This week, I’m going to try to answer a very difficult, but very popular, question that I get this time of year: If I’m an agent who doesn’t have a client working out, or I’m going to Indy to network as an aspiring NFL scout, when should I be there?

I should start by saying there’s no right answer to this. It all depends on your budget, your schedule flexibility, your willingness to “put yourself out there,” and why you’re going to Indy.

So when should you arrive and when should you depart? You may be one of those people who has a job or classes during the work week, and good on you if you do. However, if you don’t arrive until Friday night or Saturday, the week is pretty much over. Workouts start Thursday night, which means they’re pretty much over on Sunday. if you don’t arrive until the weekend, much of the hay is already in the barn. I recommend arriving Wednesday and leaving Friday or Saturday. Obviously, Wednesday of combine is a key part of our year at Inside the League, which we discuss weekly in our Friday Wrap (register for it here).

There’s another important point to be made. The NFL Combine is still a workplace for the league’s scouts and executives (as well as the players working out), so unless you are employed by an NFL team or are part of the media covering things, you are gonna feel left out. Indianapolis is a great place to hold the combine, but it’s a cold-weather city in March, so everything takes place indoors, unlike at all-star games. You need a badge to get through the door most places you’ll want to be, but there are shortcuts to getting access if you know a few tricks.

I’m going to focus on two tracks: aspiring scout and aspiring agent.

AGENT

• If your future is in player representation, you’re probably going to want to meet as many scouts as you can and maybe even catch the eye of a big firm that might hire you later.
• Unfortunately, there is no one hotel where agents tend to stay. All i can tell you is stay downtown if you can afford it. If you’re really budget-minded, stay near the airport (you can find places there for a fraction of the cost, though the Uber rides may balance things a little). I generally use the restaurants downtown as my “office” when I’m in Indy, and you can, too. i recommend this place. It’s centrally located and has really big booths.
• More bad news: The NFLPA no longer holds its all-agents meeting during combine. instead it’s held online the week before. So there’s no central location for contract advisors.
• If you’re looking for a place to stake out, the halls and corridors of the Indiana Convention Center are probably a good place to start during the day. It’s kinda like the “highway” of downtown Indy. Lots of vendors set up here for that reason. In the evenings, you’re looking at the Yard House, Harry & Izzy’s, Prime 47 and, of course, St. Elmo’s.

SCOUT

• If you want to be hired as a scout, you’ll need to be around scouts. One place to catch them is the Starbucks at the JW Marriott downtown. You’ll want to be there quite early; there’s actually been a whole story written about this in The Athletic. The key is patience and deference to the people you meet. If you’re too solicitous, you’re just going to make people angry.
• The JW has probably replaced The Omni as the best networking location in Indianapolis. The NFL buys out the entire hotel (or at least most of it), and most NFL teams hunker down there. Where scouts are, agents (and everyone else) tend to be.
• The hotel bar, Velocity, is also a popular place for scouts who want to catch a late beverage.

This week, NFLPA Executive Director DeMaurice Smith called for the end of the NFL Combine. It’s probably bluster, and it’s unknown if it’s something Smith will continue to push for, but when a person in Smith’s position speaks, you have to consider what he says.

That’s why I asked a few of my friends in scouting what it would mean for there to be no combine. It’s a worthy question because, in the space of about 10 years, we’ve seen the annual Indianapolis workouts go from a mostly hidden evaluation exercise to a large media phenomenon which includes whistle-to-whistle coverage. That’s great for Internet scouts, but it’s made the job of NFL scouts a little less comfortable, at the very least.

