NFL agent Jack Mills has seen five decades of football deals in Colorado; he didn't see this coming.
Jack Mills eats at the same table with the same server every time he eats at BJ’s Restaurant and Brewhouse in Boulder, Colorado. He orders the cheeseburger special meal like countless diners who walk through the door on 28th Street.
But Mills, 86, is far from ordinary.
He is a decorated sports agent with over 50 years in the business. He has represented four Heisman Trophy winners and three NFL No. 1 draft selections, including current Buccaneers starting quarterback Baker Mayfield.
Mills’ experience dates to an era when college football players were not compensated until they entered the draft. Now, in the Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) era, that amateur landscape is almost extinct.
Mills is struggling, in many ways, to understand the seismic shift in college football.
“You are dealing with young kids that already have cars and money in the bank. Academics have taken a back seat to athletics,” Mills said.
Under the House v. NCAA settlement framework, Division I member schools can pay athletes directly. The revenue-sharing cap is set at $21.3 million per school for the 2026–27 fiscal year.
A visit to Mills’ office reflects a different time. He pointed out one of many pieces of memorabilia that he thinks speaks to his career. It’s a caricature a friend drew when he attended the University of Oklahoma in the late 1950s.
“[My friends] called me Clark Kent back in those days because I looked like him,” Mills recalled. “I was helping recruit players, and little did I know that was a prophecy for my life’s work.”
Mills said today’s draft compensation is much more structured, and he recalled getting stuck with Detroit executive Russ Thomas in 1975 over the signing bonus for Doug English, a second-round pick from the Texas Longhorns. Thomas wouldn’t raise the guarantee to $40,000; Mills wouldn’t settle for $39,000.
“Now in today's market, there's a total salary structure for every draft choice, so we don't even have to do this anymore in terms of negotiating what the numbers are,” Mills said. “So it's a totally different world.”
Mills helped build that world. Now he no longer recognizes it.
When he started, the only guaranteed money in an NFL contract was the signing bonus. A five-year deal “didn’t mean anything,” Mills said.
So, he pushed to get his clients back to the table as often as possible. Someone was always about to sign for more.
“It’s just human nature that the next guy up is probably going to beat the last guy,” Mills said.
Mills once asked Stan Kasten, president of Ted Turner’s Atlanta Braves from 1986-2003, how fast a player had ever tried to renegotiate. Kasten told him about a player who signed at 10 a.m. on a Saturday, heard someone else got a better deal and wanted to redo his contract by 4 p.m. the same day.
That impatience now starts in high school.
Mills said almost every college player of any stature already has an agent. The rules against pro representation are largely ignored, and the race to sign players starts years before anyone knows who will make it to the NFL.
“There’s almost no compliance with the rules,” Mills said. “The problem is knowing who the pros are going to be.”
He still believes the college game lacks the one guardrail that would make the new system honest: a hard cap on what players can earn, including outside money.
“You can say there’s a cap of $20 million, or they can say it’s $50 million, but it doesn’t mean anything unless there’s a limit on the outside money,” he said.
Mills’ “outside money” remark refers to third-party collectives that partner with athletic departments, allowing schools to spend far more than the legal cap.
Mills expected college players to be paid for endorsements someday, like a name on a jersey or a shoe-company deal. What came instead caught him off guard.
“I didn’t foresee direct payment as we have in the revenue sharing by the school,” Mills said. “That’s gonna eliminate some folks. Might eliminate CU from competing.”
He has lived in Boulder long enough to say that without flinching. And he doubts the Colorado Buffaloes can match schools like the Texas Tech Red Raiders, where booster Cody Campbell has poured oil money into football.
Colorado is spending about $18-21 million on its roster this season, according to a recent analysis by The Athletic. That’s only middle-of-the-pack for Big 12 schools, and half of the $38-42 million that the Red Raiders have in resources.
“[Colorado] is not the SEC. This is not some of the Big Ten schools,” Mills said. “It’s just a different culture here for big-time college sports.”
His fix would come from labor law, not from Congress. Collective bargaining would let the sport limit coaching staffs and spending without facing antitrust lawsuits, he said.
But a union needs employees, which schools insist their players aren’t, despite paying them.
“From an IRS standpoint, I don’t know how you’re not an employee,” Mills said.
Mills now runs his business with his son, Tom. Shark Sports Management has few clients, which allows Jack enough room for a life outside the office.
“Traveling for game weekends is always big,” said Tom. “When we visit Baker in Tampa, we spend time with his family, and it’s obviously a better time and mood when [the Buccaneers] win.”
Tom said he and Jack get to a few games every year during the regular season, but it’s important not to overload their schedule.
“If you’re not careful, this business can dominate your life,” Jack said. “You can be on the phone not only during the day, but at night.”
Tom handles most of the recruiting now, primarily over Zoom. When asked what he's learned from his son, Mills didn’t pretend to have an answer.
“Of course he’s learned most of what he does from me,” he said. “He’s doing it the way I do it. He’s doing it with integrity and honesty.”
But the game is growing in its own way, and that extends to his field. When asked what might surprise his former clients today, Mills gave a simple answer.
“That I’m still active in the business,” he said. “I doubt there’s another guy my age in the business.”
He doesn’t act his age, either. He spends his days around people a fraction of his age: prospects on Zoom calls, or on this day with me, a student with a notebook.
“Jack is always willing to help and eager to share his knowledge,” said Jessica Baumgarten, Business of Sports Director at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Baumgarten invites Mills to speak to her Business of Sports program students every summer.
“Whether he's offering advice or sharing one of his many great stories, you always walk away better for having spent time with him,” said Baumgarten.
Mills was inducted into the National Sports Agent Hall of Fame in 2023. While Mills is still in the business, he’s made it a priority to manage his schedule more recently.
“You’ve got to figure out some way to balance your life,” Mills said, “with your kids and with your family, your wife, you know, the whole thing.”
Football is a whole new world now. Colleges write checks, and teenagers have agents. The sport Mills helped professionalize now negotiates with itself every year. Everyone in his business wants more.
But Mills figured out a long time ago what was enough.
It’s on 28th Street, at a table by the window, where the server already knows his order.
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