EUGENE — Jeff Hawkins does not hate agents. Not all of them, at least.

As an associate athletic director at Oregon, Hawkins counsels Duck football players who seek professional representation. The good agents — the ones who play by the rules and look out for their clients — usually have no problems with his screening process.

If you are an agent looking for someone to exploit, Hawkins is not the person you want to see. Baldheaded and brash, he is not afraid to call out unscrupulous agents as body collectors, bag men or worse.

As part of a committee that proposes athlete-agent legislation, Hawkins remembers being challenged by a judge who did not see the need for more government regulation.

Hawkins described the problem in typically blunt language, and he says the mood in the room immediately shifted.

“Basically, I compared it to being a predator,” Hawkins said. “These people reach out to them, they start grooming them online — ‘I’m going to be your best friend, this is what we’ll do.’ I see them as nothing less than predators.”

Hawkins has been studying the agent issue since he joined Oregon’s football staff in 2001 as an aide to then-head coach Mike Bellotti. He ramped up his efforts to educate players after quarterback Dennis Dixon came to him for help in 2007, overwhelmed by the free shoes and per diem checks he had been getting from agents after his season-ending injury.

Hawkins now coordinates an in-depth interview process for any players who choose to participate. Another batch will hear their names at this week’s NFL draft, including defensive end DeForest Buckner, a projected top-10 pick.

Like Marcus Mariota last year, Buckner was highly sought-after by agents. And like Mariota, Buckner used Hawkins as a point person to filter requests from those vying to represent him.

“Hawk is such a gatekeeper, too,” said Mariota’s mother, Alana Deppe-Mariota. “That was what was so critical for us.

“You don’t want to violate anything with regards to the process — somebody talking to somebody, having a cup of coffee. We just really stood clear of anything up until the end of the season.”

Hawkins discourages players from talking to agents during the season, though he does not forbid it. His rules are straightforward: Make sure the agents are registered with the state and the university, and don’t take anything.

From there, players who participate in agent interviews come to the table with a list a questions prepared by Hawkins. For example:

• Who will be negotiating my contract? Will you, or will you have someone else do it?

• How many other clients will you sign at my position?

• What kind of pre-draft training, services and support will you be providing?

Hawkins sits in on interviews, along with a panel that can include Horace Raymond, Oregon’s assistant athletic director for player development; Kip Leonard, a retired Lane County circuit judge; and David Mikula, a psychotherapist who works with Ducks athletes.

Compared with schools around the country, Hawkins realizes the time and energy he devotes to the agent issue puts Oregon in the extreme.

“Nobody in the country does what we do,” he said.

Mariotas by the book

The most high-profile player to participate in Hawkins’ screening process is also the poster child for how it should work.

By the time he was a junior at Oregon, Mariota had scouts and agents salivating over his potential. He also had little interest in dealing with his professional future until the college season ended.

“Marcus wanted nothing to do with it,” Alana Mariota said. “He hadn’t even decided what he was going to do.

“He didn’t want to have anything to do with anything until his season was over. It kind of left the ball with us.”

After Mariota turned down a chance to enter the draft the year before, it was widely believed that he would turn pro after his junior season. As the season progressed, though, Mariota had not stated his intentions to anyone — not even his parents, Alana said.

The Mariotas did not want to push Marcus into a decision, but they also had to be prepared for him to turn pro. That meant sifting through the correspondence coming in from agents and narrowing the list to a handful of finalists.

Agents hoping to represent Mariota were told to contact Hawkins, who forwarded the communications to Alana and Toa Mariota. Mariota’s parents interviewed agents in Eugene during weekend visits and also arranged a meeting in Los Angeles to coincide with a game against UCLA.

By the night of the national championship game against Ohio State, the Mariotas had a sense of Marcus’ plan. He had a flight booked the next day to San Diego, where he would start training at a facility called Prolific Athletes and presumably make a decision about his agent.

After Ohio State’s 42-20 win, Alana and Toa were driving family members to the airport when they got a call from Marcus. He was back at the team hotel, and he needed to talk.

“I thought, ‘Oh my God, this kid is going to change his mind. He’s going to stay,’” Alana said.

By the time they made it back to the Gaylord Texan Resort, Alana had a million thoughts running through her mind. Could the family afford to keep flying from Hawaii for every game? What about insurance? What if Marcus got hurt?

So, she said, what did you need to talk to us about?

