UK tailback Moe Williams is a rising star on the collegiate gridiron whose exploits are sure to draw attention and action from sports agents around the nation.
"I can guarantee, he's getting plenty of free advice right now from another source -- the agents," said UK football coach Bill Curry. "Whether he likes it or not or anybody in the room likes it, they're all over him."
Bob Bradley, UK's assistant athletic director, acts as a liaison between agents and student athletes. Bradley and UK's head coaches can talk with agents, but not players or assistant coaches.
"I would tell Moe that he needs to get help, since there are good ones and bad ones," Bradley said.
Bradley said that the "good" agents deal through him for football and baseball players. UK basketball coach Rick Pitino handles the basketball players.
But the dishonest agents are not going to deal through the administration, and this is where the problem begins.
Kentucky State Law defines a sports agent as "a person who solicits, personally or through an agent employee, a student-athlete to enter into a contractual relationship."
The legislation also defines what are considered unlawful activities by the agents. Unlawful practices can be classified as a Class D felony.
Unlawful activities occur when agents shower prospective professional athletes with money and gifts, with hopes their involvement with the youngster will pay dividends when the athlete signs a professional contract.
Frequently agents use a middle man called a "runner," who serves as a contact between player and agent, and also distributes money and gifts to the student athlete. This practice is an NCAA violation, but the NCAA's meticulous monitoring of college athletics is rendered ineffective when it comes to controlling this problem.
"The reason we are having problems with agents is that they are not part of the NCAA," said UK's NCAA Compliance Director John Butler. He said the NCAA cannot levy penalties against agents because of their lack of affiliation.
But the NCAA can penalize the student athletes by revoking their eligibility while remaining powerless in deterring agents from soliciting talented college athletes.
"It's a very insidious and difficult thing to police," said Thomas C. Hansen, commissioner of the Pacific-10 Conference in an opinion written for NCAA News .
"I think we've only seen the tip of the mountain. If we have more of this, I'm at the stage where we ought to let kids get agents. Let the agents advance them money against their later professional earnings, and that would help them financially and stop the threat of disrupting our competition," the opinion said.
But agents already keep score with the athlete of how much money changes hands. As reported in NCAA News , one former Florida football player who, after receiving a signing bonus from an NFL team, was surprised at how little of the money was actually his.
Rather than a hefty check to deposit, the athlete received a detailed statement from his agent that included interest on gifts received during college.
So why do college athletes continue to accept the cash and gifts, even though they know it could ruin their NCAA eligibility?
Second-year Kansas City running back Greg Hill states several reasons, but as he told the NCAA News , the main reason is the NCAA Manual.
"I think that's (the NCAA's) fault because of the strict restrictions on how long guys can work and how much (financial aid) guys get," said Hill, who played football at Texas A&M.
The NCAA's Manual also drew criticism from Royce L. Money, president of Abilene Christian University.
"The NCAA has become a very cumbersome bureaucracy, in my opinion," Money said. "The regulations that are contained in the NCAA Manual seem to be endless -- they cover every minute detail."