Given all he has seen, Tom Condon could tell stories for days.
When he was a captain and tone-setting guard for 12 years with the Kansas City Chiefs, his nose was crooked and his neck roll thick. Then he became one of the most influential men in the modern era of the NFL.
A titan of a player agent, Condon represented 79 players who were drafted in the first round, including nine who were chosen first. And another 23 first-rounders signed with him at some point after they were drafted. He represented three Bosas (John, Joey and Nick), two Kalils (Matt and Ryan), two Kelsays (Chris and Chad), two Mannings (Peyton and Eli), two Martins (Zack and Nick) and two Watts (J.J. and Derek).
And that was just a small slice of his impact.
A labor leader, he helped resolve the 1982 strike, became president of the NFL Players Association and nominated Gene Upshaw as executive director. Then he served as Upshaw’s agent and adviser for a quarter-century. Condon helped unionize NFL referees. He was one of the founding forces behind the NFL Coaches Association, and in 1982, Condon testified before Congress that Blacks were not being given equal opportunities for advancement. He led a bond campaign as chairman of the Jackson County Sports Authority in 1990 that resulted in the Chiefs and Royals agreeing to continue playing in the Truman Sports Complex for 25 years.
Moreover, he was the kind of blocker who could be counted on to clear holes for Joe Delaney, and then the kind of friend who would help carry the running back to his final resting place after Delaney’s tragic drowning at 24.
His aura drew in people such as Howard Cosell, who hosted him for dinner at his penthouse in Manhattan.
Heath Shuler, a client during his playing days, took his call as he was walking to the podium to declare victory in a race to become a United States congressman.
Stories? He has them like nobody else. But Condon is 73, and many of his memories have gone gray like his hair, which was once as black as obsidian.
His mind, so sharp he formulated Drew Brees’ complicated contract in his head while on the phone with New Orleans Saints general manager Mickey Loomis, processes more slowly now.
His sentences are short.
His voice used to be smooth like Barry White’s, but his speech has become labored.
His movements take more time.
To get from here to there, a wheelchair.
This began about five years ago.
Soon after, doctors began talking about Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus. The condition, which afflicts musician Billy Joel, causes excess spinal fluid to build up in the skull, putting pressure on the brain. A shunt implant has helped drain excess fluid from Condon’s head but has not been a cure-all. And the reality is, despite many tests in many places, his diagnosis is murky.
Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus can be caused by head trauma. As can CTE.
“It’s very tough,” Condon says.
“What did Marv Levy, your favorite coach, tell you?” Bowen, his wife of 10 years, asks him. “Always put yourself in a position to win. You always did. And you’re a warrior.”
Tom and Bowen Condon have been married for 10 years, but they go back much longer than that. (Courtesy of Tom Condon)
If there was one defining characteristic of Condon’s life, it was that he always found a way.
He did it when he was battling a defensive tackle with arms so long and hands so strong that the opponent left bruises in the shape of handprints on Condon’s biceps. Hiring noted attorney Johnnie Cochran helped him find a way to get an unprecedented $25 million settlement from the NFL for Orlando Brown after a referee’s flag injured Brown’s eye. He even found a way when summoned to a last-minute negotiation with league commissioner Pete Rozelle mid-workout, rushing to the meeting in sweat-soaked short shorts.
In a new phase of life, he’s trying to find a way again.
On the first day of Chiefs training camp in 1979, Ken “Fuzzy” Kremer, a rookie defensive tackle, noticed a large tattoo on a teammate’s hip on his way to a shower. The tattoo is a tiger, in honor of Condon’s favorite childhood dog. He was an Akita named Tora, which means tiger in Japanese.
Tom’s father — Tom II — brought Tora home on a military transport ship from Japan when his namesake was born in October 1952. Tom II was stationed in Japan after being transferred from Korea, where his unit had been decimated in the Korean War. At 17, Tom II also served in World War II, having survived the Battle of the Bulge and a shootout with Nazi soldiers in a French house. When his military service ended, Tom II became a lawyer who spent most of his years as the neighborhood fixer in Ansonia, Conn.
