It's my naive opinion that if player agents are doing their job well no one in the general public hears about them. Nearly every contract negotiation is a bit of a wrestling match. Not literally. Most GMs would get their asses handed to them by Tom Condon. If these contract negotiations aren't a wrestling match one side isn't doing their job. The goal is for everyone to leave the table happy even if they had to leave a little bit on it. An NFL contract negotiation is little dance of give-and-take. It's a dance that's been going on since agents entered the game over 40 years ago. A dance that takes place in private. It's never good when the dance goes public. In that case Ben Dogra is an idiot.
Ben Dogra is the agent for Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson. For that reason alone he's been in the news a lot in recent months. The talking heads in the media can't get enough of the story. They've been beating the Peterson situation beyond death. They've beaten it to death and keep on beating it way, way past death. It's really quite sad and probably a dream come true for Dogra. He must relish the narrow-minded redundancy of the media. This is a situation in which Peterson really has nothing about which to complain. Through his agent, and probably because of his agent, he's been complaining a bunch. Peterson, himself, started this nightmare when he disciplined his son in the only manner that he knew. He saw this discipline as normal. Most of the rest of the world saw it as child abuse. The Texas judicial system saw it as a crime. The NFL did as well. Peterson was punished by both and missed all but one game of the 2014 NFL season. The Vikings paid their running back for the entire season. It's a pretty good gig to get paid for doing so little. The NFL took some of that pay away as punishment. Peterson lost some more income when some sponsors backed away from a man that disciplined his son too harshly. All of that loss in income is on Peterson. Every single penny. If anyone went out of their way to support Peterson it was the Vikings. They made Peterson the highest paid running back in the league last year for playing in a single game. That's significant support in every single definition of support. Now, he and his idiot agent are railing against the only people that are truly in his corner. And have always been in his corner.
Agents become Super Agents by the clients that they keep. Dogra's client list includes Peterson, Mario Williams, Richard Sherman, A.J. Green, Robert Griffin III, among many others. That sort of client list makes him a Super Agent. Nice list but Super Agent is still a shaky term for an agent that was fired by his agency. CAA, claiming just cause, fired him in November. If "just cause" means being an idiot that the firing was justified. Dogra is suing CAA. He hired Rusty Hardin to represent him in the lawsuit. Funny thing about Hardin is that he just happens to be the lawyer that represented Peterson in recent court proceedings.
One could say that Ben Dogra is simply do his job for his client. That doesn't make him an idiot. That makes him an player agent. What makes him an idiot is that he's made all of it a show. He's created a lot of drama and made it very public. He had a very public blow-up with Vikings VP Rob Brzezinski in the streets of Indianapolis at the Scouting Combine. He made a less vocal but less volatile scene at the owner's meeting in supposed support of his client. All of this is far too public and has the feeling of being staged. In my book, it's made both himself and his client look more than a little sad. And that makes Ben Dogra an idiot.
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