[The New York Times]
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has begun investigating alleged incidents of threats and violence involving sports agents and players. According to a number of sources familiar with the investigation, Norby Walters and Lloyd Bloom, two New York agents, are among the subjects of this inquiry.
The Dallas office of the F.B.I., the sources said, has a recorded phone conversation between Bloom and a former Southern Methodist University receiver, Ronald Morris, in which Bloom threatened to have Morris’s hands broken if he were to sign with another agent.
The sources also said that the F.B.I. was investigating alleged threats made against another former S.M.U. player, Jeff Atkins. Both Atkins and Morris are currently under contract with another management concern, Athletic Associates, in Dallas.
The F.B.I. in Dallas would neither confirm nor deny the existence of the investigation or the recording.
Lonn Trost, an attorney with Shea & Gould in New York who is representing Walters’s firm, World Sports and Entertainment Inc., in a number of lawsuits, said that he was unaware of any F.B.I. investigation concerning his client. Neither Bloom, who was in Los Angeles, nor Walters, whose office in New York was called repeatedly today, could be reached for comment.
5 Said to Be Interviewed
So far, at least five individuals have been interviewed by the F.B.I., according to Edward Vincent King Jr., an attorney specializing in sports litigation in San Francisco. King said he had spoken with a sports agent who had been questioned by the F.B.I. on Tuesday and that four other players had also been interviewed. More interviews are planned, other sources said.
The Chicago office of the F.B.I. has also been brought into the police investigation of an assault on a sports agent who recently signed two players formerly associated with Walters, other sources familiar with the case said.
Kathe Clements, a vice president of the Zucker Sports Entertainment Group, in Skokie, Ill., and the wife of Tom Clements, a former quarterback for Notre Dame who plays for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers of the Canadian Football League, was beaten unconscious and stabbed in the arm by a man in a ski-mask in her office on the morning of March 16, according to the Skokie police.
Clements said that she had been advised not to discuss the attack and declined to comment on whether the assailant had said anything to her during the assault. She also declined to identify who had requested that she not discuss the matter.
”If the guy wanted to kill her he probably could have,” said Lieut. Michael Langer, the commander of the detective bureau for the Skokie Police Department. ”Somebody sent them a message, there is no doubt about that.” Langer said that the department had found nothing to link Walters and Bloom to the case.
Clements, the sports agent, said that Zucker Sports had signed contracts this year to represent three football players: Bill Ransdell of Kentucky, Reggie Rogers of Washington and Doug Dubose of Nebraska. Rogers and Dubose had previously ”been in contact” with Walters, she said, but would not specify if they had signed a contract with him.
2 Threats Reported
In a March 12 article in The Atlanta Constitution, the National Football League Players Association was said to have received phone calls from two unidentified players who claimed that Walters had threatened to break their legs for dismissing him. Walters told The Constitution that the allegation was ”sickening, really sickening. Who knows what these kids will say to break their contract?” The story also said that Walters had admitted to paying money to two Zucker Sports clients, Rogers and Dubose, while they were playing in college.
According to a story in the March 30 issue of The Sporting News, Walters and Bloom signed 15 football players during the last year. Other sports agents familiar with some of the players said that only two, Paul Palmer of Temple and John Clay of Missouri, were still under contract with them. The loss of players as clients, either previously under contract or merely associated with the company, is believed to be the primary reason behind the threats, sources said.
Also stemming from the contract disputes are a number of lawsuits between players and World Sports. Trost, Walters’s attorney, said that there were currently five lawsuits pending in court, charging players with breaching their contracts with World Sports. The defendants named in the individual suits are Rod Woodson of Purdue; Terrence Flagler of Clemson; Tony Woods of Pitt and his present agent, Bruce Allen; and Brent Fullwood of Auburn and his agent, George Kickliter.
Lawsuits have also been filed in Florida against World Sports by Adrian White and Frankie Neil, two players, in an apparent attempt to sever their contracts, Trost said.