{"id":2206610,"date":"2025-12-20T12:15:41","date_gmt":"2025-12-20T12:15:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2206610"},"modified":"2025-12-20T12:15:41","modified_gmt":"2025-12-20T12:15:41","slug":"divine-sports-entertainment-adds-two-positions-for-talent-representation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/divine-sports-entertainment-adds-two-positions-for-talent-representation\/","title":{"rendered":"Divine Sports & Entertainment adds two positions for talent representation"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Faith-based talent representation agency Divine Sports and Entertainment<\/a> has added two new employees. NFLPA certified agent and former NFLer Jovan Barnes joined the agency as its new president of football and partner. Michelle \u201cShelly\u201d Schmidt, a 30-year industry veteran, will act as Divine\u2019s new head of client Services. Both will be based in Fort Wayne, Ind.<\/p>\n

As part of the move, more than 10 NFL clients Barnes represented with his father, Roosevelt Barnes, at their former agency, Independent Sports and Entertainment, will still be co-represented by the pair despite Jovan Barnes\u2019 flip to Divine. The pair most notably represent Seahawks DL Leonard Williams, who was listed as the 99th best player on the NFL\u2019s top 100 list<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Barnes will complete many of the same duties he had at ISE, but in an expanded role where he will oversee NFL contract advising, NIL dealings, marketing, client services and more.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis will be a great challenge and I\u2019m ready for it. It seemed like it was a perfect fit,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is a new frontier for me and I\u2019m connecting with some other great young men going down this path. It\u2019s been a great journey so far and I feel like I\u2019m just getting started.\u201d<\/p>\n

Schmidt, who also worked at ISE, will be in charge of many of the same tasks she led before like NFL Combine, Pre\u2011Draft support, off\u2011the-field life management, sourcing and negotiating brand deals as well as Hall of Fame and post\u2011career support. Schmidt has been a strong behind-the-scenes advocate for Pro Football HOFers Deion Sanders, Rod Woodson and Devin Hester, as well as dozens more former NFLers.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the end of the day, I look back and we represent big people. We\u2019re faith-based and we\u2019re blessed because these guys [clients] are good guys. I\u2019m the bulldog behind these guys,\u201d Schmidt said. \u201cI love what I do. I love to be involved and I\u2019m not going anywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

The N.Y.-based agency was co-founded in 2017 by NFLPA agents Michael DeSane and Ryan Williams-Jenkins. With the addition of Barnes, the agency now employs six NFLPA certified agents and one NIL agent. In total, the company employs at least 12 individuals. Divine has negotiated over $1B in NFL contracts, $3M in NIL contracts and $10M off marketing deals. The agency helps to represent four Pro Football HOFers (Hester, Woodson, Walter Jones and Derrick Brooks), five college football players and over 20 NFL clients. More will be announced in the coming weeks with the addition of Barnes\u2019 clients.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.sportsbusinessjournal.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Faith-based talent representation agency Divine Sports and Entertainment has added two new employees. NFLPA certified agent and former NFLer Jovan Barnes joined the agency as its new president of football and partner. Michelle \u201cShelly\u201d Schmidt, a 30-year industry veteran, will act as Divine\u2019s new head of client Services. Both will be based in Fort Wayne, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[304804],"class_list":["post-2206610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-nfl"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2206610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2206610"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2206610\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2206611,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2206610\/revisions\/2206611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2206610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2206610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2206610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}