This side hustle took Speedy Morman far from the court, gym, or any field! On a high-stakes episode of “Overtime Hustle,” presented by Ally, the host and journalist tried his hand at becoming a sports agent, and what better place to do it than Los Angeles?
“Los Angeles isn’t just the home of movie stars. It’s the home of superstar athletes. Where your favorite player goes isn’t just about the ‘fit; it’s about the deal,” Morman explained. “See me, I’m a good negotiator. If I can’t play ball, maybe I can learn hardball.” With that, he packed his suitcase and met with agent Lonnie Murray, the “perfect person for that job,” in his words.
She’s the first Black woman to be certified as a player agent by the MLB Players Association, boasting over two decades of experience. Before getting down to business, though, Murray tasked Morman with pitching his first prospect: Carson Dalton. “Check the ‘net, check his box scores, do some digging,” she instructed.
Ahead of the meeting, Morman made a few phone calls, struck up small talk with the other agents, and rehearsed his pitch. Although charisma is clearly on his side, he leaned into another one of his biggest advantages: connections. As the journalist jokingly noted, he knows “Kim Kardashian personally” and even rang up Stephen A. Smith to get his potential recruit onto “First Take.”
When it came time for his big pitch, Morman took the lead with confidence. He presented Dalton a PowerPoint that outlined what the agency is, what they do — or as he put it, “What don’t we do?” — and everything they had to offer. To prove just how “tapped in” he is, Morman even hilariously included a photo with Steph Curry and a selfie with GloRilla.
Dalton admitted, “It’s a lot to digest” and said he’d get back to Morman in a few days. After the meeting, Murray offered him a bit of advice: “How about we focus on underpromising and overdelivering?” That opened the door for Morman to ask her about some of the toughest challenges sports agents typically face.
“The biggest challenge with respect to being an agent are larger, more well-funded agencies,” she said -- the kind that “throw money after a client” but “don’t actually serve the client.” Murray’s counter, however, is staying performance-driven: “When you make all your own money based on your performance, you can have it all.”
Moments later, they addressed the elephant in the room: the lack of female representation in sports agencies. “The reality is that I started over 20 years ago, and there are still only two Black women,” Murray shared, adding that she’s working on the third. “With respect to women overall across this industry,” she continued, “you see it a lot in basketball and football, but not so much in baseball -- at least not women who are scouting their own players [or] negotiating their own contracts.”
Ally fast fact 💡
Women remain severely underrepresented in sports agencies. In the NFL, fewer than nine percent of certified agents are women, and in Major League Baseball, there are only about a dozen female agents across the entire industry. By contrast, women make up nearly 47 percent of agents and business managers in entertainment and arts overall.
Speaking on what it takes to succeed as a woman in the industry, Murray stressed, “They need to demand to learn all elements of it and not just allow themselves to be pigeonholed into either being a face for that larger agency or the secretary that got certified.”
Morman, for his part, felt confident that Murray would hear back from Dalton after the pitch. But with one hustle down, it’s on to the next. Find out what it is on next week's episode of "Overtime Hustle," presented by Ally.
Watch the episode
Watch Season 2 of “Overtime Hustle presented by Ally” every Tuesday at 2 p.m. ET on the REVOLT website and YouTube.