Here are the responses we got and the points scouts made:

• Why make medical examinations less efficient?: “They still have to have some type of central medical testing take place. It wouldn’t be feasible to have the players go to 32 clubs for exams, so I don’t ever see that component going away.  I could see them eliminating the interviews and making it a medical event with on-field workouts for TV.  They aren’t going to lose that programming for NFL network.”
• A lot of talented players might go undrafted: “It would definitely affect the way things are evaluated. . . Would make it harder on the players with removing the medical aspect. . . Would create more financial and logistical challenges for NFL teams, college teams and agents as well.”
• T-30 visits would have to be expanded: “My guess would be that there would be more medical question guys brought in for top 30 (visits), or the league may allow more than 30 visits. I don’t think it would affect pro days too much. There will still be the usual coverage with scouts and coaches to hash out questions.”  
• It would ultimately mean more work for the players: “If you don’t have them all in one place, the kid will have to most likely (be evaluated medically, be interviewed, and work out) a bunch of times with all the teams individually. It’s big business, and when clubs invest big money, they want to get as much information as possible to make decisions. It won’t change the information they want from the kids, I believe, just the method and logistics of getting it.”

Is Smith really serious? Time will tell. Ultimately, though, it probably wouldn’t benefit players the way Smith thinks it would. . . or at least that’s what scouts think.

To learn more about how scouts — and others around the league — think, make sure you’re reading our weekly newsletter, the Friday Wrap. You can register for it here.

Wednesday, I spoke to my friend Jane Verneuille, who’s in charge of credentials for the Senior Bowl. Jane is kind of like the “mom” of the game, beloved by people like me who’ve been coming for decades. Anyway, she told me the number of credentials awarded this year was about the same as it always is. That took me by surprise, because the talking point among people here all week has been how the numbers are down. It just doesn’t feel like the same place it was maybe five years ago, before Covid.

Maybe it’s not true. Jane would never lie. The numbers are the numbers. Still, everyone I spoke to this week said the same thing: where is everybody?

I think the main factor, as pointed out by one friend this week, is that teams don’t send coaching staffs to Mobile anymore. It’s more than just the two teams that used to staff the game; you don’t see any head coaches, coordinators or position coaches here, and at one time, you saw them all. My old joke used to be that on your first day at the Senior Bowl, you wanted to take a selfie if you saw Sean Payton or Mike Tomlin in the bathroom, but by Day 3, you just wanted to go to the bathroom. These days, coaches just aren’t here.

Here are a few more reasons Mobile felt a little more empty this week.

• The closure of the second floor commons area at the Renaissance Mobile Riverview Plaza Hotel is the biggest post-Covid change in Senior Bowl policies. The old joke used to be if someone set off a bomb on the second floor of the team hotel on Tuesday or Wednesday, they’d have to cancel the draft. These days, however, if you aren’t directly involved with the game or the league, you can’t go up the escalator. Everyone who has been coming here since before 2019 feels the difference and laments it.
• That’s not the only barrier segregating NFL personnel from everyone else. Since the game moved from Ladd-Peebles to Hancock Whitney Stadium, scouts and executives sit on one side of the stadium and everyone else stays on the other side. The view is the same; you just don’t get a chance to exchange pleasantries with the friends you’ve made the way you used to. That’s probably a good thing. They should be allowed to do their jobs without being bothered. Still, it’s different.
• The Shrine Bowl schedule has had an undeniable impact. “Arrival day” used to be Monday; now that practices in Las Vegas overlap Senior Bowl week, no one gets here that early anymore. What’s more, because the Pro Bowl is also in Vegas, people leave earlier.
• Similarly, weigh-ins used to be Tuesday’s must-see event. These days, like all but one all-star game, the Senior Bowl doesn’t even have public weigh-ins anymore. That’s one less opportunity for everyone on the coaching and evaluation side to be in one room together.
• I think that the absence of NFL coaches here has taken away some of the “job fair” aspect of the game. Fired college and pro staffs used to descend on Mobile with resumes in hand. I think these days, the bigger names in coaching are relying on their agents to do their networking.
• The AFCA Convention has probably replaced the Senior Bowl, to some degree, as an offseason rendezvous point. It’s held much earlier in the month, but it serves the same purpose.
• The Senior Bowl used to be the third or fourth week in January, but now that the game bumps up against Signing Day, I think that has had a big impact on the number of college personnel evaluators who used to make it here.
• XFL camps are under way. That’s a lot of coaches and scouts who might otherwise be in Mobile, either looking for jobs or simply renewing acquaintances.
• One thing I heard all week is how Mobile has been “built out” much more than in the past. It’s true; there are more restaurants and hotels, and some of them are outside of the downtown area. This has had an undeniable impact on the bars and eateries that used to be packed this week. It shocked me to find out that Wintzell’s Oyster House, which used to be a Senior Bowl institution, wasn’t even open on Monday. Later in the week, there were multiple empty tables during the evening rush. The restaurant is clearly facing staffing and service problems, much as the rest of the country is, but this doesn’t explain the obvious dip in demand.
• Financial professionals, especially those trying to break into the industry, used to be ubiquitous here, but they don’t get credentialed anymore. Granted, they don’t need to if they just want to watch practices or gather downtown, but I think many of them feel intimidated without the stamp of approval that comes with holding a badge.
• The number of people covering the game, sharing their opinions and interviewing players has grown immensely. Maybe people feel they don’t need to be here as much anymore.

