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Leigh Steinberg is the superagent's superagent. If you passed him on the street, you might not recognize him, but you'd certainly notice his clients: Troy Aikman, Sugar Ray Leonard, Warren Moon, John Starks, and Steve Young, to name a few. CNN turns to him for comment. He served as technical advisor on Jerry Maguire and guest starred on "Beverly Hills 90210" and the sport-themed HBO series "Arli$$." Now, Steinberg's entering the literary field as the co-author (with Michael D'Orso) of Winning with Integrity, a companion that, via suggestions, history, and personal anecdotes, guides readers in using negotiation tactics to better their lives and business pursuits. SMOKE caught up with Steinberg, a 49-year-old married father of three, to talk about his book, sports representation, and those $100 million paydays for top athletes.

I think the process of negotiating scares many people, but it is a central proposition in most people's lives. I tried to put together a primer that would be accessible and give people common-sense tips about how to be more proficient in the negotiation process.

There are two key points: The degree of psychology that goes into a negotiation, and the true need to understand one's own value system and priorities. Negotiating requires introspection and clarifying goals before going out and engaging in any discussions. The revelation here is how much clarity is needed before going into a negotiation. The other key is to not imbue the person with whom you are negotiating with emotional baggage. You want to step into the shoes of the person with whom you're negotiating, to really understand their agenda. That will help establish a paradigm of trust.

Sports representation back in 1975 was very akin to the wild, wild West. There was no guaranteed right of representation. Free agency changed everything,. When I did my first contract for Steve Bartkowski in 1975, he was the first pick in the NFL draft and the Atlanta Falcons had his rights. We negotiated the largest rookie contract in NFL history, for the massive sum of $600,000 over four years, and his first two years of salary were $40,000 and $60,000. At that time, each team received $2 million as its share of the NFL’s national TV contract. By 1989, that figure had risen to $17 million. Last year, it was $40 million and over the next five years it will average $73 million per season, per team. There's been an exponential explosion on the financial side of football and all professional sports. And TV is fueling the high salaries.

There are dangers. Some players today don't know what their predecessors went through. We need to do something about that. In terms of young people seeing games, if we don't have the ability for young people and working-class people to attend games, I'm not sure even the TV popularity can be sustained. Teams need to set aside seats in a ballpark to be distributed under non-economic terms. That's really important.

Most of the people who enter the field do it because they truly have a desire to help young men and truly love sports. The problem is that "agent" too narrowly defines their function as stacking one dollar after another into a player's bank book. That's only part of the job.

The major satisfaction I get is to be a part of the maturation process of the young man and to try to help bring out the best in him. We don't take clients unless they're willing to serve as role models, unless they understand the concept that what they do triggers imitative behavior, especially in adolescents. Seventy-two of the players I've worked with have established scholarship funds at their high schools. John Starches is a very community-oriented person who set up a foundation in Tulsa that helps troubled high schools in the inner city. Steve Young has endowed foundations with a couple of million dollars. When a Cordial Stuart stands up and says, "Real men don't hit women," that will resonate powerfully with a whole part of the population that simply doesn't respect authority figures.

It's hard for people to hear a player say, "I can't live on $100 million. I need $120 million." Is a player worth so much money? When you start to apply social values to economic questions, there's no doubt that a doctor or a teacher is more important. I'm the son of a teacher and a librarian, so I was brought up to think teachers did the most important job. But the economy is not set up that way. You and I may feel it's unmerited, but that's the nature of the economy

No. I grew up wanting to be Sandy Koufax. He's my all-time sports hero. If I couldn't be him, I wanted to be Mary Wills. I love to play sports, but I don't have the illusion that I could somehow be competitive. About the only thing I can do as well as most is long-distance running. - Ian Spelling