Monthly Archives: June 2025

Blake’s Summer Sleepers for 2026: Reviewing A Couple Interesting Prospects

27 Friday Jun 2025

Posted by in NFL draft, Scouts

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On Wednesday, former NFL scouting executive Blake Beddingfield presented his Summer Sleepers list and joined dozens of agents on Zoom to discuss them. It’s our second year of presenting his list during the summer, but our sixth year of him doing this (we used to save it for in-season). Here’s a look at a past list.

Anyway, the value in Blake’s list (as well as the timing of it) is in the players he spotlights. All of them enter the season as Day 3/UDFA types, and maybe they never rise above that, but even if they don’t, it’s valuable to know about them. As we’ve recounted on ITL this week, a growing number of players with Day 1 grades already have strong relationships with top firms, and the battle is for the players who aren’t on preseason mock drafts.

Anyway, here are two of the 55 players Blake discussed Wednesday that I found especially interesting.

Barion Brown, WO, LSU: Brown could be the fastest player in the draft, and he will play a role in Year 1 as he’ll be used to stretch defenses and create mismatches. He’ll also be a starting returner immediately. However, he has inconsistent hands and he struggles with the ability to catch a ball with tight zip and velocity. He will “double-catch” it at times, and other times, he just drops the ball. There’s already been a lot of hype this spring about Brown, who transferred in from Kentucky this offseason, but there are red flags due to his hands.

Elijah Pritchett, OT, Nebraska: Pritchett has a first-round body but free agent film. There’s already video of him doing impressive feats of strength during his short time in Lincoln, but it’s not the tools that are in question. Blake got really passionate describing Pritchett’s unrealized potential on Wednesday; you don’t often find the combination of strength, feet and burst that the big ‘Husker shows. He’s already got 12 starts at tackle (mostly right, but one at left) from his time at Alabama, and the potential is tantalizing, but at this point it’s just potential. Still, if the light comes on, he could be elite. The question is, will it?

The point is, unless you’re with one of the top 50 NFL agencies (and maybe, even if you are), you need to know about the players Blake described Wednesday. It’s still early, and if you get in with one of these young men early, it may be the difference when it’s decision time in December or January. For $45 plus tax, you get Blake’s list with his notes and projections on all 55 players, but you also get the video, during which he really gets passionate about who these players are, their NFL comps, and the details you can’t find anywhere else.

2025 NFL Agent Exam: Your One-Month-Out Game Plan

20 Friday Jun 2025

Posted by in Agent Exam, Agents, Getting started

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It seems hard to believe, but on Saturday, we will be exactly a month away from the 2025 NFL Agent Exam, scheduled for Monday, July 21. I think the one-month mark represents the very last chance anyone has to start studying and still have a chance to pass, and even then, there are no guarantees.

If you’re someone who has only been casually studying for the past few weeks and who’s ready to get serious, here’s what I would recommend, based on what we offer for exam prep.

  • Buy our study guide. That’s gotta be Job 1. “The study guide has been really helpful,” said one satisfied customer this month. “I feel pretty good so far,” said another. “Have been using the study guide daily.” It’s $350 plus tax ($378.88 all in) and we can have it in your inbox within an hour of purchase. It’s the Cliff Notes for the CBA. Spend two weeks and learn everything in the guide inside-out. Take time off from work if you have to. Simply sifting through it over a weekend isn’t going to be enough.
  • Try one of our instructional videos. We’ve been having monthly Zoom sessions with our house CBA expert, Chicago-based agent Ian Greengross, since February. They are $50 plus tax each, and they’re especially valuable if you’re more of a visual learner. We’ve got five of them recorded and “in the can,” with another one set for July 8. I recommend you start with our February video. You can buy it here. If you like Ian’s teaching style and find it helpful to see problems worked out step-by-step, you can purchase the others.
  • Buy Practice Exam 1. It’s a 50-question, multiple-choice exam that will help you familiarize yourself with the style of questions, and that’s important. Register for it here. Take it several times (it won’t cost you extra). I’d plan on taking it the weekend of July 5-6. You can shoot fireworks and spend the weekend on a boat some other year.
  • Set aside July 8 and 10. On the 8th (a Tuesday), we’ll have our final monthly Zoom session covering, mainly, drug policy (including forfeitable breach; you’re going to want to see someone work those problems once or twice, I assure you). Cost will be $50 plus tax. Then, on Thursday, we’ll have our “pressure test” session in which we’ll give you 20 fresh, new questions, and one hour after we publish them, Ian will join everyone on Zoom to work them. If you’ve gotten them all correct (they’ll be mostly math problems), you can feel really good about your chances of passing. Cost will be $70. We’ll start registering for both sessions next month.
  • Consider getting Practice Exam 2. You can register for it here (it’s on a separate database from Exam 1). It’s half the cost of Exam 1, which is why you have to buy them in sequence (1 before 2). Purchasing Exam 2 sometime in July just gives you one more time before the exam to figure out if you’re ready.
  • Rest up for the pre-exam Zoom sessions the third week of July. If you’ve been preparing and you feel ready for the exam, the NFLPA’s sessions will be really helpful. If you use them as a review, in other words. If those sessions ARE your exam prep . . . I don’t like your odds.
  • Join us for our final exam review on Saturday, July 19. We’ll cover the topics that the PA tested for on last year’s exam (there were some really off-the-wall questions). It will be a two-hour session and we’ll go through our mock test, question by question. We do this on Saturday so you have a full Sunday to go over things. Cost will be $70. Once again, we’ll start registering for it in mid-July.

