After a stellar coaching career at North Dakota State and Wyoming, Craig Bohl got involved in the background of college football’s shifting landscape.
Bohl serves as the executive director of the American Football Coaches Association, and he recently returned to NDSU for the program’s annual football coaches clinic. He took the opportunity to share his thoughts with the Fargo Forum’s Jeff Kolpack on the need for vetting sports agents for college athletes in the NIL era.
“We need good agents, players need good representation,” Bohl told Kolpack, “because there are some bad actors out there.”
“It’s almost like human trafficking,” Bohl added.
Bohl has been addressing this issue for some time, and he informed WZFG in October 2025 that the AFCA had approached Congress about the matter. It’s one of the provisions in President Donald Trump’s executive order regarding college athletics, Kolpack noted.
In the order, the Federal Trade Commission has been asked to “take immediate actions on violations of the Sports Agent Trust Act,” Kolpack wrote. Bohl highlighted a case of a former high school coach, who was fired for past criminal behavior, who got involved in 11 college recruits’ lives as a Dallas-based sports agent and housed them in Georgia. Kolpack noted that the agent charted a 25-30 percent commission.
“That’s one example right there that is documented,” Bohl said.
A Lincoln, Nebraska, native, Bohl coached NDSU from 2003 to 2013, where he started the Bison FCS dynasty with three-consecutive national championships. Bohl then coached Wyoming from 2014 to 2023 before retiring.
Craig Bohl Calls Out ‘Agents’ For Manipulation
Bohl issued a letter, obtained by the Forum, for the Federal Trade Commission earlier this year to thank them for investigating the issue.
“Over the last few years, since the long-overdue compensation of college athletes began, our coaches have seen a dramatic increase in unprepared, unethical ‘agents’ exploiting young athletes in financial negotiations,” Bohl wrote, via the Forum in February. “We have seen many instances of ‘agents’ manipulating student-athletes and their parents.”
Bohl previously shared instances of manipulative behavior by agents when he talked with WZFG last year. He highlighted that agents target underserved families with lofty financial promises, which has even led to parents giving up guardianship rights.
Bohl told Kolpack that he hopes there can be one organization to oversee agents instead of “the current patchwork of 32 state regulatory systems that lack uniform standards and meaningful enforcement.”
Not Just Big Schools
Even NDSU, as a smaller school, isn’t immune to the problems with sports agents today.
Former Bison defensive end Jake Kava told Kolpack in February that he received messages during his playing days between 2018 and 2023, as NIL came to the forefront. Kava now works with Bison 1660 AM in Fargo.
“Like anything, I do think there are some good guys out there representing college athletes that are transparent and have the student-athletes’ best interest in mind,” Kava said, “but from what I’ve seen and heard, more often than not, they are exploiting young kids that don’t really know what they are signing or getting themselves into.”
“I’ve heard some horror stories about athletes signing contracts with agents that have things like ‘lifetime perpetuity’ buried in them,” he added.
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