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Three Quick Insights on Scouting

17 Friday Apr 2015

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I’m working on a big story for ITL clients next week that will go into minute detail on the undrafted free agent signing process. That’s about the last truly unexposed part of this business, in my opinion, and for the people I work with (as well as the true NFL junkies out there) it’s need-to-know information.

Anyway, before Monday, I will have interviewed five former NFL scouts. So far, I’ve spoken to two of them at length, and it confirms a couple things I’ve always suspected, but didn’t know for sure. Here are three common denominators I’ve noticed about the scouting process as it pertains to scouts and agents:

  • All scouts are scared to death of the unknown: I remember once asking an NFL GM (the one I discussed earlier this week) if teams pay any attention to the draft guides and the websites.  He said yes, but only to a point. He said that all they cared about was making absolutely sure there wasn’t a name on any of the sites that the scouts hadn’t heard of. To some degree, player evaluation is a massive process of elimination. You want to make absolutely sure there’s not a guy out there that you haven’t at least decided can’t play.
  • NFL teams are always looking for big guys. Always. This is from Jeff Bauer, who until December was Director of College Scouting for the Jets: “Usually offensive tackles are the toughest players to find. If there’s one position, offensive tackles can demand more (from their post-draft signing bonuses) than anybody else because everybody needs tackles for camp. But if (the agent for) a receiver is messing around with a signing bonus, (he) better be careful because there’s one just like (his client) out there.”
  • Agents, like their clients, struggle with reality as it gets closer to the draft. The following comes from Jon Kingdon, until 2013 the Director of College Scouting for the Raiders: “You start calling the agents a week or two prior to the draft.  We would have someone call the agent for everyone we had ranked in the sixth and seventh round and ‘FA – YES’ grades.  He would express our interest in the player, getting as much information as he could from the agent.  He would confirm the phone numbers for the player and the agent and would then tell the agent that if the player does not get drafted, we would be interested in signing him as a free agent. Often the agent would be shocked that we would raise the possibility that his player might not get drafted, and they would tell us how much money they had invested in the player, and that they were sure his player was going in the first three rounds.  More often than not, their player would go undrafted.”

WST: “Scouts Tell Me”

16 Thursday Apr 2015

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For War Story Thursday (since we missed Wednesday), a brief story about draft info and where it comes from (and why).

In the days before Inside the League in the early ’00s, I was able to befriend an NFL GM, and we spoke occasionally. He was amazingly forthright and always spoke openly, which I appreciated. At the time (as now), I was thoroughly interested in how information flowed through the league. Why would an NFL scout risk his highly coveted, hard-to-replace job to tell a beat writer who the team liked in the middle rounds, or even in the early rounds? The GM was succinct.

“I spent some time in the media doing broadcast work between jobs, and I saw that media-friendly GMs and scouting directors always got friendly treatment in return,” he said, as I recall. “It’s a quid pro quo relationship. If you give a reporter good inside scoop, he’ll take care of you when times are tough.”

He added that, most of the time, information that’s coming from the bigger media personalities and better-known ‘draft gurus’ was coming from director types, not road scouts. Directors were the ones that benefited from media exposure and the ones who regularly dealt with beat writers.

In succeeding years, it was fascinating to watch him live this out. This GM became one of the most media-friendly, if not the most media-friendly, NFL officials in the game. I knew a writer who tells a story about being on the golf course when the GM’s team signed its first-rounder, and he got a ring on his cell phone. It was the GM, and while the writer stood on the 15th hole, the GM spelled out in detail the terms of the contract while my friend scribbled madly on his score card. This was an unsolicited call, mind you. That’s a GM who’s eager to stay on writers’ good sides.

I got another dose of reality today when I was chatting with a longtime member of the scouting community who’s now between jobs. During our conversation, he mentioned a current NFL head coach and how much he respected his work ethic and smarts before his voice trailed off. I could tell there were things he’d left unsaid, so I asked him what he didn’t like about the coach.

“He thinks about his career first,” he said. “He’s always talking to the media. That’s why he has his job now, why he got a head coaching position. He’d been feeding the media for years and it paid off.”

I could tell you dozens more stories in this vein, from how agents control information release to how NFL officials have benefited from cozy relationships with people on the representation or media side.

The media can be a fickle beast. Writers will turn on you in an instant if the wind changes direction. Still, if you apply your instincts to the information you read and track it back to who benefits from its release, you can usually figure out where it came from. That’s one of the most important traits you can have as a member of the business. If you don’t already think about where draft info comes from when you read it, change how you read. It will serve you well in your career.

What’s at Stake?

14 Tuesday Apr 2015

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I was watching the broadcast of the St. Louis Cardinals’ home opener yesterday — yes, I recognize that there are other sports besides football — and they were interviewing former Cards great Ozzie Smith. He made a point that I’ve never seen anyone else make at such an occasion.

They were asking him about the pageantry of Opening Day and the happy, feel-good atmosphere of the festivities, especially among the retired players assembled, and how much fun he must be having. I’m paraphrasing, but his response was something along the lines of, “Hey, I can relax because I don’t have to worry about hitting a slider or a curveball here in about a half-hour.”

I think he really nailed it with that quote. I go to pro days, all-star games, training facilities, and all manner of places where non-athletes love to hang out and be part of the throng. Very often, I wonder if the people dressed in their leather and expensive sunglasses really have an appreciation for what the players are thinking and talking about and going through.

Extraordinary athletes have a way of making things look easy. I guess that’s what makes them great. But that feeling of competing, and knowing what the price of failure is if you don’t succeed, is something not everyone knows. Most of us that have been ‘in the arena’ have come to the end of our playing days at times, but not all have known that urgency.

