Monthly Archives: February 2018

The 9th annual Capital Preservation Partners ITL Combine Seminar Presented by Sure Sports

23 Friday Feb 2018

Posted by in ITL, Scouts

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I’m pretty excited about our ninth annual seminar. I’m excited about our partners; I’m excited about our program; and I’m excited about seeing so many friends and clients. I’m also excited about the new venture we’ll be introducing next week, The Scouting Network.

I wanted to use this space to provide a quick look at the agenda for Wednesday (7 p.m., Room 126 of the Indiana Convention Center in downtown Indianapolis).

  • 6 p.m.: We’ll start with networking for an hour before we officially kick things off. We’ve expanded the invitation list a bit this year from previous years, and we’ve already got more confirmed attendees with five days to go than we had last year.
  • 7 p.m.: The winner of the top 2017 Draft Class Award will be announced, and a representative from that team will accept the award, provide a few thoughts on the team’s selections and process, and answer a couple of questions from the audience. Want to know which team won, and who’ll be representing the team? We’ll be announcing that this evening in our Friday Wrap. You can register for it here. It’s free.
  • 7:15 p.m.: Our title sponsor, Leo Gjoni of Capital Preservation Partners, will welcome the audience and introduce himself and his service.
  • 7:20 p.m.: Shawn Zobel of Zobel Sport Consulting will introduce our new venture, The Scouting Network. Shawn and I hope to make the Network the place for people in the football scouting and evaluation business — college personnel directors, all-star game organizers, and NFL scouts and former scouts — to learn more about the profession, make and renew acquaintances, and otherwise solidify their respective places in the game. Shawn will lead The Scouting Network in addition to his other projects.
  • 7:30 p.m.: I’ll return to the podium to recognize some of our guests, then I’ll introduce our panel of former NFL scouts.
  • 7:35 p.m.: The members of our panel will each lead things off with a brief summary of their respective careers in football and how they got started. Then they’ll field questions from our audience on the business, where it’s going, and other related topics. Our panel will include Matt Boockemeier, who’s worked with the Vikings, Packers and Saints as well as in the UFL and CFL; James Kirkland, who’s the Director of Player Personnel at Illinois after an NFL evaluation career that included work with the Browns, Titans, Falcons and Bears; Matt Manocherian, who was with the Browns and Saints and who now serves as the Director of Football Development for Sports Info Solutions; and Bob Morris, who’s worked with the 49ers and Browns and coached at the college level for more than two decades. Shawn will moderate.
  • 8:45 p.m.: Shawn will deliver brief closing remarks. We hope to wrap things up by 9 p.m. at the latest.

We’re really excited and feel it’s going to be a fun and informative night for anyone in the football business. We’ve opened it up to all members of ITL as well as other members of the football community on the college and pro side.

Though it’s invitation-only, we have limited spots available for people interested in the business. Want in? We’re all about helping people get a leg up on a career in the business. Email us here and we’ll try to work you in.

Taking a Look at Who’s Signing Whom in the ’18 Draft Class

16 Friday Feb 2018

Posted by in Agents

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For the most part, the end of January marks the end of the signing period for any draft class. At that point, all-star games are over, combine prep for most players is a month old, and with a few exceptions — in this year’s case, Louisville QB Lamar Jackson and Alabama PT J.K. Scott — everyone going to the combine has representation.

That’s why the list of players signed to SRAs through the end of January provides an interesting snapshot of the draft class as seen by agents and the industry at large. Though the number of signees should still swell by at least 50 percent over the next couple months, and though there are still signed players out there that haven’t popped on the NFLPA’s master list, for the most part, the players that will be signed have been signed.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at the draft class so far.

