Black Enterprise partner site The Shadow League is launching a fascinating series that profiles some of the most successful black sports agents in the industry. The series looks at these agents’ career wins as they sign clients up for dream professional contracts; as well as the challenges that stem from being a person of color in some predominately white fields.
Recently, the series focused on Tory Dandy, a black sports agent representing some of the top athletes in the National Football League. Here is an excerpt:
Growing up in Woodruff, a town nestled in Spartanburg County, South Carolina with a population of less than 5,000, Tory Dandy could have never envisioned that he’d one day be negotiating contracts and representing some of the top players in the National Football League.
In March, one of his clients who ranks among the league’s top receiving threats, wide receiver Sammy Watkins, inked a free agent contract with the Kansas City Chiefs for three years and $48 million…
And on his beginning as a sports agent:
As a junior, he remembers coming across something online about the Black Sports Agents Association. He looked into it some more and found that they hosted a conference every year. As a senior, he was in attendance at their conference in Las Vegas and listened as athletes, agents and business executives talked about their experiences in the business of pro sports.
He was intrigued but still unsure of his career path despite having an interest in the business world. One of his former teammates was seen as an NFL prospect who’d begun getting recruited by agents.
“He didn’t know much about the process, didn’t have a lot of family support and he asked me to sit in on some of his agent meetings,” said Dandy. “I did and I found it very intriguing. But it was one of those things where the blind was leading the blind. He didn’t know much about it and neither did I.”
Read the rest of Dandy’s story and other great profiles of black sports agents here.