Leigh Steinberg, former student-body president at the University of California at Berkeley and outspoken activist in protests against the draft and the Vietnam war in the Sixties, is the country's hottest sports agent, having negotiated more than $100,000,000 in contracts for his clients, mostly professional football players. At the same time, he has revolutionized the concept of being an agent for athletes. While he negotiated the largest contract in sports history--$40,000,000 for four years for Steve Young from the Los Angeles Express--he has also offered to take less money for clients if team owners would lower ticket prices. How does a former Berkeley radical reconcile his leftist politics with the cynical world of pro sports? PLAYBOY sent Victoria and David Sheff to find out.

Q 1

PLAYBOY: How did a nice guy like you get into a business like this?

Leigh Steinberg: By accident. I certainly never planned to be a sports agent. I was always a sports fan--I grew up rooting for the Dodgers, the Rams, the Lakers and UCLA--but I was more interested in politics. I went to law school and was thinking of taking a job in the Alameda County district attorney's office when Steve Bartkowski called me.

While I was working my way through law school at Berkeley, I was a dorm counselor at Norton Hall when they moved the football team into it. My job was to make sure there was at least one wall left standing by the end of the year. Steve was one of my students.

I graduated in 1974 and traveled all over the world during that summer. When I got back to California, Bartkowski was the first player picked in the N.F.L. draft. He had an attorney, but he wasn't happy with him. He looked at a few people and it came down, fundamentally, to the question of trust. He called me because of that.

Q 2

PLAYBOY: Describe your initiation into the world of sports negotiating.

Leigh Steinberg: You have to understand that the Bay Area is not like the rest of the country. Bartkowski and I were in an environment where if you walked up to someone and said, "The basketball team just won the play-offs," he'd say, "That's great, if you're into that aggressive type of behavior." On the other hand, if you told him, "I just walked down by Strawberry Creek and had a long, introspective search and found myself," he'd throw his arms around you and say, "That's wonderful!"

So Steve and I got off the plane in Atlanta at night, prepared to sign his contract the next day. But we simply weren't prepared for what was waiting for us. There were klieg lights flashing in the sky. We were whisked off the plane and reporters crowded around us. The next thing we heard was "We interrupt The Tonight Show to bring you a special news bulletin: Steve Bartkowski and his attorney have just arrived at the Atlanta airport. We switch you live for an in-depth interview." It was a level of adulation I had never seen before--and it was stunning. I realized the immense impact that athletes have on people's behavior.

Q 3

PLAYBOY: What made you decide to become a full-time negotiator?

Leigh Steinberg: : We were sitting at a table, having negotiated a massive contract, and I had the feeling that everyone's interests had been represented except the fans' and, therefore, the long-term interests of the sport. I decided I didn't want to have the highest-priced players in a dying sport.

I knew that it was becoming increasingly difficult for a family to go to a game. If somebody has never played sports himself nor seen them played live, it's hard to see how he can sustain interest in them. There's a very tender bond between fans and their sports idols. If we price fans out of the games, we're killing the sport.

This is happening at a time when sports are thriving. In football, players' contracts went up about 26 percent from 1982 to 1983. A couple of years ago, players were averaging $80,000 a year, when basketball players were averaging $240,000 and baseball players $225,000. Now the football average is $126,000. Football teams do have larger rosters, but they also have vastly larger revenues. They can afford to make the games more accessible to their fans.

Q 4

PLAYBOY: What's causing the dramatic increases in salaries?

Leigh Steinberg: Several factors. The United States Football League is definitely the most important. Previously, the N.F.L. could draft a college senior and hold those draft rights until the following year. His only choices were to join the team that drafted him, miss a year of his career or go to Canada. Canadian teams do not have the revenues of N.F.L. teams, so they weren't able to compete, except in the cases of a few quarterbacks.

The draft gives all the power to the teams. It's an outrageous infringement of players' rights. No one tells a journalism major that he has to write for the Schenectady Times.

Q 5

PLAYBOY: But hasn't the free-agent system opened up economic bargaining in sports?

Leigh Steinberg: In football, the team retains the right of first refusal, even though the player has already gone through his contract. He has to take the best other offer he can find back to the team for which he's been playing, and if it chooses to, it can match it and he has to stay. So the initial drafting team can keep him forever.

The N.B.A. has a similar matching situation. In baseball, after six years, a player is allowed to be a free agent. But in football, the second deterrent to player movement is that the team signing the free agent must compensate the team that gives him up. Let's say Bartkowski plays through his contract and works out a deal with the San Francisco 49ers. First, he has to take the contract back to the Falcons, and they can match it and keep him. Second, if they choose not to match the offer, the 49ers have to pay compensation to them on the basis of draft choices. In the case of the quarterback, at the figures they're talking about, that would be two first-round players. No team will give that up. So the bottom line is that no one signs free agents.