Respected agent Eugene Parker dies at 60 after brief cancer fight
Some sad news on this Friday morning: agent Eugene Parker, who represented some of the NFL’s biggest names over his 30-plus years in the business, has died at age 60 after a brief fight against kidney cancer.
Parker’s family wrote in a statement, “The family of Eugene Parker is deeply saddened to report the loss of their beloved husband and father. Eugene passed away on March 31, 2016 after a brief and heroic battle with cancer.”
Parker was a rarity in the agent world: he was respected by both players and front offices, a terrific negotiator known for getting every dollar for his players but doing so in a no-nonsense way.
He was also a pioneer: years before the Raiders made Art Shell the league’s first African-American head coach and decades before Ozzie Newsome became the NFL’s first black general manager, Parker was the first black player agent.
Unlike others in his profession who seek out the spotlight, Parker essentially hid from it – a search of the extensive Getty Images library turns up just four photos of Parker, all of them from the Pro Football Hall of Fame induction ceremony of Deion Sanders, one of his many clients.
Tim Graham of the Buffalo News wrote a wonderful profile of Parker in 2013, even getting the reclusive man to sit down for an hour-long interview.
Parker gave Graham his core philosophies, which he laid out with every client from Day 1:
• “I don’t have a magic wand.”
• “I don’t trick teams.”
• “You have to do two things as a player. You have to reach your potential on the field, and you’ve got to be a solid citizen off the field. If you’re both those things, then you’re very valuable to your team and to the NFL.”
• “My job is to make sure you maximize your value, and I will.”
Parker grew up in Fort Wayne, Ind. in difficult circumstances, but used sports as his path to college, earning a scholarship to Purdue University for basketball, where he was an All-Big Ten player and a fifth-round pick of the San Antonio Spurs. But Parker opted for law school instead, and became an NFL agent almost by accident: a couple of years after the Detroit Lions drafted his friend and former Boilermakers teammate Roosevelt Barnes, Parker began representing him for free.
He and Barnes would go on to form Relativity Sports agency, based in Fort Wayne. Parker’s lengthy active-player client list includes Arizona Cardinals receiver Larry Fitzgerald, Dallas Cowboys receiver Dez Bryant, New York Giants defensive end Jason Pierre-Paul, and New Orleans Saints safety Jairus Byrd. He also represented Hall of Famers Sanders, Emmitt Smith, Rod Woodson, Walter Jones and Curtis Martin.
Parker is survived by his wife, June, and five children.
Byrd tweeted a tribute to Parker on Friday, and also changed his profile picture to a photo of Parker:
