What do Molly Fletcher, Jack Davis and Dr. Charles Tucker have in common?

Molly Fletcher

After graduating from Michigan State University in 1993 with a degree in Communications, Molly Fletcher, who played tennis at MSU, moved to Atlanta with an interest in being in the sports business. In 1996, she joined Career Sports & Entertainment, an integrated sports and entertainment agency which at the time had about 40 clients. Early in her career, she began to recruit players and broadcasters. Today, Fletcher and company represent 250 coaches, athletes and broadcasters, and count John Smoltz and Tom Izzo among its superstar clients. How does an East Lansing native wind up representing two of the biggest names in sports?

“John was a Michigan guy who played with the Braves,” Fletcher began. “He was referred to CSE in the early 1990s, and was one of the two or three baseball clients they had when I joined [in] 1996.” As Michigan natives, they bonded quickly. As for Izzo, “we had known each other from a distance.  [In 2005] there was an article in the Lansing State Journal about me. [Future MSU athletic director] Mark Hollis dropped the article on Tom’s desk and said, ‘if you’re ever going to get an agent, it should be someone like her.’” It was then that Izzo, though having no intention of going anywhere, decided it would be wise to have Fletcher onboard to help promote his standing in the community, at MSU, around the state and the country. “Tom cares a lot about the community,” Fletcher says, and “has a special role as basketball coach. [He’s] such a unique person.”

Fletcher recently completed writing her first book, Your Dream Job Game Plan, and has appeared on CNN talking about job hunting techniques in challenging economic times. Saying that “people don’t hire paper, they hire people,” Fletcher’s book describes five tools that give job seekers a leg up: Your Passionate Style, Your Fearlessness, Your Game Plan, Your Flawless Execution, and Managing Choices.

She said that she wrote the book because, “I’ve met a lot of people that think they want to be in the business, but have no understanding of the recruiting process. You need to get in front of people.”

For more on Molly Fletcher, visit her website at www.mollyfletcher.com.

Jack Davis

In the late 1980s, Jack Davis, a lawyer at Loomis, Ewert, Parsley, Davis & Gotting, PC, in Lansing, was contacted by some sports agents and asked if he’d be interested in representing athletes from a legal standpoint. As he tells it, he “went to interview sessions, and they chose.” It’s that simple? When you’re as good at what you do, as Davis is, yes, it is. And before long, Davis was working with the likes of Steve Smith, Glen Robinson, T.J. Duckett and Mateen Cleeves.

Davis says that during their senior year in high school, exceptional athletes will start looking around for an agent to sign with for help bettering their standing in whatever draft they intend to enter. The agent will typically connect the athlete with various professionals, including accountants, investment advisers and, yes, lawyers.

Assuming the client makes it as a pro, his or her management team will help determine the best financial package, sort through potential endorsement offers and work on generating positive public relations. Davis says that successful people such as he are the ones who “have the athlete centered as the most important part” of the process. When decision time comes, most athletes will “sit down with the agent, accountant, me and family members. Agents are usually very important, and I respect that. People don’t realize what the agent does. They don’t just negotiate contracts,” he says. They have to know exactly how their clients’ careers are going. “People don’t understand how important the agents are in keeping the athlete confident and successful.”

He said another big job is to “highlight the athlete’s personality in the market that they’re new to,” either after being drafted or traded. It’s important that the athlete “fit into the new market,” geographically speaking.

Davis said that the industry is “becoming a little more concentrated. A lot of what’s happening is that people on the sports side are trying to get into entertainment,” and vice versa. Also, firms are consolidating into organizations that have all the features and personnel big-name athletes want.

Charles Tucker

Dr. Charles Tucker played basketball in college (at Western Michigan University) and was drafted by the Kentucky Colonels in the ABA in 1968. He played in a number of different tournaments, met and stayed in touch with a lot of players who went on to super stardom (George McGinnis, Oscar Robinson, Ralph Sampon, Julius Irving) and even made a living trying out for teams for several summers. “Every summer for five years, I had teams that wanted me,” he says, and paid him up to $4,000 per week to be in camp.

In the off season, he continued his education at Michigan State University, studying for his doctorate degree. It was here, while running basketball camps, that he met a talented high school junior named Earvin Johnson. Tucker says that the player who would come to be known to the world as “Magic” was “shocked that I could beat him.” Tucker was 26, Johnson was 17, “and I amazed him.”

The rest is history: Tucker became Magic’s agent, because “when Earvin came out, he said he didn’t want work with anyone but me.” And after Magic got started, others started contacting Tucker for help with their careers, even though, “I didn’t know about the agent business.” What he did know was how to form and build relationships, something common to all successful agents.

“I got cut so many times, I knew something about the business of contracts. I knew about all that business, and I got close to people who had been in the business and knew what was going on,” he said. “For the first 10 or 15 years, the business was pretty good, but then it got real slimy. I refused to do it. So I didn’t make it a real business. I didn’t go out and recruit [athletes].”

Why? Because when it comes to recruiting, whether you’re a coach or an agent, in order to get an athlete, “you have to deal with the AU coach, with the grocery store guy next door, the uncle, with the high school coach himself and the parents, maybe both parents separately.” And that’s no fun. Instead, Tucker said he concentrates on looking out for the livelihood of the athlete. “What situation can make them a better person and a better ball player? I used to try to figure out ‘is this a good guy, who’s trying to make himself better? Or is he trying to hustle me?’”

Tucker, who works in tandem with Davis on behalf of clients like Steve Smith and Mateen Cleaves, said what gives him the most satisfaction is something former MSU head coach Jud Heathcoat once said: “I only had one friend in basketball, one person I could trust, and that was Doctor Tucker.”