Williams, Krzyzewski miles apart on agents

The coaches of the last two teams to win the NCAA men's basketball championship respect each other immensely, but they part ways over the value of sports agents for their players.

Mike Krzyzewski, who led Duke to last season's title, said he believes that agents, for the most part, are honest and that they perform valuable services for their clients.

"I do think that the vast majority of agents are reputable people," Krzyzewski said last week. "They're pros. A lot of them are (my) good friends and have represented our players over the years. The guys I know, I trust."

Roy Williams, who coached North Carolina to the 2009 title, said he believes that agents are leeches who do nothing good for athletes, coaches or programs.

"I don't like the guys," Williams said. "Even the guys that are good, I don't like them. I tell them, I say, 'You're the best in a terrible profession.'"

Williams said with a laugh that there's not enough time to explain his distaste of agents, but that one reason stands above all others.

"They want your money," he said.

The role and influence of agents has come to the forefront in the ACC since June, when information linked a sports agent to trips to Miami for at least two UNC football players, and after John Blake, a former UNC football assistant, was found to have a relationship with agent Gary Wichard.

"I would hope that there's not this wave of crucifying agents because that's not right," Krzyzewski said. "Most of them are great guys and great people."

David Falk, a longtime agent, often sits behind the bench at Duke basketball games. Krzyzewski does recognize that not all agents are honest or ethical, however, and said he knows that some will push limits to try to gain an edge with players for possible representation.

For those reasons, Krzyzewski has rules for agents and his players to follow. Since 1986, when the Duke program reached its first Final Four under Krzyzewski, agents have been asked to go through Paul H. Haagen, a Duke professor of law and senior associate dean for academic affairs, to speak to players about possible representation.

Problems can still arise from the unknown, and Krzyzewski says that some of the biggest threats are from "runners" - people, sometimes students, who are hired by agents to befriend athletes, obtain cell-phone numbers and establish friendships to benefit the agent.

"They're hired not necessarily to do illegal things," Krzyzewski said. "They may not give anything, but they get to 'know' that person. So we try to talk to our guys about new friends.

"Not just this guy in a suit who comes in and is 15 years older than you, but your peers. And in this age, (we talk about) what you do in a social network. We try to talk to them and have this resource, and hopefully we've built up some credibility over the years with agents."

Williams said he cannot imagine anyone who worries about agents getting to his players more than he does.

He personally checks every ticket list, home and away, to see who is receiving his players' tickets. He puts the players' tickets into every envelope on every road game to make sure that no tickets go to the wrong people.

"I want to know who it is hanging around the locker room," Williams said. "We start from the first day talking about it. There's really nothing (agents) can do for you. I've got some (agents) that two or three of my guys have stayed with (over the years) and I say, 'I still don't like you.'"

One of Williams' former players told him that he was thinking of going to law school and becoming an agent.

"I said, 'Go talk to somebody else. I will never speak to you again,'" Williams said. "And I would have. There's no way in Hades that he would have ever had one of my players."

Williams said he also fears the unknown. He said that UNC has approximately 800 athletes. Add two parents per player and that's 2,400 people. Somebody, somewhere, might be tempted when an agent comes calling.

"And there is no way in Hades you can monitor everything they do all the time," Williams said. "The only thing you can do is educate them, plead, or beg, borrow and steal to get them to come around to your line of thinking."

Some people connected to the state's other ACC schools are enjoying the plight of UNC's football program. Duke and UNC are the most intense of rivals, but Krzyzewski said that he doesn't like the turmoil for one simple reason.

"It can happen to anybody," he said. "You just have to try to do as much as you can to reduce the chance of that happening."