University of the Pacific alumnus Scott Boras, named the most powerful sports agent in the world for the eighth time in nine years by Forbes Magazine, will be the 2023 commencement speaker for the McGeorge School of Law

Boras pursued his undergraduate studies at Pacific while playing for the Pacific Tigers baseball team, then went on to earn his Doctor of Pharmacy from Pacific’s Thomas J. Long School of Pharmacy in 1977 and then his law degree from McGeorge in 1982.

Boras will speak to McGeorge graduates Saturday, May 28 at the Sacramento Memorial Auditorium for the school’s 99th commencement ceremony.

“Every day, Scott Boras demonstrates the value of a McGeorge School of Law education,” said Dean Michael Hunter Schwartz. “I am thrilled to welcome him back to Sacramento to inspire McGeorge’s Class of 2023.”

Boras is currently ranked as the No. 1 sports agent in the world eight out of the nine times Forbes Magazine has conducted the ranking since 2013. 

Boras is the founder, owner and president of the Boras Corporation, a sports agency in Newport Beach, California. Boras Corporation was the sixth most valuable sports agency in the country in 2022, with 106 clients and more than $3.8 billion in active playing contracts.

Boras is the first agent to negotiate $50 million, $100 million, $200 million and $330 million dollar baseball contracts for players. In the baseball litigation arena, he has won the most arbitration cases in Major League history than any other agent. Boras Corporation is the only agency in history to negotiate annual player contracts in excess of $1 billion, which has been achieved three times in the past four years.

He is currently earning a record-breaking $191 million in commissions from his client base, breaking his own previous record of $161 million in commissions in 2020. In Dec. 2019, Boras negotiated contracts for six high-profile clients totaling more than $1 billion within the span of three weeks.

Boras’ client roster is star-studded. Boras engineered nearly half of Major League Baseball’s largest contracts that exceed $200 million. His largest client contracts include:

1.    $330 million deal for Bryce Harper (2019, Philadelphia Phillies)
2.    $325 million deal for Corey Seager (2021, Texas Rangers)
3.    $324 million deal for Gerrit Cole, (2019, New York Yankees)
4.    $280 million deal for Xander Boegarts (2022, San Diego Padres)
5.    $275 million deal for Alex Rodriguez (2007, New York Yankees)

Boras is a native of Sacramento who grew up on a dairy farm. He played four years of minor league baseball for the St. Louis Cardinals and Chicago Cubs organizations. During his undergraduate studies, Boras was a student-athlete, team captain and All-American on the baseball team. Knee injuries cut his baseball career short which led him to pursue his legal education.

After law school, Boras worked as an associate in the pharmaceutical defense department of a major Chicago law firm before founding the Boras Corporation.

In 1995, Boras was inducted into University of the Pacific’s Athletics Hall of Fame. In 2010, Boras was awarded Pacific’s Distinguished Alumni Award, an award recognizing individuals whose outstanding achievements and service to humanity have brought credit to the university. In 2021, he was inducted into the Sacramento Baseball Hall of Fame. Baseball America named him among Major League Baseball’s most influential non-players in the last 25 years.

Boras also was McGeorge’s commencement speaker in 2002. Previous commencement speakers include retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, actor Raymond Burr, members of Congress, governors, lieutenant governors, attorneys general, mayors, university presidents, law school deans and 51 judges.