Leigh Steinberg

Bryce Alderton

Not even a trial will taint or tarnish the legacy that Leigh

Steinberg wants to instill in sports and its athletes.

The 53-year-old Newport Beach resident and Chairman and Chief

executive officer of the Newport-Beach based firm Steinberg and

Moorad continues to champion efforts to teach athletes on becoming

role models and looks into the world of television and film to get

his message across.

Steinberg has testified in a suit brought by parent company of

Steinberg & Moorad, Assante Sports Management Group, in February

2001, against Steinberg’s former partner David Dunn, who Assante

alleges broke terms of a contract Steinberg said had a $2- million

signing bonus with $7 million in compensation bound over five years.

Steinberg has accused Dunn, a protege of Steinberg, of stealing 50

of his clients in attempting to build his own firm.

Steinberg testified a few weeks ago and said he and his business,

in its 13th year in Newport Beach, move on despite the current

litigation.

“We’re in the process of talking to a new group of athletes and

frankly everyone is excited with the work we’re doing,” Steinberg

said. “We’re so busy taking care of clients and our attorneys are

taking care of the other work. We have a full plate of exciting

projects we’re moving forth with.”

Steinberg & Moorad now has 150 clients that range from

professional football and baseball players to agents representing

skateboarders such as Tony Hawk and surfer Kelly Slater.

Steinberg agreed to be the executive producer for either a

theatrical or television film release about Spencer Haywood of the

NBA’s Seattle Supersonics, who was the first player to challenge the

NBA’s rule restricting underclassmen from entering the NBA Draft.

He has also agreed to work as a technical consultant on the film

“Black Ball,” a movie about Sweetwater Clifton, the first black

player to play in the NBA.

These aren’t the first movies Steinberg has consulted on.

Writer and director of the 1996 film “Jerry Maguire” Cameron Crowe

consulted with Steinberg for two years to do research for the film,

attending the 1993 NFL Draft, player workouts, NFL meetings and the

1994 Super Bowl with Steinberg.

Among the agents now working for Steinberg is one of his past

clients, retired NFL quarterback Warren Moon, who played for 16

seasons in the NFL for the Houston Oilers, Minnesota Vikings, Seattle

Seahawks and Kansas City Chiefs, amassing 291 touchdown passes,

fourth all-time behind leader Dan Marino’s 420.

Bruce Tollner, whose father Ted Tollner is the quarterbacks coach

with the San Francisco 49ers, and cousin Ryan Tollner, have also

helped in bringing clients to the firm, that has represented NFL

players such as Drew Bledsoe, Steve Young, Troy Aikman and major

league baseball players such as the Anaheim Angel Darin Erstad and

the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Eric Karros and Shawn Green.

In Steinberg’s 27 years of negotiating contracts for sports

professionals, he still maintains that “the fan comes first” and

“strikes, holdouts and labor hassles are destructive to sports.”

“I believe that athletes earn and deserve the compensation that

comes to them, but that negotiations should be done without rubbing

that compensation into the faces of fans,” Steinberg said.

Steinberg champions the adage of “athletes leaving a legacy as

role models,” and points out that two of his former NFL clients,

Derron Cherry, former safety with the Chiefs, and Ray Childress,

defensive lineman with the Houston Oilers, are now both minority

owners of NFL teams, Cherry with the Jacksonville Jaguars and

Childress with the first-year Houston Texans.

When not negotiating salaries, Steinberg donates his time to

several charities including the Steinberg Leadership Institute, a

nationwide program in 20 U.S. cities run by the Anti-Defamation

League that promotes ethnic diversity and graduates 600 youth leaders

each year who aid police departments and school systems, fighting

hate and racism. Steinberg also sponsors a series of summer camps

with the Orange County Human Relations Commission that holds

workshops at high schools and middle schools educating leaders about

various ethnic backgrounds.

Each year Steinberg sponsors the Spirit Run in Fashion Island that

raises money for Newport-Mesa schools and he also sponsors the

Newport Beach Film Festival.

Sports has always played an influence for Steinberg, who remembers

when his father took him to a Los Angeles Angels game when the team

played at Wrigley Field in Los Angeles where Steinberg caught his

first baseball, and going to the L.A. Coliseum to watch the Los

Angeles Rams when Steinberg said, “you needed a telescope to see the

field.”

“Growing up I was a huge sports fan, but I never thought of it as

a profession,” Steinberg said.

That was until Steinberg, set on taking a job with Alameda County

prosecutor’s office, negotiated what was at the time the largest

working contract in NFL history for rookie quarterback Steve

Bartkowski, drafted No. 1 by the Kansas City Chiefs in 1975.

“We had just arrived in Atlanta at night and here was a huge crowd

pressed against the police line,” Steinberg said. “They interrupted

the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson to show Steve Bartkowski arriving

in Atlanta with an in-depth interview. I saw the tremendous

veneration athletes had in the country. Athletes have an opportunity

to serve as role models. There really was not a field of sports law

then. A team could refuse to deal with an agent.”

Steinberg has also held a series of concussion seminars hosted by

neurologists and head specialists that speak on recent medical

research into concussions and head injuries suffered in sports such

as football.

With the sports law field burgeoning, Steinberg no doubt has left

an impact, which is what he aspired to do from his days just out of

UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of law in 1974, when he considered

becoming a criminal attorney.

“I was looking for a profession to make a positive difference and

it has been very fulfilling,” he said.