Over decades, Orange County’s Leigh Steinberg built a reputation as one of the nation’s most preeminent sports agents. He’s represented the likes of quarterbacks Troy Aikman, Ben Roethlisberger and Steve Young as well as negotiated deals for five dozen first-round picks in NFL drafts. In the process, the 60-year-old Newport Beach resident has helped put more than $3 billion in his clients’ pockets.
So, it wasn’t surprising that before the 2017 NFL draft, Patrick Mahomes, a Texas Tech quarterback, decided to work with Steinberg and his partner, Chris Cabott. The Kansas City Chiefs then used the 10th pick in the first round to select him. On Sunday, Mahomes lost an overtime heartbreaker against Tom Brady and the New England Patriots for a chance to play the Los Angeles Rams in the Feb. 3 Super Bowl in Atlanta. But in pre-game publicity, media speculation swirled that the 23-year-old Texas native and arguably the most impressive rising NFL quarterback star eventually could land a $200 million contract from the Chiefs.
Mahomes’ success isn’t limited to his football accomplishments, however.
In recent days, The Kansas City Star’s Brooke Pryor reported on Mahomes’ off-the-field financial endeavors by following the sage advice of Steinberg and Cabott for lucrative marketing deals.
Steinberg told Pryor that the key was not to “overpromote” his client too early.
“The point is not to saturate so people become tired of Patrick,” he said. “There’s a timing with how much shows up on televisions or social media and the rest of it.”
Pryor also reports of the efforts Mahomes’ parents and godfather, a former major league baseball player, undertook before selecting the Southern California-based sports agents.
Go HERE to read Pryor’s full report.
CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.