Trace Armstrong was driving toward Fort Lauderdale, Fla., in December 2009 when a client, college football coach Butch Jones, called to say officials from the University of Cincinnati wanted to meet that night in Detroit.
“He literally turned the car around and drove right to the airport in Orlando,” said Jones, now coach at Tennessee. “He had no luggage and no clothes.”
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Butch Jones found out firsthand how far Armstrong will go for his clients.
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Armstrong, still dressed for Florida’s warm weather in a linen shirt and slacks, met Jones in Michigan. It was 16 degrees outside.
“We had to stop in one of the stores in the Detroit airport to pick up some clothes,” Jones recalled. Since Armstrong is a 6-foot-5 former NFL defensive end, finding clothes that fit can be a challenge. “He bought a sweater,” Jones said, chuckling.
Cincinnati officials met Jones and Armstrong at the airport Marriott and negotiated through the night. At 3 a.m. they had a deal.
“The next thing you know I was flying to Cincinnati to be introduced as the head football coach,” Jones said. “And I was struggling to tie my tie while I was getting dressed for the press conference — and he’ll probably kill me for saying this — but he helped me tie my tie.”
That’s when Armstrong and Jones looked at each other and both burst out laughing. “And we both said, ‘We will always remember this moment.’”
It’s the kind of relationship-building that has helped Armstrong quietly and steadily build one of the largest college football coaching representation practices, according to those who know him.
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Armstrong represents about 20 Division I head football coaches, including Ohio State’s Urban Meyer, Texas A&M’s Kevin Sumlin and West Virginia’s Dana Holgorsen. Another of his clients, Tom Herman, jumped late last month from Houston to Texas, one of the highest-profile jobs in college football.
Since moving from CAA Sports to Athletes First as vice president and director of coaching this fall, Armstrong has added new clients, including Houston offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Major Applewhite, UNLV coach Tony Sanchez and former LSU coach Les Miles.
Armstrong also represents NFL coaches, including Green Bay Packers coach Mike McCarthy; some college basketball coaches, including Indiana’s Tom Crean; and some broadcasters, including ESPN broadcaster Dan Le Batard.
Le Batard said Armstrong was his friend before he was his agent.
As a columnist for The Miami Herald, Le Batard covered Armstrong when he played defensive end for the Miami Dolphins. As a reporter, Le Batard found Armstrong to be an interesting interview because they talked about things beyond football — politics, parenting, philosophy and the history of war.
When Le Batard needed an agent about 10 years ago, he hired Armstrong, based on the relationship they had built.
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Trace Armstrong, after 15 years as an NFL defensive lineman (he’s shown tackling the Patriots’ Drew Bledsoe in 1995), has developed a long client list in the growing specialty of representing college football coaches. He’s building a practice at Athletes First after recently moving to that agency.
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“I had discovered that beyond being interesting, he had an uncommonly strong moral construct,” Le Batard said. “He is just a really good person. Super solid in all the ways that matter. I don’t know a lot of people with his depth of character. He didn’t have much experience in this field, but he didn’t have to sell me. I wanted to follow him.”
While at CAA, Armstrong negotiated a deal with ESPN that allowed Le Batard to stay in Miami, where he lives, working from a studio that was built for him.
Le Batard noted that Armstrong made enough money in the NFL that he didn’t have to work in the agent business. “But he is using his relationships he built as a bridge to build the dreams of his clients.”
Armstrong’s easygoing manner makes it easy to forget he was a star football player. During an NFL career that began in 1989 and spanned 15 years, he played for the Bears, the Dolphins and the Raiders and recorded 106 quarterback sacks. (Asked to confirm the sack number and comment on whether it was a high total, he emailed, “Yeah … it went ok.” He is No. 25 among all-time sack leaders.)
Armstrong was a player leader and a player representative from his first year in the league and in 1996 was elected NFL Players Association player president, a position he held until 2004. In 2008, he was one of four finalists for the NFLPA executive director job, which went to DeMaurice Smith after a contentious election.
“It was tough,” Armstrong said of the loss. “And it was public. A lot of times you are going for a job and nobody knows.”
Armstrong had started his coaching agent practice a little more than a year before that election, and he decided afterward to keep going on that course. It’s an area of the business that has exploded in the last few years.
“This was something five or 10 years ago [where] you’d have a football agent or a basketball agent do it on the side. Over the last several years you are starting to see firms and executives focus solely on this area.”
The contracts of coaches have more than doubled in the last seven or eight years, Armstrong said, and more coaches have agents than ever before, going beyond head coaches and coordinators to include position coaches. Armstrong said he represents football coaches “at every position” but would not name them or give a total count on his client list.
Armstrong left CAA Sports earlier this fall and had a range of offers but chose Athletes First because of a “gut feeling.” His practice, based in Gainesville, Fla., where Armstrong lives and played college football at Florida, will add staff, he said, but he did not provide details.
Athletes First represents more than 100 players in the NFL. Before Armstrong arrived it represented about 30 coaching clients, including the Dallas Cowboys’ Jason Garrett, the San Francisco 49ers’ Chip Kelly and Louisville’s Bobby Petrino.
Armstrong will work with agency founder David Dunn and coaches agent Kyle McCarthy, said Brian Murphy, Athletes First president. “I think he likes the ability to be able to build a practice in his own image and have control over that and do things the way he wanted to, and we gave him carte blanche to do exactly that,” Murphy said.
Murphy said he was also impressed by Armstrong’s research — not just on coaches’ contracts but also on things that make a winning football program.
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James Franklin describes Armstrong as someone he can consult on matters beyond football.
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“He is out there really advocating, not just for compensation and that part of the contract but he is really helping the coaches go to bat, saying ‘These are the things we need to build a successful football program.’ I’ve never seen that before.”
Armstrong’s skills moved Penn State coach James Franklin to sign with him five years ago, but so did Armstrong’s ability to get along with nearly everyone.
Franklin said that after he and his wife, Fumi Franklin, sat down and had dinner with about five coaches agents, he picked Armstrong in part because of how he interacted with Fumi.
“It was amazing how many agents that were somewhat dismissive and disrespectful of my wife,” said Franklin, who considers his wife his partner both personally and professionally.
Franklin, as well as Le Batard and Jones, all described Armstrong as more than an agent, but a friend whose advice they have sought out on different issues.
“When you have 120 18- to 22-year-old males you are responsible for, there is always something going on. There is always some issue, some challenge or some adversity,” Franklin said. “And having someone like Trace who not only understands contracts but has tremendous relationships with ADs and search firms and things like that and also understands college campuses and communities, he’s just a really, really good resource to bounce ideas off of.”
