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Norman,
OK – Billy Brewer’s 2007 late season call-up to the big leagues of professional fishing caught him by surprise. When two Wild Card competitors declined to enter the 2008 Elite Series, Brewer was given the opportunity to play with the big boys on one condition: he had to pay up in advance.
“I had about two days to make my first payment,” he said. “I put up $7,000 out of my own pocket with no sponsor.”
Shortly thereafter he was able to procure a title sponsor who he thought would stake him for the next three years, but the rug that held that professional relationship was unexpectedly, and he feels unjustifiably, yanked out from under him at midseason.
Despite finishing the year in 82nd place overall, guaranteeing himself a place in next year’s field, he won’t be back unless he can get some more financial support before the first installment of his entry fees is due in October.
“I’ve already talked to my wife about it and I’ve decided that f I don’t have a bona fide sponsor I can’t go back,” he said. “The financial part of it is too much of a gamble and I’m not willing to gamble $100,000 of my family’s money. I’ll just give the spot up and try to qualify again through the Opens and work the whole next year to get a deal lined up.”
Deal Gone Bad
He admitted that he was naïve about the limited market power of Elite Series pros when he first signed his deal with AlphaTrade.
“I told Alton (Jones) about it,” Brewer said. “He was a very big help to me all year long. I also talked to Marty Stone a bunch. When I told them about the deal, they both said that I was a very lucky individual to have that kind of deal. I thought everyone on the Elite Series had something like that.”
He signed a three-year contract with the company. Formally, the additional years were at their option, but they made verbal commitments to honor the full duration of the agreement.
“I don’t like to think about it as what they were supposed to do for me,” he said. “It’s about what I could do for them. I was supposed to bring them investors and I brought close to $200,000 in investors.”
Unfortunately, they elected to terminate the contract at mid-season.
“On the Monday or Tuesday after Clarks Hill they emailed me. They didn’t even call me,” he said. “Just an email that said they wouldn’t be able to honor the contract. I had already fulfilled all of my obligations. I had paid for the wrap out of my own pocket.”
Brewer believes that their actions were a clear breach of the contract and is currently considering his legal options.
On the Water
While his pre-Elite career as a pro angler was shorter in duration than that of many of his fellow competitors, including his fellow rookies, Brewer set what he felt were realistic goals for his first year on tour.
“In the long term, I wanted to win Rookie of the Year and make the Classic,” he said. “In the short term, I wanted to make a check in three of the first four tournaments. I achieved that goal. I figured I would draw four to six checks.”
“I didn’t achieve some of those goals. Later, it became let’s just make the cut for next year.”
As stated above, he started the year with three money finishes in his first four events, capped off with an 8th place performance at Amistad. But he failed to make a single cut to the third day after that and suffered from three triple-digit finishes.
Did he hit a wall?
“I had been through a long season with baseball and that’s a longer more strenuous year,” he said. “It wasn’t a matter of hitting a wall. It may have been that I pressed more. In baseball, you know you’re getting a paycheck so you can relax. In fishing, one decision can make or mess up your entire day and (the AlphaTrade situation) weighed heavily on my mind.”
While he was hesitant to make excuses for his poor second half performance, it is important to note that all of his money finishes came before the AlphaTrade ax fell. Indeed, his four best finishes all came before that time and he never threatened again.
“I just didn’t fish like I fished the first part of the year,” he said. “Once I had to dip into my savings to do it, things changed.”
The other thing that changed is that while he’d been able to pre-practice in Florida and Texas, especially at Amistad, every body of water on the schedule after Amistad was completely new to him, which put him “behind the eight ball.”
He particularly rued his 102nd place debacle at Murray: “Especially after I saw how Fred (Roumbanis) won, I could’ve choked myself. I was fishing everyone else’s strengths instead of my own. I’m a river rat.”
Payback
He took lessons from his days as a major league pitcher to fashion himself as a model citizen.
“In baseball there’s what’s known as being a good rookie,” he said. “You speak when spoken to and give the guys who have been around longer the credit and respect they deserve. That’s a credo I live by.”
But he suffered only short-lived rookie jitters: “When you back into the water next to Rick Clunn on your first day of practice, if you don’t get chills you don’t have a bone in your body.”
“Guy Eaker was the first pro to talk to me,” he continued. “He told me to loosen up and have fun and congratulated me on being there. When Rick
(Clunn) knew my first name, after that it was just fishing.”
Just fishing, maybe, but it’s a business too and he knows that he needs to make some magic happen in order to get the sponsorship deal he needs.
“The economy is down. Companies are really cutting back on their advertising dollars. A lot of guys tell me that sponsors are cutting back or cutting them out. And even though we get to use our boats all four days now, I can’t blame them.”
While he’s disappointed in the way AlphaTrade treated him, he was quick to point out that his other sponsors lived up to their ends of the bargains they struck. Local tackle company Power Tackle and financial advisor Kendall Lovett supported him above and beyond what he expected from smaller companies. |
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He made particular note of the support and counsel of BassCat’s Rick Pierce.
“Even if BassCat cut me this year, and they haven’t, I’d still say they’re the best dadgum boat company to work for,” he said. “Ask people from (other boat companies) if they got a text message from the owner of the company before every tournament wishing them good luck.”
“Then at the end of the first day, he knew exactly what you needed to make it and called with words of encouragement. I don’t think anyone else gets that and at BassCat you get it whether you’re Mike Iaconelli or Billy Brewer.”
End Game?
Brewer is firm in his conviction that he won’t return next year without a corporate partner. He doesn’t deny that it’ll hurt to sit on the sidelines when friends he’s made – not only veterans like Jones and Stone, but fellow soon-to-be sophomores like Brian Clark, Wade Grooms and Clark Reehm – continue to pursue their shared dream. Still, he has forced himself to take a realist’s approach to the situation.
“After I was done with baseball (due to injury) I realized that there are things you can’t help and things you can help,” he said. “If I don’t have the (money), I can’t do it.”
“It won’t hurt as much as baseball did,” he continued. “(With baseball) it made me sick to even watch it.”
While the AlphaTrade fiasco has left a bitter taste behind, he’d like to eventually put that behind him as well.
“I pray about it and ask for peace about it,” he said. “All I can do is forgive them and be a bigger person.”
But in the meantime, the boat serves as a floating billboard of what could have been. He hasn’t fished at all since he made his last cast at Oneida. Since then he’s been teaching youngsters to play baseball and working his connections for possible sponsorship deals. He’s looking forward to selling the boat, not because he dislikes it or because he needs the cash, but because it constantly reminds him of the deal that soured his year.
“I just can’t wait to have that wrap taken off,” he said.
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