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The last few months have treated Jayden Daniels and his family quite nicely.
Daniels, the No. 2 overall pick for the Washington Commanders, is the frontrunner for NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year after a stellar first five starts to his career. And all the while, his mother, Regina Jackson, became a certified agent in the NFL.
Based on CBS Sports research and conversations around the league, it's likely Jackson is the first parent of a top-three draft pick in NFL history to become a certified agent. And Jackson adds to a growing list of NFL parents who are joining the agent ranks.
Jackson became an NFL Players Association certified agent within the past month, passing the exam that was administered in late July.
"For her, taking the agent's test is because she wants to be knowledgeable and helping her son and guiding him through his NFL career," said Denise White, a public relations specialist who works with Jayden Daniels and his family. "It's important for her to have all that knowledge so she can give her son guidance, which will help him focus on the field and she can help focus off the field for him."
Jackson is not listed among Daniels' representation. The young star has four agents on file with the NFLPA. He's represented by the quartet of Ira Turner, Ron Butler, Aston Wilson and Stanley Bien-Aime, all of Agency 1 Sports.
Daniels signed a four-year contract worth $37.75 million in June after being drafted in April. Rookie deals have been slotted ever since the 2011 collective bargaining agreement, and teams can't extend or renegotiate with players until the conclusion of their third season.
Jackson, who White said holds an MBA in concentration entrepreneurship and a masters in public services administration, has been working toward being an agent dating back to Daniels's collegiate days.
"I think any businessperson with the education that she's had, the leadership she's had and companies that she's worked with... it would only make sense to me that she's instilled this incredible work ethic in him," White says. "Her focus is making sure she has all the tools and knowledge she can to guide him through his rookie season and his NFL career."
There are roughly 1,000 certified agents. In order to become a certified agent, one must have both an undergraduate and postgraduate degree (masters or law) from an accredited college or university. There's a non-refundable $2,500 fee, and one must be able to pass a background check. There's a 2-3 day virtual seminar followed by the agent exam that normally takes place in late July. And once the agent passes the exam and is certified, he or she must pay annual dues between $1,500 and $2,000 depending on how many clients he or she represents.
One agent estimated that of the nearly 1,000 agents, there are no more than 50 women who are agents. That number has increased in recent years, and Klutch agent Nicole Lynn headlines the group with more than two dozen negotiated contracts -- including what was at the time the richest contract in NFL history for Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts in 2023.
Jackson is not the first parent of an NFL player to be a registered agent. In fact, she's not the only mother of a current player who's also an agent.
Heather Van Norman served as a business manager for his son earlier in his career, and last year she became a certified agent. Her son, Odell Beckham Jr., is likely the highest-profile NFL player whose parent serves as one of his agents (along with his longtime agent Zeke Sandhu.)
Alishia Jones, mother of second-year Colts cornerback Jaylon Jones, became a certified agent in 2023, though she does not represent her son.
Joe Linta, who represents players like Colts quarterback Joe Flacco and 49ers fullback Kyle Juszczyk, served as the agent to his son T.J. in 2019. T.J. went undrafted and signed with the Chiefs for one month before being released. And Patrice McDowell-Brown became an agent in 2013 one year before her son, Preston Brown, was drafted and began a six-year career as a linebacker. Former No. 1 overall pick Andrew Luck had his uncle, Will Wilson, serve as his agent during his playing career.
Lamar Jackson's mother, Felicia Jones, has sometimes been misidentified as his agent. The two-time NFL MVP has no agent, and his mother serves as his business manager.
And Jackson and Van Norman aren't the only LSU moms who serve as agents. Kimberly Williams has been an agent since last year and has negotiated two deals already, and her son, Josh Williams, is a sixth-year running back for the Tigers this season.
A source indicated parents-as-agents could continue as a trend in pro sports, especially in the NFL. With the growth of NIL in colleges, parents are becoming even more involved in their children's business dealings -- many times out of necessity for the 18-to-21-year-olds.
"My mother has never missed a game," Daniels said on "The Pivot" podcast last year. "If it's raining out there, she's going to be out there. If it's [negative] degrees, she's going to be out there standing up the whole time making sure she's cheering me on."
I can't say that I've seen it all, but I can say that I've seen enough. As the son of a college basketball coach, a former collegiate athlete myself, a former Strength & Conditioning Coach, and now the father of 3 active boys, I spent my life engaged in sports under many different capacities. Success is subjective, and after spending all these years in sports I'm going to share a fraction of my experience of what has led to perceived successes, and in some cases perceived failures, derived from my unique perspective.
Be the Pack Leader.
Whatever the parents do, good or bad, the children will follow. Parents who eat poorly tend to have children who eat poorly. Parents who drop their kid off late to practice or school signal to their kids that their time isn't as important as Mom or Dad's, and being tardy to school or other activities is acceptable behavior. Parents who yell at officials tend to have children who yell at officials. Growing up with a father who was a basketball coach, I was constantly exposed to him yelling at referees, which he would readily admit was a mistake passed along to me during my own athletic pursuits.