It was the war hero — he was awarded two Bronze stars — who showed his son how a life should be lived, and nothing was more important to young Tom than making his father proud. He did, but it took a while.
As a 120-pound freshman at Notre Dame High in West Haven, Conn., Condon was cut from the football team. He was determined to put on weight, but no one was more determined than his mother, Marge. She served him sandwiches stacked high for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and then another after dinner. By the time he was a high school senior, Tom weighed 190 and was voted all-league.
With no football scholarship offers, he walked on at Boston College. As a 200-pound guard, he was introduced to another freshman who weighed 30 pounds more than him — a fullback — and thought there was no way he could make the team.
But he didn’t act like it. Tom Marinelli, a freshman offensive tackle who became one of his closest friends, says he and his teammates never knew Condon was a walk-on because of the way he carried himself. Condon started on the freshman team, and the assumption was that he would be given a scholarship as a sophomore. Then his coach told him they don’t give scholarships to players his size, even though he had gained 10 pounds.
Condon never griped. As a sophomore, he started several varsity games and was finally given a scholarship as a junior. Then, before his senior season, he was named one of three team captains.
“Every practice, he left it all on the field,” Marinelli says. “Every game, 110 percent if there is such a thing. He exemplified give it your all. And the determination in him was honestly inspirational.”
His determination also inspired the Chiefs to select him in the 10th round of the 1974 draft.
In those days, the head coach often negotiated contracts with his players, and Hank Stram offered Condon a $14,000 salary with a $2,000 signing bonus. Stram expected a prompt, “Where do I sign?” But Condon balked. Stram told him he never had a 10th-round pick make his team, and he should consider the $2,000 bonus payment for a summer job. Condon, showing confidence and bargaining chops, came back with a $30,000 guaranteed offer from the Boston Bulls of the World Football League. Stram buckled, upping the offer to $18,000 with a $10,000 signing bonus.
By his second season, Condon was a starter. Two years after that, he began looking ahead, working toward a law degree from Baltimore Law School. At 8 a.m. on Tuesdays during the season, he faithfully attended Commercial Transactions class at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, which transferred credits. He couldn’t make it to Thursday classes because of Chiefs practices, but a classmate gave him notes, without which his path would undoubtedly have been very different.
During two-a-day training camp in 1981, Condon asked for a two-day leave so he could take the bar exam. His then-coach, Levy, asked him whether it was a negotiating ploy, but after Condon assured him it was not, Levy granted him the time, and Condon passed the test on the first attempt.
Condon had some sway with the boss because he could play. Bill Polian, a scout on the Chiefs during Condon’s playing days, recalls him as a leader in every respect and a superb technician. He relied on leverage, footwork and hand placement because he needed to early in his career, when he weighed 240 pounds. Condon steadily gained weight, eventually reaching 300.
“He was undersized but succeeded because of his grit and desire,” says Hall of Fame linebacker Willie Lanier, whose locker was next to Condon’s for much of his career.
“Tenacious” is the best word Kremer can think of to describe Condon’s playing style.
“He wasn’t the biggest or fastest, but he would hold, bite, scratch or kick you — whatever he could to keep that guy in front of him out of the quarterback’s face,” he says. “I thought he might have problems later in life because he really gave it his all.”
What he lacked in elite physical ability, Condon made up for in will. And it was most noticeable in the weight room, where he was without peer on the Chiefs. He worked his lower body until his legs were sturdy as Greek pillars.
“He did full squats where your butt touches the floor and comes back up, and he could do it with massive amounts of weights,” Kremer says.
In 1982, he finished third in the Strongest Man in Pro Football contest with a combined lift of 38,100 pounds in the overhead press, squat, bench press and dead lift.
Injuries?
“I never really got injured,” he says.
