"It's not an option now," said Danny Arnold, founder of the Plex training centre in Stafford, Texas. "Every agent has to send a player to a place like this. You end up spending the same amount of money on a first-round pick as you do a seventh-round pick."

"It's a hot trend now, where everybody thinks that they can train athletes," [Tim Robertson] said after spotting [Ted Ginn Jr.] on a bench press.

"The (other) agents criticized us and said there was nothing to it," [Eric Metz] said. "Now they say: 'Look how you ruined the business. Now we have to spend all this money preparing players.' "