Rich “Big Daddy” Salgado has been around the NFL Draft for 27 years, a larger-than-life mascot of sorts for football insiders who know the burly yet gentle athlete insurance salesman for far more than his risk products. But he almost didn’t make it this week to what is scheduled to be his 28th draft.
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Like many in New York, the 6-foot-4 Salgado contracted COVID-19, sending him recently to the hospital for four days, two of which he was on oxygen as he battled fluid buildup in his lungs. He is still recuperating at his Long Island home.
“Well, you want to laugh, I survived an aneurysm, I’ve survived a divorce, and now I have survived coronavirus,” he said. “So I’m like, ‘God’s not ready to take me yet.’”
When that does happen, the NFL family would lose not only a disability and life insurer who has had over 500 clients during his career and expects six new ones to be drafted this week, but also someone who behind the scenes is one of the great networkers in football.
“I get a lot of players that will come up to me and be like, ‘Hey, I didn’t know you knew Big Daddy’ or ‘I didn’t know you grew up with Big Daddy,’” said Jacksonville Jaguars head coach Doug Marrone, who has known him since the 1980s after unsuccessfully trying to woo him to Syracuse — Salgado played at Maryland. “Even people around the league, or the coaches, it never ceases to amaze me how many people he knows from a network standpoint. From owners, I would imagine, to people in the front office, everyone knows him.
“It’s hard especially in this league to have a relationship with so many different types of people,” added Marrone, a Salgado client.
It’s difficult to sum up exactly what besides insurance Salgado does that makes him so key in the NFL, but it seems to be a mix of constant introductions, gift-giving, favors and knowing just about everyone. If a coach needs to unplug discreetly, Salgado is there with a faraway vacation rental. He has references for divorce lawyers, doctors, money managers — you name it. Someone knows a sick kid; Salgado is there with game tickets.
Salgado, whose company is named Coastal Advisors, got his start in the sports insurance business after graduating from Maryland in 1989. He moved to Pittsburgh to look after the affairs of his college roommate, Steelers quarterback Neil O’Donnell. While around Pittsburgh sports, he got into the insurance business and quickly began to make his mark.
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Athletes have been known to blow through their money, thinking they are invincible, so Salgado was always in their ears about the need for life insurance, disability and other risk-reducing vehicles. He even once tried to market his own line of shoulder pads, with the slogan ‘the guy who protects you off the field now protects you on the field.’ The pads didn’t pan out.
More than three decades later, his influence is obvious just standing with him in a hotel for a few hours during February’s NFL combine, an event he attends to pitch incoming players (he said he met with 20 of them that week). During a few hours the Friday morning of the combine in Indianapolis, Salgado can barely move a few feet without an agent, coach or industry professional stopping to glad-hand him.
“Look, he’s family, it’s relationships, his family is connected,” said Wasserman’s Doug Hendrickson, a Salgado client and one of the many agents who stopped to exchange industry information with him. “You know, he knows everybody. He’s dialed in with the right people. I trust him. And when it comes to getting disability quotes and different insurance stuff, he’s our go-to for that.
“He knows the wife, the kids, everybody else, he’s the best. Look, at the beginning in life, it’s not what you know. So, it’s who you know, it’s his network. He’s got a huge Rolodex.”
Salgado can even get the press-shy from different walks of life to sing his praises. Later that morning at the combine, it was new Washington Redskins head coach Ron Rivera who embraced Salgado. Seeing a reporter, he asks the pen get sidelined. A few minutes later after learning the notepad is for a story on Salgado, Rivera commands the writing implement to re-emerge.
“This is the guy, he is the best kind of person,” Rivera said. The coach’s insurance is held elsewhere, but he says if he could do it over it would be with Big Daddy.
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Then there is Salgado’s good friend, Sean Hannity, the Fox News personality. Salgado makes appearances on Fox and has befriended it seems like the entire network.
“I don’t like to do interviews, period,” Hannity said. “You can say that. And I’m like, he’s such an amazing human being.
“You know, I’ve been on Fox 24 years, radio 31 years, you know, hate to say it. I mean, I’m like, people say, ‘I’m gonna take a picture with Big Daddy.’ OK, I am nobody. I get it. He cares a lot about helping athletes manage their money, manage their lives, manage fame in a very, very open, down-to-earth realistic way.”
Hendrickson and Salgado (Daniel Kaplan / The Athletic)
Salgado got his nickname in high school and college, and it stuck. He even partnered 20 years ago with then-NFL linebacker Mo Lewis on what turned out to be a short-lived T-shirt line bearing his nickname.
“A lot of people start off calling him Rich when they first meet him, and then he just says, hey, like, you know, people just start getting wind it’s Big Daddy,” Marrone said.
In 2008 Salgado had a brain aneurysm and the night before his operation, he had dinner with Jay Glazer and Michael Strahan, his good friends from Fox Sports. Salgado didn’t let on how serious his condition was, even as his dinner mates cracked mortality jokes. Salgado didn’t want to burden anyone.
History repeated itself with his COVID-19 diagnosis. Only when out of the woods did Salgado tell people he had more than the bronchitis he had been saying he had.
Back at the combine, Salgado and his brother, Jim, the nickel coach of the Buffalo Bills, talk about who is going to coach the brothers’ annual youth football camp in Long Island in June. They hope Steve Spagnuolo might do the honors this year (presumably the camp like any large gathering could get canceled because of social distancing orders).
As they collaborate, a steady stream of different parts of the football business universe interacts with them that morning, a Nike executive; athlete lender Leon McKenzie; LA Chargers vice president of football administration Ed McGuire; Carl Dunbar, the offensive line coach for the Steelers; former players Erik Coleman and Ernie Conwell; a bevy of agents; ESPN reporter Adam Schefter. “I don’t even know he does that,” Schefter said jokingly when asked what besides insurance made Salgado a fabric of NFL inside life.
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Even a fashion executive, Percy Knox, who sells custom suits to athletes, stops to say hello (Salgado himself arranges suits for a small group of broadcasters, including Coleman, and others through Saks).
Salgado got sick not long after returning from the combine. His bout with COVID-19 had a silver lining, he said. He lost 30 pounds off his 340-pound frame. Is it OK to still call him Big Daddy?
“Yeah, of course,” he said. “I am gonna send you a picture. I’m gonna send you two pictures, before and after. You’re gonna die laughing.”
(Photo of Rich Salgado, Roquan Smith, Daryl Johnston: Peter Larsen / Getty Images for Saks OFF 5TH)
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