A graphic of his body in a September 1984 edition of the Kansas City Star told a different story, pointing out several nose fractures, disk damage in his neck and back, a hyperextended elbow, a broken wrist, bruised kidneys, pulled hip flexors, groins and hamstrings, ligament tears in both knees that required surgery and several sprains to both ankles.
And there were more.
“Do you remember the time you said the crowd was floating?” Bowen says to him. “Or the time you were concussed, and they took you out of the game and then you still practiced the next day?”
He nods.
Chiefs guard Tom Condon, left, blocks Steelers Hall of Famer Mean Joe Greene. A head slap by Greene cost Condon the hearing in one ear. (George Gojkovich / Getty Images)
On the flight home from a game in Pittsburgh, Kremer sat next to him and asked him how he played against Steelers great Mean Joe Greene. Condon didn’t respond. Eventually, he nudged him.
“What the hell’s the matter with you?” Kremer said. “I’m talking to you.”
Then Kremer realized Condon couldn’t hear him. And he noticed blood flowing out of his right ear and down his neck.
That blood was the result of one of Greene’s head slaps that was especially vicious — mean, you might call it. Greene’s open hand ruptured Condon’s eardrum and may have severed a nerve and destroyed some neurons, too.
He still can’t hear out of the ear.
His right eye still hurts, too.
In a 1975 game, Baltimore Colts defensive lineman Mike Barnes reached through Condon’s facemask and embedded AstroTurf in the eye. Eventually, he had a lens implant, but the eye was never the same.
In the rematch against Barnes and the Colts later that season, Condon dominated Barnes. Afterward, Barnes approached him on the field, told him, “You kicked my a–” and gave him his Baltimore Colts jacket, which Condon still has, a trophy for perseverance as much as excellence.
He never stopped coming through 12 seasons, and he played longer than all but 14 players from his draft class, so long that he bridged eras. In the beginning, he saw teammates taking drags of cigarettes during halftimes, and near the end, he recognized the smell of weed as he walked to his car in the players’ parking lot after games.
Everything he became — and is today — can be traced to those playing days.
In Condon’s last season, his teammate Art Still asked him to help him get more money than the Chiefs were offering. Condon, with help from Tony Agnone, who had been an assistant to the dean at Baltimore Law School, negotiated a contract that resulted in Still being paid significantly more than he originally had been offered.
Condon and Kremer remained teammates in the agent world. Together, they went from Tom Condon and Associates to IMG to Creative Artists Agency.
In a complicated business, Condon kept it simple. He recruited clients based on three qualities — athleticism, intelligence and character. His desk was free of clutter, just a phone, a legal pad and a pen. Oh, and a framed dollar bill, inscribed “Dear Tom here is my last dollar,” signed by Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank and given to Condon after Matt Ryan’s massive contract extension.
It was Condon’s background as a player that helped convince Peyton Manning in 1998. Condon was not yet the mega-agent he would become, and friends told Manning he should sign with someone who had more experience with prospects like him. But Manning felt a connection.
“The fact he was a lineman just kind of resonated with me,” Manning says. “He understood there was nothing more important than what was happening on the football field.”
During the 2003 season, Condon advised Manning to let his contract expire, believing he would gain leverage once the Indianapolis Colts were forced to use the franchise tag on him. Manning won the MVP award and then signed a deal that made him the highest-paid player in NFL history at the time. But when Manning was coming off a neck injury in 2012, Condon acquiesced to his client’s wishes that he sign what was, in essence, five one-year deals with the Denver Broncos instead of a guaranteed five-year contract, as Manning didn’t want to take money if his neck wouldn’t allow him to play.
“I had total peace of mind with Tom, which allowed me to go out there and play,” Manning says. “Tom was just a critical part of my football journey.”