This is the game plan I’d follow if I were you and hadn’t really started yet. Shoot, even if I had, I’d probably do it this way. I realize this involves spending some money, but would you rather have a few extra bucks in your pocket but risk failing? It’s going to cost money to succeed in this business, and the investment starts now.

I hope your next month goes well. Best of luck to you.

Thinking and Talking about the $20.5M Schools Need in the Revenue-Sharing Era

13 Friday Jun 2025

Posted by in NIL, Scouts

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Last week, the news broke that revenue-sharing is here. It’s a big story and represents major change in college football, but I think there’s something that’s being ignored: $20.5 million is a lot of money, and raising it is not going to be easy for anybody.

I should start by saying most scouts I’ve known are not especially business-minded. They just expect that the money to do things will be there, so I’m not picking on anyone in the industry for whistling past the graveyard when it comes to money. Still, it doesn’t make it any less true that coming up with the dollars is going to mean great pressures, and they may eventually fall on people in the industry.

At any rate, I texted with several friends at the GM/DPP level at P4 schools. Their response to how their athletic departments would raise the money varied.

  • One referred to a donor drive at his previous school. He didn’t mention what the results were, and I didn’t ask. I just don’t see an annual donor drive not succumbing to fatigue from the alumni.
  • One pointed out that Michigan — the mighty Wolverines — have already announced a 10 percent staff cut due to a revenue decline associated with fewer football home games this season.
  • One said he expects schools to raise money the old-fashioned way — ticket prices and student fees. OK, but I don’t think the old ways are going to be enough. Maybe I’m wrong. He also said he expects cuts to football departments: “Hard to have 50 recruiting, creative or even analysts positions when you have to pay the players.”
  • Only two admitted concern about financial pressures. One said that some schools will get half the sum from athletic department revenues (others will get all of it from there). His will not. I suspect his school is not in the minority. The other one, though feeling far more secure about his own school’s prospects, admitted that “there’s very likely to be teams that don’t have that lying around.”
  • One expressed optimism that schools would come up with the cash because they always have. I’d say that’s accurate, but I still am not confident the money will come without strings attached.

Not many of them thought private equity would be necessary, though I don’t share that opinion. Just this week, we started seeing stories about schools like Alabama, Purdue, Penn State and UCLA and how they are weighing capital infusions. That’s a really big deal. Private equity doesn’t care about tailgating, character development, a band’s performance at halftime, percentage of players who earned their degrees, or anything else. They care about making money. Even as cynical and money-focused as college football has become, that’s a new frontier.

I spoke to a friend who’s knowledgeable about this things, and he said he sees a plus to the new demands because (a) it might force schools to cut back on their excessive staffing and (b) might even curb coaches salaries (though he admitted that’s a long shot). OK, maybe, but I don’t know if a few cuts here and there will be enough to make a difference.

I don’t know if I got any real answers, but I did get confirmation that not all schools will come up with the money the same way, and obviously, this is not going to be a level playing field financially. Like everyone else, I guess I’ll be watching closely to see which schools do this successfully, and which ones figure things out that others can’t. But I have this gnawing suspicion that many will be hurt by these new changes. We’ll see.

2025 NFL Agent Exam: You Gotta Read This Advice

05 Thursday Jun 2025

Posted by in Agent Exam, Agents, Getting started

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With the 2025 NFL Agent Exam less than two months away, we are officially in the red zone as it relates to the exam. At ITL, helping people pass the exam is a big part of what we do, so I recently reached out to several successful test-takers from last summer to get their recommendations on how to study.

They were all very good, but one stood out in particular. It was the email sent me by Norcross, Ga.-based Sean McIlhinney, who put not one, but two, players on 90-man rosters as a rookie agent despite being independent.

What follows is Sean’s response to my request for advice on how to pass, and I recommend that you heed all of it. OK, maybe not ALL of it, but most of it. Here goes:

“Attending the two-day overview that the NFLPA offers (the week before the exam) is a must! I would not have passed the test but for attending those two sessions.

“(As for study aids,) I only used the materials that the NFLPA provided to study. I focused on the item list that the NFLPA gave to study and actually prepared a typed, detailed outline of the item list. The outline was probably 20 pages. I waited until the last week to actually prepare the outline, and it was super helpful because (a) it helped reinforce everything I had learned from just reading the materials and (b) the outline referenced actual pages numbers in the materials given, so I was able to easily go to the NFL materials during the test if and when needed.   

“I truly did not start studying hard until the last month, when I studied every weekend for eight hours per day (Saturday and Sunday) just reading the materials. I would start off at a breakfast place reading, go to a pool and read for a few hours, and then end at another restaurant and read. Three different places each Saturday and Sunday for approximately 2.5 hrs at each venue to keep things exciting.  No real note-taking – I just read to understand and further familiarize myself with the materials. I definitely used my highlighter while I was reading, but no note-taking.  

“The one thing I wish I did was find some sample salary cap practice questions from a prior test to work through before the test. I understood the salary cap rules well going into the test, but I had never seen any practice questions, and thought it would have been very helpful to have done some practice salary cap questions instead of trying to figure it out on the fly during the test.

“I was told that you could not get up and use the bathroom during the test and was genuinely worried about that, so I sported an adult diaper just in case.  No joke. Fortunately, I never used the diaper and passed the test. 

“Good luck!”

For more advice (that might be quite as offbeat), check out this week’s Friday Wrap, which comes out at 7:30 p.m. on Friday’s (duh). You can register here.