How did The League get so many NFL players on the show?

We were very lucky in the beginning.  Antonio Gates came on the show (the spa scene with Ruxin) before we had ever been on the air, so he took a real leap of faith. As did Terry Bradshaw. 

In Season 2 things started to take off.  Jackie used to work with CAA and made great relationships with their agents, along with other folks like EAG, Rosenhaus and Relativity. More than anything, those agents trusted us that everyone who will come on looks great, and has a blast.  We always tell them, all they have to do is be themselves. Our guys are going to be the ones who look like idiots. We had Terrell Suggs, Josh Cribbs on that season.

By Season 3 there was a real shift - the players were now watching the show. They heard of it from their teammates who had been on. Or fans would solicit them on twitter: A lot of "Hey man when are you going to be on The League!" Opening that year with "The Shiva Bowl Shuffle" really delivered on the promise of the wish fulfillment of the show. You win your league and you make a video for the message board rubbing it in everyone's faces with the NFL players who got you there.

The premiere of Season 4 was the defining moment that we had really become a destination for NFL players. Recreating the NFL draft as fantasy with Rich Eisen, RGIII, Trent Richardson, The Kalil Brothers was easy to put together. The rookies were watching the show in college and now got cameos when they went pro. But even though we had a lot of incoming phone calls, some big fish were tougher to catch. Eric Shenks and the entire team at Fox Sports was so supportive - making introductions to Terry in Season 1 and then helping us convince Jerry Jones and The Dallas Cowboys to let us shoot at their training camp. (And let Taco run through it naked).
That episode  - all of those things coming together, along with Jason Witten and DeSean Jackson - was a real game changer. FX was thrilled when they watched the first cut. The NFL a little less so when they realized 9 players were in that one episode alone. 
The NFL literally thought we had broken into the Draft in NYC and shot the scenes.
Little did they know it was months later at the Avalon in Hollywood.

And from then on more players wanted to be on the show than we could ever realistically write in.  This isn't Arliss. These are just 6 schmendricks from Chicago.