As a Strength & Conditioning coach, I would routinely work with wealthy families that would spend thousands of dollars on equipment, instruction, and travel teams, only to fill their kids up with fast food prior to training, and then have the audacity to ask me, how can I get them to eat better? My kid is always on their phone, meanwhile Mom has her head buried in a screen the whole time she's asking me questions, occasionally looking up when its her turn to speak.
My kid got thrown out of his baseball game from arguing with the umpire, the same time Dad is off yelling at the opposing coach. We are the pack leaders.
As pack leaders we carry the responsibility of preparing our kids for the path by making the same choices for ourselves, we would want them to make on their own.
No parent is perfect, and I'm equally guilty in making all these mistakes. As Pack Leaders, it's our duty to serve as a positive example and have the humility to make corrections when we struggle with our own behaviors.
Inspire Curiosity, even when it's inconvenient.
Stop jumping on the couch! Stop throwing your toys! No, you're supposed to do it this way, are examples of statements we all grew up hearing and we say the same to our kids without thinking twice. We spend the early years of childhood raising our kids how to walk and talk, and once they start walking and talking we spend the remaining time telling them to sit down and shut up. Inspiring curiosity isn't mastered by offering excited speeches or motivation. It can be a simple is leaving them alone some time.
As long as physical safety isn't compromised, let them figure out on their own what does and doesn't work. Inspiring curiosity at an early age leads to coachable kids who will actively learn to seek out information from others who know how to do it well. It's human nature to want to help your own child if they are struggling, and I'm not suggesting you don't help them if they are having a hard time with their homework or learning how to hit a baseball, but when the coaching overshadows their own curiosity, it creates a real challenge with significant developmental consequences.
While I was growing up it was neighborhood pick up games, playing football in the backyard, games of tag, where kids would assemble, play, and dictate the rules on their own. Now, the games played in the neighbor's yard have been replaced where children can only play a sport if they have a uniform and a coach to organize the whole experience. When children are raised to always follow orders, you create a generation of adults who can't think for themselves, they fear change, and personal discovery has been muted, all of which is then acquired by the next generation.
As a Strength and Conditioning coach, I would routinely alter training sessions to play games where the kids would decide the boundaries, the rules, pick teams, and compete. Some parents would ask, why am I paying you to let my kids play tag? Well, I'm putting them in a competitive environment that is based on multi-directional movement, reactionary decision making, and for a brief moment in their day I've given them a break from an adult telling them what to do, inspiring them to create.
Even though my children are still young, my own parenting has been criticized by others as being perceived as though I'm disengaged with them. Quite the opposite. They're learning they can't throw toys against the wall because the last time they did, their favorite truck broke. They're learning they can't take their hands off the swing or else they will fall. They learned when they hold the bat a certain way they miss, but when they hold it a different way they can hit the ball.
If you're unsure whether you are inspiring curiosity or muting it, observe when your children make a mistake. Do they immediately turn to look at you, or do they try to figure it out on their own?
By no means am I in 100% compliance with this concept, and I still heavy sigh every time one of my kids throws a handful of food against the wall. However, the learning benefit for my children will always outweigh the inconvenience of scraping spaghetti out of the kitchen curtains.
Don't Specialize
When I was 8 years old I wanted to be a fighter pilot, so why was I out playing hide and seek with my friends and not training to enroll in flight school? A year later I wanted to be an Astronaut. After that, a Fire Fighter. Then, I wanted to be a Doctor. When I became a teenager, I wanted to be a professional athlete. As a kid, growing up with those hopes and dreams led to curiosity to explore those subjects in greater detail.
I learned about aerodynamics, physics, anatomy, and so on trying to figure out what I liked, what I was good at, and that information never goes away. For me personally, it was invaluable to helping me become a well-rounded adult. The same holds true for youth sports participation. Despite all the evidence from orthopedic surgeons, despite all the quotes and interviews done by high level coaches explaining why they prefer multi-sport athletes, why would we restrain a child to one sport?
According to Open Access Journalism of Sports Medicine, approximately 45 million children in the U.S. are actively playing sports. With such large number of children playing, those that argue for early sports specialization have but a handful of examples of successful professional athletes (Tiger Woods, Serena and Venus Williams) to make their case. What I have is an 80% dropout rate by the age of 15 and an ever-growing expansion of orthopedic injuries based on increasing specialized competition, and rampant mental health concerns among young athletes.
In fact, the Participation Trophy Generation has unfortunately discovered that giving every kid a trophy just for showing up, can lead to a decrease in self-esteem, an increase in depression, anxiety, and potential substance abuse. Why do we keep doing this? It is my belief that parents who seek early sports specialization do it not for the benefit of the children competing against each other, but it's the parents who are in competition. Parents are in a race to outspend one another, boasting about their children's athletic achievements.
If you don't believe me, most youth sports programs have what they consider, an Elite level. Under what guidelines can you consider an 8 year old soccer player elite, unless it's to entice future parents to spend an exorbitant amount of dollars competing for their kids to achieve this meaningless title.
