Nicole Lynn is an influencer of elevating influence. Lawyer, agent, author, public speaker and president of football at Klutch Sports Group. She’s only 34, or relatively young for a power broker who counts Jalen Hurts, Quinnen Williams, Myles Garrett, Will Anderson Jr. and Bijan Robinson as clients.
Still, the totality of her accomplishments can create unintended consequences. All are first-world problems, to be sure, the product of what can seem like sudden and outsized success. Within that calculus, Lynn can be reduced to the same set of facts, figures and anecdotes—young innovator upending an industry through empowerment; a “trailblazer,” Hurts says. But the CliffsNotes version leaves out all the toiling, the doors slammed shut, the improbable odds surmounted. “People are just getting the highlight reel,” she says. “That part is frustrating.”
Truth is, Lynn’s rise wasn’t sudden, not to her. She didn’t bring this subject up. Nor did her career start with Williams, her first client projected as a top-five pick. She represented undrafted free agents before the Alabama defensive tackle climbed so many prospect boards; her roster a mishmash of players few had heard of and fewer still remember. This path, from the NFL hinterlands to , took 10 years. A full decade that sometimes felt interminable, that saw Lynn go back to college, intern, scuffle and scrap, change jobs, partner with perhaps the most famous rapper alive and land an MVP candidate through an Instagram DM. Year after year was necessary to infiltrate a landscape where the best players went to the same agencies for representation, especially elite quarterbacks.
Anyone who didn’t know her story might view those 10 years as lacking any influence. That’s not true. Lynn influenced a lot of things, until the reductive nature of a life explained in highlight-reel form took control of the narrative, making how she arrived at her now lofty perch seem simple or predestined, making her into anything other than what she is: one of the top agents—regardless of gender, race, ethnicity or any other qualifier—in pro sports.
