Success Quote by Leigh Steinberg

There is a whole origin myth packed into that shrug of a sentence: the idea that expertise doesn’t begin as destiny, it begins as distance. Steinberg’s line works because it punctures the neat narrative we like to tell about sports power brokers-that they were born with a puck in their crib, groomed by some icy lineage. Instead he frames hockey as an imported culture, something strange and faintly irrelevant to a kid raised in sunlit California. The simplicity is doing strategy: it’s a credibility move through self-deprecation.

Steinberg, a businessman best known for turning athlete representation into a high-stakes, media-savvy profession, is also quietly explaining how modern sports become national products. Hockey, long coded as Northern, cold-weather, and (in the U.S.) niche, had to be sold to places where winter is more concept than season. “We knew nothing” is less confession than snapshot of a market: no local rinks, no family traditions, no everyday exposure. It hints at why the NHL’s expansion and TV era mattered, and why intermediaries like agents and marketers gained power-they weren’t just negotiating contracts, they were translating a sport to new audiences.

The subtext is ambition without pedigree. If you didn’t grow up inside the culture, you have to learn it fast, perform fluency, and build networks that substitute for childhood belonging. Steinberg is telling you: I came from the periphery, which is exactly why I learned how the center actually works.