“He looked at me and goes, ‘What time is my flight tomorrow?’” Alana said. “I went, ‘Are you serious?’”

Mariota flew to San Diego the next day and began training for the draft. His parents had arranged agent interviews with three finalists, leaving the final decision to Marcus.

Alana and Toa had their favorite: Ryan Tollner of Rep1 Sports, the agent Mariota ultimately picked.

“We didn’t give him any insight of what we thought,” Alana said. “We really wanted him to make a decision based on who he felt was best, and a lot of it was relationship.”

As the No. 2 pick of the Tennessee Titans, Mariota signed a rookie contract worth roughly $24 million and landed endorsement deals with Nike and Subway. When he speaks to UO players, Hawkins now uses the Mariotas as an example of how to navigate the agent process.

“They did everything by the book,” he said.

Tough to enforce rules

For the most part, Hawkins said, players like Mariota and Buckner are choosing from agents at the top of the profession. It is the players on the fringe who are more likely to attract a sketchy agent or get stuck with a bad agreement.

A common trick, Hawkins said, is for agents to pay for training up front but ask to be repaid after the player gets drafted. If the player does not get an NFL contract, he could end up owing $20,000 or $30,000 to his agent without a way to pay it back.

Quarterback Vernon Adams Jr., a projected late-round pick or undrafted free agent, interviewed eight agents before picking one who agreed to pay for his training with no strings attached.

“If I didn’t have Hawk, man, I would have probably been stuck with some bad agent — not even a bad agent, just like a bad person,” Adams said. “I wouldn’t know how to set up the meetings and meet with them. I probably would have just picked the first guy who showed me interest when I was a sophomore in college.”

Leonard, who retired in 2010 after 25 years as a circuit court judge, started participating in the agent interviews after star running back LaMichael James asked him to take part in his selection process.

Leonard and Mikula have seen all the presentations — glossy, spiral-bound portfolios packed with pictures of agents and their clients cavorting in Las Vegas — and have learned to spot agents who are less than trustworthy.

“It’s a sales pitch, and I don’t blame them — that’s how they get their business,” Leonard said. “They want to be pitching to the player, and they’ve got these three older guys in there asking questions.

“The questions we ask are questions the players probably wouldn’t think to ask or know to ask.”

Along with advocating for players, Hawkins spends his time advocating for tougher laws regulating agents.

Oregon’s Athlete Agents Act, a version of which has been adopted in 43 states, requires agents to register in states where they plan to recruit players and notify the school’s athletic director before making contact.

Hawkins supports these laws but reserves some strong words for the states’ enforcement of them.

“They pass the law, they cut the ribbon, they kiss the baby and walk away,” he said. “You’ve got to enforce it.”

With Hawkins standing watch, unregistered agents are not a big issue at Oregon. In other places, it is easier for agents to ignore the law with little risk of punishment.

“Legislators have a decision whether to build a freeway or a hospital or enforce agents,” said agent David Dunn, who has represented Joey Harrington, Akili Smith, Ifo Ekpre-Olomu and Casey Matthews among other former Ducks. “I don’t blame them for prioritizing the way they do. But as someone who has followed the rules forever and ever, it is a bit disconcerting to have no teeth in these things.

“You can violate the rules, and I don’t even know if you get a hand slap.”

Agents say Hawkins plays tough, but fair

Hawkins supports tougher legislation and a national clearinghouse for agent registrations. In the meantime, he will keep proselytizing to players and agents — and anyone else who will listen — about the importance of following the rules.

Considering his harsh view of the way some agents operate, you might expect Hawkins to be an unpopular figure in the agent community. But for the reputable ones, he says, he is actually providing a service by weeding out competitors who skirt the rules.

Agents say Hawkins has a reputation for playing tough, but also for playing fair.

“From my experience, he plays no favorites,” said Dunn, who also represents former Oregon coach and current San Francisco 49ers coach Chip Kelly. “Given my tenure with Oregon and my relationship with Chip, I should be a favorite son, and I’m not. I’m on equal footing with everybody else.

“I’ve interviewed plenty of guys that I haven’t gotten and a handful of guys that I have. It is very, very difficult to keep politics out of these things, and he’s succeeded in doing that.”

If Hawkins senses that someone is trying to exploit one of his players, though, you can bet his words will have some bite.

“He’s like a bulldog,” said Mikula, the psychotherapist. “He’s very New England assertive.

“Behind that, there’s a really big heart. He does it because he really does care.”