Steinberg, once NFL ‘super agent,’ back in game with Mahomes
Sunday’s Super Bowl brings a wave of redemptive stories. The Kansas City Chiefs returning to football’s biggest game for the first time in 50 years. The 49ers arriving one season after going 412. And quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo reaching the summit barely 16 months after suffering a torn ACL.
But the most striking comeback might involve Leigh Steinberg, a man who won’t step on the field in Miami.
Steinberg once lorded over the NFL, a sports “super agent” with a starstudded roster of players and a social conscience sharpened during his college days in Berkeley. He represented the No. 1 overall draft choice eight times and worked with 62 firstround picks and 10 Hall of Famers, including former 49ers quarterback Steve Young and onetime Dallas Cowboys quarterback Troy Aikman.
Cameron Crowe modeled his hit movie “Jerry Maguire” on Steinberg, with Tom Cruise in the lead role. Steinberg threw
an annual Super Bowl bash bursting with celebrities and power brokers. His net worth reached $75 million, according to the New York Times. And then it all collapsed. Steinberg spiraled into a haze of alcoholism and bankruptcy, finally hitting rock bottom in March 2010 — when he chugged a bottle of vodka and tried to enter a detox facility, which turned him away because it didn’t have a bed available.
He eventually checked into a halfway house and launched his long road back. Steinberg, who had lost his NFL certification to represent players, was recertified in 2013, returned to the business in ’14 and slowly started to connect with a new generation of football stars.
Sunday’s game marks a milestone, because Steinberg’s marquee client now is Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes, the league’s reigning Most Valuable Player. This will be the 11th time a Steinberg client has started at quarterback in the Super Bowl.
He also made headlines last month, when he signed two of the 2020 draft’s top prospects in Alabama quarterback Tua Tagovailoa and his college teammate, wide receiver Jerry Jeudy.
“I’m so happy for Leigh,” Young said. “Talk about going all the way to the bottom. … He’s back on his game. It was a bad situation that we don’t need to talk about. He clawed his way back.”
Steinberg, 70, was more than willing to reflect on his rise, fall and return in a phone interview last week. He feels a strong connection to the Bay Area, given his time at Cal (longago Golden Bears quarterback Steve Bartkowski was his first client) and the many 49ers players he once represented (including Brent Jones, Jesse Sapolu, Tim McDonald, Merton Hanks and Gary Plummer). Steinberg also represented 49ers general manager John Lynch during his playing career.
Steinberg blamed his downfall on myriad personal issues. He struggled to handle an avalanche of turmoil: His dad Warren’s death in 2004, coupled with his sons’ diagnosis with a serious eye disease. (Matt Steinberg now is legally blind and his brother John also struggles with his eyesight.) There was the breakup of his marriage and the loss of his house to mold.
Leigh Steinberg’s drinking increased steadily in the early 2000s, to the point he began skipping days of work. Steinberg once told espn.com, “I had days when I completely checked out and drank all day.”
Court filings and testimony, according to a New York Times story in January 2015, portrayed Steinberg’s drinking binges as embarrassing bigname clients; and also included accusations he licked the faces of two female employees.
He finally sought help for his alcoholism in 2010, though the severe financial problems took many years and lawsuits to resolve. Steinberg insisted he hasn’t had a drink since March 20, 2010, nearly 10 years ago.
“The important thing about sobriety is not what you say but just stacking up the days,” he said in last week’s interview. “The very beginning of sobriety is tough. The cravings are still there and there’s wreckage. So it took several years to work through all that.”
It also took Steinberg several years to rebuild his business. He spent much of 2014 traveling the country, promoting his book, “The Agent,” and speaking on college campuses. Steinberg eventually connected with a new partner, Chris Cabott, for the company now known as Steinberg Sports & Entertainment.
Steinberg’s name recognition remained strong, but he suddenly had to make inroads with a new generation of prospects. The first client of his “second” career was Garrett Gilbert, a quarterback from Texas and SMU and the son of Cal alum Gale Gilbert, a former Steinberg client.
One big step came when he landed quarterback Paxton Lynch, Denver’s firstround pick in 2016. A year later, Steinberg hooked up with Mahomes, who was the 10th overall choice. After sitting behind Alex Smith for one season, the young quarterback rocketed to stardom.
Mahomes embraced Steinberg’s desire for his clients to give back to their high school, college and community. One prime example: Former running back Warrick Dunn has helped more than 150 single moms move into their own homes.
Steinberg’s longtime vision of professional athletes as philanthropic role models is admirable. But he’s also mixed in an ample amount of selfpromotion, given his various book/movie/side projects.
Now, he insisted, his life is more balanced.
“This is really exhilarating,” Steinberg said of Act 2, “because back in the day if I didn’t sign the first pick in the draft, or I didn’t have half the starting quarterbacks, that was somehow perceived as failure. Now I appreciate each moment of the experience.”
Part of the experience is the Super Bowl party he first held at his thenBerkeley Hills home in January 1985, ahead of the 49ers’ victory over Miami at Stanford. This week’s gathering, scheduled for Saturday afternoon in Miami, will be the 33rd edition.
One fresh twist: Steinberg also held an alcoholprevention orientation when he resumed the parties after his hiatus. That helped convince 49ers running back Jeff Wilson, now a client, that Steinberg was on the right path.
“He’s been nothing but good to me and my family,” Wilson said.
As for Sunday’s game, Steinberg obviously will root vigorously for Mahomes. Few agents know the economic value of a Super Bowl victory better than Steinberg does, how it turned players such as Young and Aikman into “supernovas.”
This seemed curious, the tarnished/resurrected celebrity agent talking about the power of fame in America. So Steinberg was asked if he views this celebrity machine any differently in light of his personal travails.
“I’m under no illusion that fame is somehow lasting,” Steinberg said. “It’s ethereal.”