and 360 doubled equals 720 — is caring more for both the coaches and players they represent (along with aspiring agent Noah Brown) than mere contract negotiations.
For a glimpse of the relationships the trio hopes to create hundreds of times over, listen to former Mocs player Rico White, who was working at Coyote Logistics a little more than a year ago but now has spent time as an assistant at NCAA Division III Emory and Henry (the 2017-18 season) and Division I Gardner-Webb (the current school year) thanks in part to Shulman’s diligence.
“I still call him Coach Shulman,” White said Tuesday, “but when it came time to choose an agent, he knew me and I knew him. He knows this profession inside and out. Plus, he’s treated me like one of his sons for as long as he’s known me. It was a no-brainer for me.”
To that end, White also wants to have that same relationship with the Gardner-Webb players.
“I want it to be about more than basketball,” he said. “I want to to make a difference in their lives, the way Coach Shulman did with me.”
Is it risky, leaving coaching for the cutthroat world of sports agents? Perhaps. But coaching isn’t exactly a stable profession these days. Merely consider that within the Southeastern Conference, 10 of the league’s 14 basketball coaches have been at their respective schools five years or less while 11 of the SEC’s 14 football coaches have coached five seasons or fewer at their current school.
Besides, Shulman’s already thinking of ways to grow the company in the future.
“With my Diet Cokes and ADD (attention deficit disorder),” he said with a chuckle, “I can multitask with the best of them.”
Note: Anyone interested in registering for The Academy clinic should go to www.eventbrite.com and key on Sports and Fitness.