I think some of the void has been filled by aspiring NFL scouts from all walks of life. Some of them are from college personnel departments, but a lot of the people I’ve met have never worked for a college or pro team. Their fascination with player evaluation brings them to Mobile with hopes that they can make a connection that could be life-changing.

Mobile used to be the one place where everyone in the scouting and player representation industries gathered for one low-pressure week. That sense of community isn’t gone, but it’s certainly lessened. Not seeing people carrying around the faux-leather Senior Bowl notebooks that used to be handed out kinda makes someone like me sad. It’s nobody’s fault, I guess, but it’s a bit of a downer, and I’m not sure it will ever be the way it once was.

Last year around this time, we asked several friends in the industry about Joe Schoen, Kwesi Adofo-Mensah and Ryan Poles, who had just been installed as the new general managers of the Giants, Vikings and Bears, respectively. Here’s what it looked like.

It’s a new year, and there are new GMs in Nashville and Phoenix. We thought we’d ask around about them, as well. Here’s what they told us.

Monti Ossenfort, Cardinals (former Director of Player Personnel, Titans)

• “Well-organized but will need to become his own man. Bided his time and climbed the ladder. Heavily influenced by (his time in New England); will be interesting to see what new systems and ideas he will put in place. Very hard worker who is organized, but who will need to put experienced guys around him he trusts to allow him to run the entire organization from a football operations standpoint.”
• “Genuine individual, active listener and skilled leader!”
• “Monti is a well-respected person and evaluator in the personnel community. Very good work ethic. Always a hard worker when I went to schools and was on the road with him. Very good in school skills, with knowledge of coaches and contacts at each school. Excellent people skills. Very low-key, not an attention-seeker, and just goes about this job. Will be a popular GM for scouts that want to work with him because of his management skills and sterling reputation.”
• “Very high-character person that treats people the right way. Handles himself well. Doesn’t look for attention. Low ego. Very good leadership and people skills. Has come up the right way and didn’t skip any steps. Has been around consistent winners his entire career. Will take the foundation of the NE system and make it his own. I’d bet on him to succeed.”
• “Monti is A-plus all-around. The person, the scout, the leader, tremendous in all facets. Outstanding ability to collaborate and take every angle into decision-making processes.”

Ran Carthon, Titans (former Director of Player Personnel, 49ers)

• “Very sharp. Very organized. Outstanding evaluator whose voice has grown in that organization each year since his arrival. Got personality and does a great job mentoring young scouts for them. Niners have a deep bench but he will missed.”
• “Excellent communicator. Really cares about relationships.”
• “The job won’t be too big for him. He will be prepared. He knows how to treat people and will be a solid leader.”

• “Ran has a well-roundedness about him that is unmatched. It goes without saying he has the knowledge/history of the game and has put in the work – that’s clear. But his authenticity and charisma are what make him who he is. He’s true to his roots and makes you feel like someone is always in your corner. . . I’ve never seen players interact with an executive like they do with him, either. Very natural.”

For more insider takes on the game, make sure you’re reading our weekly newsletter, the Friday Wrap. You can sign up for it here.