Interview: Tyreek Hill's Agent Drew Rosenhaus Responds to Stephen A's questions.

Published Sep 10, 2024, 12:00 AM

Stephen A. Smith is a New York Times Bestselling Author, Executive Producer, host of ESPN's First Take, and co-host of NBA Countdown.  Stephen A. interviews Tyreek Hill’s agent, Drew Rosenbaum, about Hill’s recent run-in with Miami-Dade police.

 

 

My guest has been ranked the number one agent by Sports Business Journal, having negotiated over seven billion dollars in NFL and Major League Baseball player contracts. He is the founder of Miami based Rosenhause Sports and the man who represents Miami Dolphins wide receive a Tyreek Hill. He is the one and only Drew rosen House right here with me, Drew, how are you, buddy? How's everything?

Man? It's been better?

You know, Yesterday was one of the most frustrating days of my thirty seven years as an agent.

Steven A is an agent.

You never dream you're gonna get a call like I did from my client, Johnny Smith on the Dolphins, who calls me frantically saying, true, you got to get to the stadium right away. The cops are beating on Tyreek. They're choking him and they're hitting him. They have him on the ground in handcuffs. I was like, are you kidding me? Is this some kind of joke? How is this possible? And I rushed to the stadium. I immediately called the Dolphins and notify them and their security so they can go help out. And I get there Tyreek still in handcuffs. It was just fine bottling. I spent quite a bit of time talking to Tyreek. He said, Drew, I give him my word. I didn't do anything to deserve that. They apparently stopped him en route to entering the stadium to play the game about two hours and maybe twenty minutes before game time. They gave him a ticket for reckless driving. And the video is just it's appalling.

This is Tyreek Hill. I mean, any.

Human being shouldn't be treated this way for a traffic incident. They put him in handcuffs, they had him on the ground, they had their me on him. He was just trying to go to work. I mean he's literally outside the stadium. You can see meet him in the background there in the video.

And what are they doing to him? I mean he was in fighting back, but by no means did he resist.

This is completely abusive, unnecessary, scary. It was one of the low points of my career to see a client treated this way at his own stadium.

Now, now, you said, you one of your clients, jan who called you and told you that they were beating him, they were kicking him, what have you? Once you got there and he was still in cuffs. First of all, what did you specifically see once you arrived, Well, once.

I got there, the Dolphins head of security, Drew Brooks was there as well, and they took the cuffs off at approximately the same time that I arrived. At that point, I was just working with Tyreek to just settle him down.

He was so upset with the way they had treated him.

He was so disturbed that, you know, his family would would be exposed to seeing him treated this way. You know, his teammates Kaleis Campbell and John Newsmith were both there.

The police were giving them a hard time.

Both of those players were very upset, very distraught. Told me that they thought the force was successive. It's just a sad situation to see an individual, forget that Tyreek's a player, but anybody just for given a citation for a moving violation who's clearly not a threat or fighting back, to be treated that way. It's just mind boggling. And if I could just say, yeah, Tyreek is obviously he's obviously driving a sports car, he's obviously black. They were white officers. I mean, it's just really sad and amiety to see this type of treatment. I don't know that they know whether he was Tyrek or not, but have some awareness that he's trying to get to the game and go to work.

Drew, let me ask you this question. You're you know, you've been obviously, you're a very influential, very powerful agent. You've been in the world of sports for so many years, like you said, thirty seven years in counting for crime out loud. I would ask you this. You've also been based down there. You were smart enough to be based down there as a no state income tax state down there, You've been smart enough to be down there all of these years. You obviously a very influential individual. When you showed up, did you say anything specifically to the officers? Did they say anything to you?

I was really focused on Tyreek. I said to the officers involved, what's.

Going on here?

You know? And initially they were very rude to me as well, initially didn't want to let me get to Tyree. I said, look, I'm Tyreek's agent, I'm a lawyer as well. You're not going to stop me. It was just a shocking scenario to see our client treated in this capacity.

Where do you go from here? Because I know they say there's an investigation going on, but They did issue a statement saying that they felt Tyreek Hill was uncooperative, but one of the officers has been resigned to desk duty. I guess where do you go from here? What's your recourse from this point forward?

Well, I trust Tyrek, he said he wasn't uncooperative. But even if he even if he was explaining that he was trying to get to the game, trying to get into the stadium, explaining who he was, that doesn't lend itself to put a guy in cuffs and put him on the ground and hit him and put their knee on his back, and Tyreek said they put him in a choke called at one point. I mean, wasn't resisting at all. Obviously the citation was just for less driving. It is where do we go from here? But we're going to investigate. We're trying to get the footage from the body cams. Tyreek what he says is gold as far as I'm concerned with the way he was treated. But we'll document everything, We'll get the evidence, and if it's warning, we'll take legal action. We want to make sure this doesn't happen anymore. We want to make sure that not only is you know the people involved here from the police standpoint, that mistreated my client, that they're punished, that they're disciplined for this, and hopefully this sets an example that this type of conduct will not be tolerated, not just towards professional athletes, but anybody that doesn't deserve this.

There should be no abuse of police power.

Tyreek said to the police, Look, I love police officers. One day, I would would love to be involved with law enforced. But what you guys treated me was not right and was out of hand.

And he he was just so upset steven A.

We were trying to settle him down, and obviously he did calm down, and what he did was unprecedented.

I've never seen a professional athlete go.

From being arrested to playing in a game and scoring a touchdown, and a brilliant one as it was. I mean, just you gotta get Tyrek all out of credit. Obviously he made light of the situation with the celebration with the handcuff gesture, but it was certainly no laughing matter by any means. And I had dinner with Tyreek last night with his family and they were still trying to process this, and his attorneys are going to take whatever action they can to make sure that these people involved here, these police officers you know, are are held accountable and will not be able to do this again to anyone under these circumstances. It certainly didn't warrant that type of physical treatment.

Last question to you, how supportive of the Miami Dolphins, Not of him, I know, the supportive of Tyreek Hill, but on you and Tyreek Hill potentially pursuing further action and light of what transpired, what are the Dolphins position on that?

Well?

I thought they couldn't have been any more supportive of Tyreek.

They were obviously very upset.

In my interactions, from the owner Stephen Ross to the general manager Chris Greer.

Obviously I spent time with them.

They reached out to me yesterday and said that I talked to the team president, Tom Garfinkel. He said he was going to do everything within his power to pursue this on behalf of Tyreek. The Dolphins reached out to me and said there was an internal affairs investigation that was taking place that they were going to help us with that. So I take my hat off to the Dolphins. The NFL Players Association reached out to me, countless players, coaches, general leaguers from other teams were really upset seeing the way that Tyreek was treated.

There's no place for this in our.

Society, and obviously I was encouraged to do everything I can to help Tyreek and straighten this situation out for the future, and I will.

Drew rosenhou is one of the best in the business ever. Good seeing you, my man. Good looking forward to seeing you again in the very very near future. Take care of Tyreek and we'll catch up later, right.

Thank Steven. Take care, take care,