Growing up in Woodruff, a town nestled in Spartanburg County, South Carolina with a population of less than 5,000, Tory Dandy could have never envisioned that he’d one day be negotiating contracts and representing some of the top players in the National Football League.
In March 2018, one of his clients who ranks among the league’s top receiving threats, wide receiver Sammy Watkins, inked a free agent contract with the Kansas City Chiefs for three years and $48 million. In addition to Watkins, Dandy also represents players such as the New Orleans Saints’ 2017 Pro Bowler and Defensive Rookie of the year Marshawn Lattimore.
Alshon Jeffery, who recently won a Super Bowl ring as a wide receiver with the Philadelphia Eagles, is among a host of other clients, with Dandy’s primary focus being contract negotiation, client services and the pre-draft process in his role as the Senior Executive Agent within the powerhouse Creative Artists Agency’s football division.
As a junior in college, he remembers coming across something online about the Black Sports Agents Association. He looked into it some more and found that they hosted a conference every year. As a senior, he was in attendance at their conference in Las Vegas and listened as athletes, agents and business executives talked about their experiences in the business of pro sports.
He was intrigued but still unsure of his career path despite having
an interest in the business world. One of his former teammates was seen
as an NFL prospect who’d begun getting recruited by agents.
“He didn’t know much about the process, didn’t have a lot of family support and he asked me to sit in on some of his agent meetings,” said Dandy. “I did and I found it very intruiging. But it was one of those things where the blind was leading the blind. He didn’t know much about it and neither did I.”
His buddy wound up signing with a small boutique agency called Synergy Sports and Dandy made enough of an impression during those early meetings to secure an internship there. “That’s how I started navigating my way through the business and I took it from there,” he said.
Dandy would accompany the agency’s clients when they went to work out with trainers in various locations in preparation for the combine. At the same time, he’d been doing research on the top agents in the industry and kept coming across one name in particular, Eugene Parker.
The more he studied Parker’s resume, he learned that he represented
players like Deion Sanders, Emmitt Smith, Curtis Martin and Walter
Jones, among many other elite NFL talents.
When some of his players were working out to prepare for the draft in Orlando, Florida, Dandy realized that some of Parker’s young clients were down there as well. He pestered those players, telling them that he wanted to meet Eugene.
Eventually, he got his opportunity in the cafeteria where the players would eat.
“I met Eugene and spoke to him for about 15 minutes,” said Dandy. “I left that meeting feeling inspired, telling myself, ‘I met the great Eugene Parker!’ He was telling me how tough this business was, how you had to do things with moral character and integrity.”
A few months later, the agency that employed Dandy folded, and he was devastated. But he stayed in touch with Parker, calling regularly just to stay in touch and reminding him of who he was.
Read more at: The Shadow League