Tom Condon, center, represented brothers Eli, left, and Peyton Manning, helping engineer the trade that sent Eli to the Giants. (Chris Trotman / Getty Images)
In 2004, the San Diego Chargers planned to select Peyton’s brother Eli with the first pick of the draft, but Eli didn’t want to play for the Chargers. As the draft neared, Condon maneuvered stealthily, telling the team that Manning would sit out a year if the Chargers took him. Then he helped broker the trade that sent Manning to the New York Giants.
Condon keeps a handwritten note from Giants general manager Ernie Accorsi dated Aug. 10, 2004, that reads, in part, “I’ve told a lot of people that dealing with you over all these years, though tough, is fulfilling because of your integrity and professionalism … This trade will always be a part of your legacy and mine — I’m proud of that.”
If necessary, Condon could be full-service. He and Bowen visited Eli’s Hoboken, N.J., condominium after a 2010 Giants game. Eli’s father, Archie, and Bowen were admiring the view of the Manhattan skyline when Condon went missing. Unbeknownst to them, Condon had given chase to a would-be intruder, caught him and pinned him until police arrived.
He would answer a call at any time, day or night. Besides a daily lift, an occasional horseback ride and daddy time with his children, Tommy and Katie, Condon didn’t do much except work. Peter Johnson, his onetime boss at IMG, subsequently joked that Condon was the worst golfer and skier he ever knew. For one typical NFL combine, Condon scheduled 23 meetings in two days.
When attending clients’ games, Condon bought his own tickets. “I didn’t want to ask the general managers for anything,” he says. “No favors.”
He earned their respect. Polian, a Hall of Fame general manager who negotiated many contracts with Condon, including deals for Manning, Dwight Freeney and Marvin Harrison, says his discussions with Condon were high-level because Condon, as a former accomplished player, knew as much or more about the game as Polian. He also knew as much about the collective bargaining agreement as almost anybody because of his work with the NFLPA.
“He was low-key compared to other agents in that era but more powerful than all of them put together when you think about all of the various issues in which he was involved,” Polian says.
It bothered Condon to see players sometimes devalued because of performances at the scouting combine. So in the early 1990s, before any players were preparing for the combine, he and Kremer started meeting with their clients in the hallway of the Indianapolis Convention Center, where the event was held, setting up cones and overseeing drills and dashes.
Then Condon broadened IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla., from a place where only tennis players trained to a football facility that prepared players for the combine and season. He hired Olympic gold medal sprinter Michael Johnson to teach clients how to run the 40-yard dash, strength trainers to increase bench-press numbers, former position coaches to work them in field drills, former front-office people to help them prepare for psychological testing and interviews, and nutritionists to improve body composition.
Every agent began replicating the idea, and Condon’s client base grew substantially.
In 40 years as an agent, Condon negotiated hundreds of contracts, some with the approach of a hawk, some like a dove, ruthless in this one, ruthful in that.
But as this life would have it, there’s a last time for everything. In June 2022, just four months after cinching the most lucrative deal of his career — four years, $135 million guaranteed for Matthew Stafford — Condon negotiated a one-year, $9.3 million contract extension for Demario Davis with the Saints.
And that was it.
“I was tired,” he says.
His memory was not what it used to be, and he knew it. His son saw it, too. And then Tommy noticed his father didn’t step as lively as he once did as they rushed to make a connection at an airport.
There was no farewell tour, no final bow; instead, he quietly slid out a side exit, an Irish goodbye. Condon stepped back into an advisory role at CAA and phased out, confident that all he had built would be maintained by his son and co-workers.
As a child, Tommy watched his dad with enchantment.
“I saw how hard he fought for his players, how passionate he was about it, and how he was willing to fight ownership,” Tommy says. “Of course, he wanted to do the best he could for his clients, but at the same time, I think there was a bigger plan — helping all players get more player-friendly contracts instead of accepting team-friendly deals, as they typically were. And that’s something I wanted to dedicate my life to as well.”
