Monthly Archives: April 2015

A Different Standard

09 Thursday Apr 2015

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The NFL sends out a daily briefing to all teams every weekday, and it lists the transactions and minutiae that make up the day-to-day operations of the league. A lot of it is stuff you can read on your favorite website, but some of it is solely for the consumption of team officials.

One of the latter daily listings is for pro days for individual players. In many cases, these are obscure players from small schools. Usually, they are represented by contract advisors who are very new to the profession, and that have limited connections in the business and perhaps a limited understanding of just what most NFL teams are doing this month. There’s probably a good bit of desperation on the part of these players and their agents as they wonder if scouts will actually show up at these workouts. Most often, I don’t think teams send representatives. After all, it’s quite late to be gathering 40 times and rep totals.

At any rate, when I see these individual workouts for players, I wonder why they’re necessary. Why did this player not go to a bigger school’s pro day, or register for an NFL Regional Combine? If the player is from a bigger school, was he truly not healthy when his teammates worked out, or did he his 40 time would not be impressive time and he wanted to put off the inevitable?

I was at a pro day for an FCS school last month, and as I talked with an established agent I’ve known for a long time, we talked about his client, who was working out that day. Though his client was really the only player teams wanted to evaluate, the young man kept coming over to his agent and pointing out things that didn’t make this the perfect day. He was asked to run against a light wind twice. The conditions were a little damp. He was shortchanged on his times. He didn’t get the start he needed because his shoes were worn in the wrong places. There were dozens of similar excuses, and he wasn’t the only player that had these issues.

My friend was a little dismissive whenever his client would return with another complaint. Later, the agent explained that he was trying to get the BS out of the young man. He was trying to squeeze him a bit, to pressure him, to get him to ‘man up’ and realize that if he was truly an NFL player, he’d have to perform even when he didn’t get the benefit of every doubt. He didn’t have nearly as much margin for error as he thought he had.

Later, as I discussed a different player with one of the team’s coaches, he said that when the team faced smaller schools from out-of-the-way programs, this young man always showed up energized and looking to make a big splash, and often, he did just that. However, when the school played ‘up’ against impressive FBS schools, the young man had excuses for why he couldn’t perform that week: migraines, hamstring issues, whatever.

I know there’s a fine line to walk between being your best physically or just gutting through a difficult workout while you’re in pain or facing some strain or pull that taxes you. Sometimes, players penalize themselves when they ‘suck it up’ and hope that evaluators give them credit for playing through an injury. The point is, the truly elite players always find a way to excel, and the ones that are on the bubble find themselves on the outside looking in not because of circumstances, but because they needed every break to go their way just to make it into consideration for the league.

Let me give this disclaimer, as I often do in this space: I’m not here to rain on anyone’s parade. At the same time, if you’re a young NFL hopeful or a person who represents one, recognize that only the truly special talents make it onto the big stage. The NFL is for the great player, or at least the young man with the physical tools to be great. If you (or your client) aren’t one of those people, that doesn’t mean you’re not a very good athlete. It only means you’re part of the 99.9 percent that doesn’t quite measure up to the extraordinary standard that all NFL players meet.

WSW: Travel trials

08 Wednesday Apr 2015

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Today, I was talking to an agent who’s had struggles satisfying a high-maintenance client during travels among teams. It reminded me of my own experience working with a high-maintenance client several years ago.

I had a friend in realty who was working with a Texans player living in Atlanta. She had set everything up so the player could come into town, hit several locations over two days, then fly back with minimal hassle. Of course, things rarely go as planned when you’re working with athletes used to having all their travel taken care of for them by their college and NFL teams.

My friend had worked hard to verify that they’d fly in early and we’d pick the young man up from the airport, then whisk him to several houses over two days, and put him back on a plane the following evening. Things got interesting when we got word from his financial planner who was with us in Houston that the player had missed his flight. That wasn’t entirely surprising. However, it was surprising when we showed up to pick him up and, though he insisted that he was in the pickup area, he was nowhere to be found. Oh, by the way, he wasn’t alone; turns out that, at his insistence, his financial planner had bought his ‘advisor,’ a street runner, a ticket as well.

So his realtor and I were at the airport planning to pick up one player, but it turns out, we were at the wrong airport (there are two in Houston) and needing to make room for two. OK. We’d roll with the punches. But it would take about 45 minutes to get to the other airport, which would mean the first half of the day was wiped out and the various house visits she’d planned would have to be completely altered.

The next 24 hours were like a comedy act. The next day, the realtor and I arrived to find his party had grown to a full processional, and his posse traveled in a convoy of vehicles behind us as we visited house after house. My friend and I went from realtor and host to caterer, entertainer, travel concierge and a handful of other duties associated with keeping several people happy.

It’s just a reminder that things rarely run exactly as planned, especially when you’re trying to keep a young man who’s rarely had to face the basic accountability that ‘regular people’ live with day to day. It’s something to prepare for as you consider a career in football.

A Viewer’s Guide to Draft Coverage

06 Monday Apr 2015

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Now that we’re less than 30 days from the draft, you may be doing plenty of Googling your favorite team’s draft needs and trying to read everything you can on who they may be drafting. Here are a few things to remember.

