NEWPORT BEACH — The water is just outside his window. The churn is inside his head.
He works on a Virtual Reality project. He has found a water product that hydrates you at 277 percent, penetrates the cell and stays there.
He is developing an app for NFL spectators. You can put down your bets, play fantasy ball, talk smack to those you beat, work puzzles and video games, and even dictate one coach’s call and one referee’s replay per game.
“It will be the answer to millennial restlessness,” said Leigh Steinberg, 70, addressing a condition that is not confined to the young.
“How do we keep the next generation coming?”
The rest of the world views Steinberg as the NFL’s real Comeback Player of the Year.
The right-hand man for the glamour quarterbacks, even the southpaw Steve Young, again has the Golden One.
Patrick Mahomes signed with Steinberg three years ago, when neither Mahomes nor Steinberg was fashionable.
“We just laid out a plan,” Steinberg said. “The skepticism was based on the offense he played (at Texas Tech). They had to score 50 points, and he was throwing whenever he could. You could project him past that.
“People said third round for him. But we went at it holistically. It’s not suasion that works, it’s listening.”
Kansas City knew it would put him next to veteran Alex Smith in 2017, with no expectation of playing, and let him set his own stage.
Few plans have worked so well. The Chiefs switched draft picks with Buffalo, a 10 for a 27 in the first round, and gave up a first-rounder in 2018 and a third-rounder in 2017.
Mahomes was the MVP last season and routinely, almost weekly, expands the scope of quarterbacking.
Steinberg will play host to his 33rd Super Bowl party in Miami on Saturday, with veterans from Afghanistan and Make-A-Wish kids, along with the usual red-carpet guests.
On his office floor are two boxes of “Mahomes Magic” cereal. On the wall are the pictures of Young, Troy Aikman, Ben Roethlisberger and Warren Moon. On this day the TV is showing the impeachment hearings.
Just in front lies a Jerry Maguire CD.
Steinberg is far more subdued than Tom Cruise was, or is, and it’s not just age. Each day is his championship game. All are single-elimination.
On March 23, 2010, he “entered sober living.” Few alcoholics, anywhere, have been so insistently open. He says he still attends meetings, works on the 12 steps, consults with his sponsor.
Battles with ex-partner David Dunn had helped to throw Steinberg into bankruptcy, but he says investors were always interested in his revival, “like I was some distressed property.”
He was back in the saddle when he signed first-round quarterback Paxton Lynch. He has “about 30” clients now, including Green Bay Pro Bowl running back Aaron Jones, and Alabama quarterback Tua Tagliavoa, who dislocated a hip in November but, according to Steinberg, will be ready to roll in the spring.
“As an alcoholic,” he said, “you realize you don’t have a divine right to players. You have to be transparent.”
His descent was accelerated, he said, by the illness and death of his father Warren, and by the retinitis pigmentosa that befell his sons Matt and Jonathan, and by the breakup of his marriage, and the clients who fled to Dunn.
“I felt like Gulliver, tied down on the beach,” he said, “and then there were all these Lilliputians sticking forks in me.”
He flicked open a Diet Coke.
“I guess the biggest question is, what life would I be waiting for? My dad said to treasure relationships and make a meaningful difference. That’s all I’m trying to do. The world will not note nor long remember the size of these contracts. Can we stimulate our best values? Can we tackle racism, sex trafficking, domestic violence?
“When Lennox Lewis cuts a PSA that says real men don’t hit women, it can penetrate the perceptual screen young people put up against authority figures.”
And with the podcasts he will host, and the new helmets and medical breakthroughs that he hopes will stem the concussion tide, and with the Agent Academies he has founded for aspiring Steinbergs, he still has not misplaced Jerry Maguire.
“Producers and directors have talked to me,” Steinberg said. “One is a proposal for a series like Mad Men, to go back to the beginning. Another is a straight movie. Yes, it would deal with everything.”
All the ups and downs?
Steinberg looks at the water again.
“To be honest,” he said, “it’s mostly been ups.”