Many parents I've encountered over the years do not approve of my explanation. In fact, I was once in a heated discussion with a parent after providing some simple math as to how the dollars they spent trying to get their daughter an athletic scholarship was more than the dollar value of the scholarship itself.
If you want to spend that kind of money with the odds of a positive return comparable to your odds of winning the lottery, that's your decision as a parent to make. If parents want to inspire their kids to be professional athletes, and coaches at the collegiate and professional level prefer multi-sport athletes on their roster, why does the opinion of the youth sport parent mob, or the views of a pre-adolescent travel team coach take priority?
As a former former Division-1, NCAA Athlete, coach, and now parent, there is a part of me who wants to groom my children into the next sports superstars, but then I always remind myself, is this what they want or is it what I want, and whose needs are more important?
I wasn't the perfect athlete, I've made countless mistakes as a coach, and I've screwed up as a parent on more than a few occasions. While I can easily look back on each of these experiences and point out all the things I would've done differently, things I would change, or decisions I shouldn't have made, we all have to parent our children in a way that always embodies their best interests.
Rarely do I ever think about my past athletic accomplishments, nor do I bask in the accomplishments of athletes I've worked with over the years. However, I do think about the days growing up playing catch with my Dad in the backyard, the sacrifice my Mom made to work an extra job so she could afford my basketball sneakers, to now enjoying every moment of chasing my kids around the house as they crash, bang, and smash everything in sight.
We have a tremendous responsibility to develop essential skills and positive behaviors in our children, and I believe sports can be a catalyst to personal achievement.
We also have an opportunity to create a lifetime of experiences to be passed on and shared among parents and children. While I have my own methods and experiences that shape my beliefs, the choice as to what kind of experience you want to provide, is yours.
Being a parent of a young athlete can be really fun! For parents who grew up playing sports themselves, it’s exciting to see their child experience the game for the first time. For parents who weren’t involved in sports growing up, it can be wonderful learning about the game, becoming a part of the culture and community, and meeting many new people.
Watching your child experience the highs and lows that come with playing sports can be a humbling experience. They will be introduced to new situations, and they will experience feelings they’ve never encountered before. But the truth is, being an athlete doesn’t just teach kids life lessons. Parents can also learn a thing or two from youth sports.
Mistakes are a normal part of life. Nobody is perfect, and even the greatest players, coaches, referees and fans occasionally slip up. And that’s OK! What’s more important is learning how to deal with failure.
There’s a great quote from an unknown source that says, “When you lose, don’t lose the lesson.” Every mistake is an opportunity to learn and a moment to teach. Stay positive, remind your child that mistakes are normal, and don’t be afraid to talk about times that you failed – and share what you learned from it.
In a previous article about getting kids interested in sports we learn that without question the No. 1 reason kids play sports is to have fun! No surprise, right? Yet sometimes we find ourselves getting caught up in the heat of a moment, or the momentum of a season, and our priorities shift.
Make no mistake, youth sports are, were and always will be about having fun. Kids learn to play a new game, make friends, deal with unique situations and build relationships. Parents have fun watching their children grow as individuals, and enjoy the camaraderie of being part of the team. Keep the game fun, and everybody wins.
Professional sports fans often define games or seasons by a single event or moment. A missed kick, a heroic catch, a buzzer-beater, the list goes on and on. The media portrayals of professional sports can be so wrapped up in gripping narrative that we sometimes forget about the game or season itself.
The same can be true of youth sports, but it shouldn’t be. Highlights and lowlights are part of every game and season, but hanging on those individual moments is an injustice to all of the other great events that occurred. If your child thinks it was his or her fault that the team lost, or that the season is over, focus on the positives. It was an exciting game, and a fun season, and no single person is responsible for the team winning or losing any game.
For helpful tips on talking to your children about failure or losing, check out this family expert’s suggestions.
Great leaders and mentors are excellent communicators; they are honest and committed and most importantly they focus on positive encouragement to help others feel more confident. Parents and coaches are important leaders in their children’s lives and should strive to bring a positive attitude to every situation.
Being a great leader is hardest during stressful and frustrating moments when we are filled with emotion. During these times, you can always fall back on a simple lesson from the Positive Coaching Alliance: Honor the game. Commit to honoring the game and set an example for others to be positive, respectful and relaxed. Your child will have more fun, and so will everyone else.
Youth sports are about learning lessons, experiencing success and failure and learning to interact with peers and adults outside of home and school. Perhaps most importantly, it’s an opportunity for parents to connect with their children on an emotional level. Use open-ended questions after practices and games to foster more-meaningful conversations.
For example, try asking, “What was your favorite part of the game?” rather than “Was it fun?”
After a bad game, or if your child is upset about a mistake, consider asking, “How did that make you feel?” as opposed to only saying, “It’s OK, you’ll do better next time.”
Be a great listener, and your child may just become a better communicator.
Many of us at TCO are parents, coaches and former players, so we understand the unique challenges placed on young athletes (and parents) today. And more than anything, we just want kids to get a chance to be kids, learn to play, stay active and lead happy, healthy lives.