  • We counted 27 contract advisors this year with at least 10 signees in the ’18 draft class. They are Evan Brennan (29); Tyrone Barnes (27); James Krenis (25); Harold Lewis and Jimmy Sexton (tied at 18); James ‘Bus’ Cook (14); Derrick Fox and Andrew ‘Buddy’ Baker (each with 13); Ed Bailey (12) and Joel Segal (12 each); Jordan Byrd, Carter Chow, Rachel Dahlen, Craig Domann, Brian Levy, Brian Mackler, Justin Vititoe, Ed Wasielewski, Cameron Weiss and Don Yee, all with 11; and seven agents with 10 each: Patrick Collins, Pat Dye Jr., Todd France, Matthew Glose, David Rich, Justin VanFulpen and Robert Walker.
  • While every year a subset of the new agent class takes Year 1 off, hoping to get an early jump on the coming class, two of the names on the above list are rookie agents. Both Atascadero, Calif.-based Dahlen of Brand Sports Management and Buffalo, N.Y.-based Glose of Priority Athletes took a ‘damn the torpedoes’ approach as new contract advisors and signed a healthy-sized class.
  • Brennan and Krenis came out of nowhere to zoom to the top three through January. At the same time last year, each had six clients, while Barnes, last year’s leader, had 20.
  • Krenis is especially of note given his willingness to go over, around and through to sign a player. We counted seven different SRA arrangements for Krenis, including signing two clients by himself. He shares the SRA with Brennan on 23 of his 25 signees.
  • Rockville, Md.-based Scott Bergman had 14 last year through the end of January, and has been a regular leader in the client count over the past 3-4 years. This year, however, he has one signee as of the end of January.

It’s important to understand that simply signing a player doesn’t represent victory, and one could even argue that big classes are a significant negative. Very often, agents signing multiple players are simply trying to increase their odds of finding one who can make a roster. They often find that sizable draft classes are an albatross after the draft when totaling training costs and handling endless phone calls from undrafted and unsigned players asking, ‘what are you hearing?’

Still, taking inventory of SRAs signed, and who’s signing them, is one way to see how agents work, recruit and risk in the modern game.

For more on the 2018 signing class as well as everything else associated with the inside of the game, make sure to sign up for the Friday Wrap. It’s free, and read by nearly 100 members of the NFL scouting community each week, as well as dozens of agents and wealth managers who are wired into the game.

How the Eagles Built a Front Office That Built a Champion

09 Friday Feb 2018

Posted by in Coaches

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Lost in last weekend’s pre-Super Bowl hypefest was a story in the Baltimore Sun with a hidden Eagles subtext. In the story, which announced that GM Ozzie Newsome would hand the reins to Assistant GM Eric DeCosta after the 2018 season, was this paragraph:

“The Ravens have struggled in recent years with losing scouts such as Joe Douglas, Andy Weidl, Ian Cunningham and T.J. McCreight. All four currently work in the front office of the Philadelphia Eagles. . . They had 55 years of working experience combined in Baltimore.”

It’s worth noting that the Eagles won this year despite going against the NFL hiring grain in almost every way when it comes to how its front office was crafted. To wit:

  • Owner Jeffrey Lurie pulled off the unusual move of demoting the de facto GM, Howie Roseman, while keeping him in the building. Equally surprising: Roseman accepted the exile, then returned stronger and better after a year of growth on the business side.
  • When hiring GMs, the league tends to pick from the Packer, Seahawk or Patriot tree. Two of the last four GMs hired in the last two months (Cleveland’s John Dorsey and Green Bay’s Brian Gutekunst) were well-rooted in the Packers’ ways, while the three hired in 2016 (Miami’s Chris Grier, Detroit’s Bob Quinn and Tennessee’s Jon Robinson) came off the Patriots’ branches. But the Eagles have gone their own way. Except for Senior Personnel Executive Trey Brown, none of their senior executives are from those three organizations.
  • You could argue that the Eagles put as much emphasis on the pro side of scouting as any team in the league. While most teams put most weight on the college side, the Eagles have six scouts with ‘pro’ in their title. While numbers aren’t available for other teams, that total is likely to be among the highest, if not the highest, in the league.
  • Unlike teams that rely on continuity in their scouting staff, the Eagles have been aggressive about making changes until finding the right mix. Joe Douglas, the V.P. of Player Personnel, has been with the team less than two years. Assistant Director of Player Personnel Andy Weidl was hired the same day as Douglas. Director of College Scouting Ian Cunningham, Player Personnel Executive J. McCreight and Director of Pro Scouting Dwayne Joseph all have two years or less in the Eagles’ front office.

