Street agents in NIL: what they charge and who they target

The person in your athlete's DMs isn't always a scammer. Sometimes it's worse. It's someone real, with a real phone number and a real pitch, who calls themselves an agent but answers to nobody.

They're called street agents. Former players, trainers, AAU contacts, random adults who decided one day that they represent athletes now. No license. No registration. No cap on what they charge. The only credential required to call yourself a college sports "agent" in 2026 is a cell phone and an email address. That's a direct quote from the AFCA's executive director, Craig Bohl, in an open letter to Congress this March.

ESPN investigated the problem in February and the numbers aren't subtle.

What the Survey Data Actually Says

ESPN and Student-Athlete Insights surveyed 1,000 college athletes. 18% said someone "helped" them with NIL deals while they were still in high school. Among Texas high school coaches whose athletes were approached by agents, 70% said the agents were not acting in the athlete's best interest.

The median cut these reps take: 20%. Some demand 25 or 30 percent. For context, NFL agents are capped at roughly 3% on player salaries. A street agent working a high schooler's $36K NIL deal at 25% is pulling $9,000 a year from a kid who may be too young to sign a contract on his own.

• 18% of surveyed college athletes had agent "help" in high school
• 70% of Texas HS coaches said agents weren't acting in athletes' interest
• Median agent cut: 20%, versus the NFL's roughly 3% salary cap
• FTC requested information from 20 Division I schools in January 2026

One Case, in Detail

ESPN reviewed the text messages. A Texas man named Tony Jones attached himself to high school player Draden Fullbright, demanded 25% of a $36K/year NIL deal, and sent expletive-filled texts when the family refused. The school nearly pulled the offer entirely because of the agent's behavior. The kid almost lost the deal not because he did anything wrong, but because someone who claimed to be helping him made the situation toxic.

“So many of our student-athletes have agents that help them with NIL that aren't really agents.”

That's South Carolina head coach Shane Beamer, in Congressional testimony.

Why High Schoolers Get Hit Hardest

College athletes have a compliance office down the hall. It's imperfect, but it's a backstop. A high schooler has nothing. They might be the only athlete at their school weighing an NIL offer, with zero points of comparison and nobody to call who's seen one of these pitches before.

That's why the FTC requested information from 20 Division I schools in January. It's why Senators Blackburn and Cantwell introduced a bill requiring agent registration and capping fees at 5%. The federal government isn't investigating a hypothetical. They're investigating what's already happening.

Where Shield Fits

The criminal end of the noise is fake coaches, sextortion, and hacked accounts. Street agents are the gray zone. Real people who actually exist, who may even believe they're helping. But they show up uninvited, they pressure families into decisions, and they take cuts far above what the NFL allows its agents to charge.

Shield screens the calls. A caller who isn't on the family's allow list doesn't ring through, so nobody has to work out at 11pm whether the voice on the line is a legitimate representative or someone angling for a quarter of money that hasn't arrived yet. Shield can't stop a text or a DM, so any rep who reaches a family that way still needs to be checked through the school's compliance office or a licensed attorney.