I wasn’t an elite athlete. My standard laugh line when I speak is that, as a walk-on linebacker at an also-ran school (Navy) in the late 80s, I may have been the worst player on the worst team in America. I always knew the end would come, and as a rotational practice player on a struggling team, I was living on borrowed time anyway.

I’m going to have the chance to attend a splashy party in Chicago the night before the draft in a couple weeks. It will be fun; it’s always great to take my wife to meet people I work with on a regular basis in a place where we can all relax and set aside the competitive juices. These events are a nice reward, but I don’t regularly attend things like this, partially by design. I never want to be the guy that forgets about the blood and sacrifice that these young men put into their careers.

You may never have played the game, and if not, that doesn’t preclude you from succeeding in this business. Still, if you’re really looking to climb the football ladder, please don’t do it for the parties, or the glamor, or the life. Don’t be ‘that guy.’ Make sure you’ll bleed just as much as your clients if they don’t make it.

High Turnover

13 Monday Apr 2015

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I was talking to one of my friends this morning. He’s one of the few people I know who’s successfully transitioned out of the agent business and into a related world where he can still travel in the same circles.

In our conversation, we were discussing the players that will be invited to Chicago to be in the vaunted ‘green room’ on draft day. These are the players, their agents and the rest of the extended party that sit at grand tables and wait for the names to be called. He told me, to my surprise, that one major firm won’t be attending the draft this year.

I guess it’s not that surprising, really. The firm has been hit by transition in its contract advisor lineup of late, and the entertainment company that owns the firm probably lacks the big margins that come with other parts of the football industry at large. What’s more, this hasn’t been a big year for the agency, and it doesn’t have the long list of highly touted players it normally has, for a number of reasons. But it reminded me of the old bromide credited to ex-NFL head coach Jerry Glanville, that the NFL stands for ‘Not For Long.’ It’s a joke, but it’s really true.

One of the things I always tell new agents is that this business turns over about every 3-4 years. When I launched ITL 1.0 in 2002, the famous lawsuit pitting Leigh Steinberg and David Dunn was under way. Leigh was on top of the business and Dunn was an upstart. That was almost 15 years ago. Things have changed quite a bit since. Now look back 30 years and you see the names Howard Slusher, Mike Trope and Jerry Argovitz on all the headlines. Those guys are nowhere near the business now. History gives us dozens of agents who made a major initial splash and are now completely out of the business. Master P, anyone?

Here’s another example. Combine prep was not even a thing in ’02, but now it’s the accepted training method for virtually ever player near an NFL team’s radar. The same is true of money and the way players are recruited (legally). A decade ago, very few players got anything before the draft. Now, we’re talking marketing guarantees, signing bonuses, stipends, and all manner of funding. It’s gotten crazy.

Believe it or not, if you’re new to the business, this is great news. When there’s not a lot of stability at the top, that means people are pushing up from the bottom successfully. That doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy, but the opportunity is there for those who are willing to look at the business differently, use their smarts, and be persistent. I hope you believe this, and that it gives you hope. I also hope ITL can be a small part of the business’s change for the better.

A Chance to Get Better

10 Friday Apr 2015

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I think I’ve mentioned in this space that one of the companies I work with is called Champions Search Firm. We help fill vacancies on athletic staffs. Historically, we’ve worked with schools in Texas only — one college and about 40 high schools since the mid-00s, from head coach to Director of Athletics — though we’re starting to get international inquiries now as well as looks from schools in other states that take their football seriously.

However, in a couple weeks, I’m going to flip the script a bit. On Sunday, April 26, we’re going to host our first-ever Champions Search Firm Young Coaches Seminar in my hometown of Katy, TX. That afternoon — we’ve set it up so coaches can drive in that morning, then drive home that evening without a hotel stay — we’re going to speak to coaches about how to move up in their careers. If they’re junior high coaches, we want to teach them how to get high school jobs. If they’re high school assistants, we’re looking to help them get head coaching jobs. If they’re small-school head coaches, we want to give them tips on getting the top job at bigger schools. If they’re not in Texas, we want to show them how to get to the Great State. You get the picture.

It’s gonna be pricey: $100 for an afternoon of instruction, and my early entreaties to the people in our database have given me a little pushback on the price. This puzzles me. I don’t know of anywhere else you can find people who will teach a young coach how to craft his resume; what to say (and not say) in an interview; how to build a program; and how to sell one’s self in a business that traditionally attracts people who aren’t self-promoters.

What’s more, we’re bringing experts. I’ll be providing an overview of the process, from interviews to references to assorted other topics (not that I’m an ‘expert’). Jason Montanez, author of ‘Lead, Sell, Care,‘ will talk about how to sell yourself to schools in your email queries, your personal manner and your interview. Jason is a high-energy guy with an infectious smile, and he lights up the room when he talks while, at the same time, coming across in an authoritative, no-bull way. Our keynote speaker will be Bob Ledbetter, whom I call the ‘Tom Landry of Texas High School football’ (I need to trademark that some day). Bob has not only won three state championships at the highest level (Southlake Carroll, which was Class 5A back then, Class 6A now), but he hired a coach, Todd Dodge, who won several more at the same school. He’s forgotten more about how to win as a high school coach than almost anyone knows, and what’s more, he’s got a great dry-wit sense of humor. He’ll talk about how to build a program, and how to build a plan that will excite any potential employer.

If you are a high school coach in Texas (or anywhere within driving distance), we’d love to have you there. I’ll have more details in this space as we get closer to it. Have a great weekend.

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.