  • It’s all based on clicks: One of my good friends runs a football site, and even though it’s relatively new, he’s gotten pretty good traction and is making money with it. How? He’s learned that people will click on any link if it includes their favorite player. So, for instance, he publishes something on Andrew Luck — and I mean anything — and then spends all his time placing it on message boards, Bleacher Report comment sections, any anything fan-based that will get him clicks. Here’s what’s interesting: he has his interns write his stories, and really doesn’t care about the content. He knows no one is editing it and that, in the long run, he doesn’t even care if it’s quality work. He just wants to get people to hit his link. That’s where the money is. So keep that in mind when your team is the Patriots and some website says they’re looking Mariota or Winston.
  • Not even NFL teams know how the draft is going to go: I remember a couple years ago a scout telling me his team was having its personnel staff rank undrafted free agents. They were ranking players they didn’t think were worth drafting. That’s ludicrous. Every year, several players a team rated as draftable fall through the cracks. In fact, probably at least half of players that go undrafted held draftable grades by at least half the teams. That’s why guys that are rated as undrafted free agents are the ones that will be lucky to actually be undrafted free agents. Those guys are the ones that held a fifth- to seventh-round grade.
  • Trading down is way easier said than done: It seems so elementary that a team that has a high pick can trade down and get a bunch of lower picks, and it’s all even Steven. In fact, this whole chart is predicated on this idea, but it rarely works out that way. There are salary considerations, plus the ‘sum’ of an impact player in the first round is rarely worth the ‘parts’ — the later-round picks obtained in return — received in return. So when you start seeing those rumors about massive trades up and down, take them with several grains of salt.

Frustration and Foolishness

02 Thursday Apr 2015

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Right now, I’m working on expanding my message to new markets, and it’s funny to see how people whose agenda should be education try to marginalize it.

Here’s an illustration. In the space of two days, I’ve gotten emails from two people (one an agent, one a parent) describing how schools segregated contract advisors from the rest of the attendees at pro day. Virginia Tech and Coastal Carolina went to extraordinary lengths to keep agents from being able to watch and follow their clients, even though these clients no longer had any college eligibility!

To me, a college is talking out of both sides of its mouth when it commits to educating its players  and getting them to the next level, but limits the players’ representatives’ access to these auditions for NFL teams. Shouldn’t agents be the ones with unlimited access, while the parents and friends are restricted? This is upside-down, but I guess, then again, it’s not.

I mean, really, it’s punitive. It’s a school sending a message to contract advisors, I think. The message: you are radioactive and we will jump through every hoop to make sure you are kept at a distance. That’s childish, because it doesn’t affect a team’s big stars. It affects the players on the fringe, the ones that are scratching and clawing for any chance to make it.

Take a look at how many players have risen to NFL stardom after entering the league as undrafted free agents. They are numerous. Maybe they’d be even more numerous if schools took the attitude that we’re going to move heaven and earth to assist your agent, financial advisor, or other representative in his efforts to get you into the league. After all, the school’s going to take full credit during the recruiting process if they do make it.

Forgive the rant, but this is persistent and stupid. This time of year, I hear these stories all the time, and I wish there was something I could do about it. Maybe, slowly, someday I can.

WSW: April Fools

01 Wednesday Apr 2015

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Sorry.

Obviously, I’m not going anywhere. I’m the same guy I was. Still running ITL and journaling regularly in this space for people interested in succeeding in the biz.

I hope you’ll accept a funny War Story, since it’s Wednesday, for your trouble.

In the 90s, before the Internet, ATM cards and Pay Pal, money was a lot different. When coaches were going out to recruit, schools handed them a wad of traveler’s cheques — I’m not even sure if these things still exist — and sent them on their way. Today’s WSW is about one coach I know. He even went on to be an FBS head coach and had great success. Maybe today’s story explains how things had a way of working out for him.

This coach was not especially disciplined. In fact, during his time as an assistant coach in the early 90s, his team had been reluctant to send him on the road, fearful he might get himself into trouble. Eventually, the team relented, sending him to South Florida, around Miami. What could happen, right?

Plenty happened. In his first days in South Florida, he discovered Jai Alai, a kind of ‘team racquetball’ contest that was exceptionally popular in the area in the late 80s/early 90s, especially with gamblers. Back then, pari-mutuel wagering and Jai Alai went together like Miami and vice. In the space of a day or two, two things happened. One, the coach got a crash course in Jai Alai. Two, he became dead broke.

That left him with few options. There were no cell phones, and what would he say if he called the school anyway? For the coach, a burly sort, there was one thing to do: find the bars on the Hispanic side of town, where he had an idea.

He’d wait for things to get busy, then challenge a fellow bar patron to arm wrestle. Arm wrestling was this coach’s game, and this became his hustle. For several nights, he spent the evenings arm wrestling for $10 a match, then sleeping in his car.

At this point, fortune smiled on him. Details are scarce, but either he was able to locate a former coach in South Florida, or he bumped into him a friend one night at the bar. Either way, he found a sympathetic ear, and his friend allowed him to sleep on his floor. Now the coach had access to a phone and non-vehicular lodging.

From there, with a small loan from his friend and his earnings toppling arm wrestling enthusiasts, the coach went on a whirlwind recruiting trip, hitting all his stops and making all his contacts before returning to the school. It all worked out, though odds were against it almost from the start.

I like to provide a moral to my anecdotes, or at least make a point. I’m not sure there’s a point today. Maybe today’s lesson is that even when things work out, you’ll need a few breaks.  Good thing my friend, this coach, got plenty during his recruiting trip to Florida.