Winning a Super Bowl often means boldly going in a direction that defies conventional thinking in a league full of copy cats. Credit Owner Jeffrey Lurie with having the courage to go with his gut and trust his instincts in assembling a winning front office.

For a different look at how the Eagles built their roster into a Lombardi Trophy-worthy outfit, take a look at Shawn Zobel’s analysis of the team. His piece leads off this week’s ITL Friday Wrap. It’s free, and it goes out to more than 4,000 people across the football business each week. It’s free, and you can register for it here.

Shawn is a scout with experience working in the NFL at the team level and for the league office. He owns TheSidelinePass.com and Zobel Sports Consulting; hosts the Football Headquarters Podcast with 1500 ESPN Twin Cities; and has won three state championships as an assistant at Eden Prairie (Minn.) High School.

 

 

 

Calling an Audible: Four Questions with James Walker

02 Friday Feb 2018

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One of the best things about going out on the all-star circuit is the people I meet. Pretty much, if you’re at the Senior Bowl, you’re either part of the business or you’re hoping to become part of it. One of the people I met at this year’s trip to Mobile is part of both of those groups.

James Walker recently left ESPN to become a part of Adeptus CPAs. Moving from sports media to numbers-crunching is not a particularly common path, so I wanted to dig into why and how he wound up with Adeptus. My questions and his answers follow.

Why leave sports media for sports accounting?

“The timing couldn’t be better. It’s no secret that sports media is having issues. Recently ESPN, my former employer, had two rounds of layoffs last April and November that impacted hundreds of talented people. Fortunately I wasn’t part of those layoffs. But it did force me to rethink my career and decide if this was a battle I wanted to fight for the next 25 years, because I’m still in my 30s. Over the summer I decided getting out the business entirely was the best long-term play. So I began discussing this with my business contacts in August and received some good feedback and interest. I was very happy to ultimately land with Adeptus CPAs.”

Why was Adeptus a good match?

“They are creative and forward thinkers, and so am I. What other CPA firm would hire a sports reporter without accounting experience? What longtime sports reporter, who spent the past decade at ESPN, would give up his life’s work to join a CPA firm? It took outside-the-box thinking on both sides to make this work. Adeptus was willing to create a new position for me as lead recruiter, which I am very grateful for. And I am leveraging my 15 years of pro sports experience, contacts, access and credibility into accounting. We have a good long-term vision for where things are headed and are very excited.”

What are some of those long-term goals?

“We want to be the go-to accounting firm for pro athletes, coaches and executives. That’s the primary goal. Currently we are doing most of our business in the NHL and MLB. I will recruit all pro sports but a major objective is to boost our NFL clientele, which is in my wheelhouse. Something that was really exciting while researching the sports accounting industry is there is no single, dominant player in the marketplace. There is not a CAA for sports accounting, for example, who already has a gigantic chunk of the industry. Most of the work is spread out. I very much believe in the quality of work and team we have at Adeptus. So why not us?”

How will you look back at your reporting career?

“Very fondly. No doubt there will be things I miss, such as covering the big games and interesting stories. But I accomplished everything I wanted and more in sports reporting. I covered four Super Bowls, the Pro Bowl, NBA Finals, major college sports and did national television and radio hundreds of times. I traveled all across the country and worked at the No. 1 sports network for 10 years. Throughout my life I’m usually self-aware when it’s time to make important changes, and this is another example of that. Fortunately I still get to be involved in sports but in a different capacity.”