So father poured into son. When Tommy was in high school, his dad assigned him research projects and had him sit in on negotiations for the Mannings, Antonio Gates, Tony Gonzalez and others. Condon brought him to the combine and the draft and made him outline the collective bargaining agreement. After 10 years of shadowing his father, Tommy became a full-time agent 15 years ago.
Now, Tommy checks in with him most days. They spent Easter together.
His dad asks about Davis, Mike McGlinchey and Calais Campbell, each of whom has been represented by father and son. Tommy negotiated a two-year, $22 million deal with the Jets this offseason for the 37-year-old Davis — his father liked that. Tom asks about the other agents in the company. And he always wants to know how Tommy’s fiancee is doing.
“Sometimes we lock eyes, and I know he’s still in there,” Tommy says. “But then I just get this feeling that he knows what’s going on, and he recognizes where his life is now compared to what it was. It’s hard for me to think about, to be honest.”
Tom Condon has difficulty with balance but works out daily in his home gym under the guidance of trainer Eric Beisel. (Dan Pompei / The Athletic)
At times, he seems as distant as a satellite.
And then you’re in his soul.
“That woman sitting over there, she takes great care of me,” Condon says of Bowen. “She gives me great advice. And she’s beautiful.”
Bowen was the one who shared her notes in that law class in 1978. And time has made her his caregiver, interpreter and inspiration.
For all but two hours a week, she is by his side, though Bowen is lifted by a team of providers and the love of those he’s touched.
In August 1996, Marinelli’s 19-year-old daughter, Jenny, was diagnosed with stage four ovarian cancer. Doctors wanted to perform surgery quickly, so quickly that Marinelli didn’t tell his friend what was happening. Shortly after Jenny was wheeled into the recovery room at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, however, Condon walked in. He learned of the surgery when he called Marinelli’s office and caught the first flight from Kansas City.
Now, Marinelli visits Condon weekly. He phones their old teammates when he’s there, and they get Condon laughing.
Kremer, more appreciative of their brotherhood than ever as time goes by, calls frequently with stories from the old days.
Condon recently heard from Brees, Luke Kuechly, Chris Spielman and Kyle Turley.
Peyton Manning sends pictures of his kids. He will come to see him in June. Maybe then he will tell stories to his old friend. He might jab him about the time the always well-dressed Condon showed up to a meeting with Peyton’s father in New Orleans to recruit Peyton wearing jeans with a suit and tie because he forgot his suit pants. Or he could bring up Manning’s wedding at the Memphis Country Club, when Condon was accused of eating most of the crustaceans on the shrimp bar.
“I think about him a lot,” Manning says. “I’m praying for him.”
Though balance is an issue, Condon works out daily in his extensive home gym — he rides a stationary bike, walks on an elliptical trainer, lifts weights and is “shockingly strong,” according to Eric Beisel, his longtime trainer.
Condon became the man he is because he could will his way through almost anything.
Almost anything.
But he doesn’t complain, and his demeanor is pleasant.
“I think he went through a period of time when he was truly expecting a lot of improvement,” Marinelli says. “The determination is still there, though. I think he still has hope. But he seems more accepting now and just concentrating on enjoying what he can.”
That includes a meal at a good restaurant with a glass of cab and time outside. He talks about getting another dog — that would make him happy.
Condon is watching the NFL Draft with Bowen and a friend in the living room of their cozy suburban St. Louis home on two well-manicured acres, where copious daffodils and forsythia are among the many blessings of springtime. He’s sitting on a sofa with a blanket covering his lap, a world away from Radio City Music Hall on the Avenue of the Americas in Midtown Manhattan, where he once fielded phone calls from general managers in the green room, a short walk from where his clients hugged and mugged in bright lights.
But now, as then, he is a part of it.
He and his wife are following Clemson offensive tackle Blake Miller because Tommy is his agent. When the Detroit Lions select Miller with the 17th pick, ESPN shows Miller at home with his family. Tommy stands over Miller’s left shoulder.
And Condon, finding a way, says, “That’s it, son.”