The week spent by our 20 CGSU interns was remarkable in many ways, but one was was in the stories they got to hear. One theme was taking risks. All who shared their stories had left nothing to chance, including taking risks that could backfire on them in order to get the job.

Among our speakers were former Browns and 49ers scout Bob Morris (now with the USFL), former Chiefs scout John Bonaventura (now with Winnipeg in the CFL) and Marc Lillibridge (who coaches and runs a training facility in St. Louis). Here are a few stories from the week.

• Winnipeg Blue Bombers Western Regional Scout John Bonaventura said he was teaching at a middle school and helping out wherever he could when he got an opportunity to work with a member of the Chiefs scouting staff at a combine in California. After helping out over several days and proving himself, he was offered a job with the team — if he could do organizational and administrative tasks to include extensive work with Power Point. When he was asked specifically if he had experience with the program, he made it clear: “Yeah, I know Power Point.” He then drove directly back to his high school job, found the audio/visual guy, and told him, “I need a favor. You got a week to teach me Power Point.” It must have worked because he was hired and spent four-and-a-half years with the Chiefs.
• Former NFL linebacker and agent Marc Lillibridge spent six years with the Packers and Chiefs, but it almost didn’t happen. He was given a chance to interview with the Packers, and though he had a lucrative offer to join a media franchise and head its draft coverage, the allure of working for Green Bay was strong. After meeting with team officials and making a good impression, he was offered the job — at about half of what he would have made providing draft content. “Let me go outside and talk to my wife about it,” he said, but he’d already made up his mind he was going to take it (he didn’t even call his wife).
• Bob Morris was a lifelong defensive backs coach when he was approached to join the Cleveland Browns under new head coach Butch Davis in the Spring of 2002. Had he opted to play it safe and stay on the coaching side, he might have wound up out of the game, but instead, he decided to give it a try. It led to two decades in NFL scouting (eight with the Browns and almost 12 with the 49ers) as well as jobs in the AAF, XFL and, now, the USFL.

There’s so much more to say about our inaugural CGSU intern class, and we say plenty in this week’s Friday Wrap, which comes out later today. You can register for it here.

We’re almost at January, and if you aspire to be an NFL scout someday, it’s an invaluable month given the multiple opportunities to get out and make contacts among NFL scouts. Here’s what I’ll be telling the interns at the College Gridiron Showcase next month who are dying to be the next generation of NFL evaluators.

Make sure you have a business card: I know business cards are so 80s, but the fact is, you can impart a lot of info in a highly mobile format if you’ve got ’em. Don’t be ashamed of using both sides if you need to. Also don’t be ashamed of making your own if aren’t with a school or organization right now.

Set a goal of 50 business cards collected in the first quarter of 2022: This could just as easily be contacts, i.e., people who work in your field whose cell and email you’ve gathered somehow, hopefully by standing in front of them and spending at least a few seconds in conversation.

Update your resume, then email it to yourself: If someone asks for your resume, you don’t want to delay. If you have it in your inbox on your phone, you don’t have to worry about forgetting to send it.

Reach out to every person whose contact you get: This has to be prompt. If you meet someone at the Senior Bowl, for example, make sure you reach out to them with a brief text or email by the middle of February. You want them to remember who the message is coming from. Even after 20 years in the business, I meet dozens of people in January as I travel from game to game, and I can’t always remember the faces of the people whose numbers and emails I collect. Make sure you don’t give anyone a chance to forget who you are.

Realize the job search is already under way: Every April, I get questions from some of my friends saying, should I start sending out my resume now? By April, most teams have already decided who they are going to interview. When we had NFL scouting directors on earlier this month, and they were asked when they started looking at possible hires, most of them said they never stop. I realize July and August are bad times to be sending out your resume, but now, in late December, isn’t a bad time.

Don’t be a pest: I know this is a fine line, and I know you have to be persistent, but if you are constantly bombing people with your info, you’re going to make them pretty numb to your constant entreaties. Map out a schedule of when you send, when you plan to follow up and how many times, and when enough is enough.

Good luck! I hope everyone who reads this winds up in the league, and I look forward to working with you. For more tips and information of this sort, make sure to check our our weekly newsletter, the Friday Wrap. You can register for it here.

If you’re like me, you love talking football with people who are fully engaged and highly evolved students of the game, and that’s why this was an incredibly enriching (and even fun) week for me as we welcomed four guests to Zoom sessions Tuesday, Wednesday (two) and Thursday.

Here are the guests who joined 30-40 aspiring scouts and football professionals and what I learned from each.

Ethan Waugh, Vice President of Player Personnel, 49ers: From Ethan, I took away that the 49ers are very analytical and measured in their evaluation of scouting assistant candidates. You better know players and evaluation if you come in for an interview. I was also shocked to learn that everyone who comes in to interview for a scouting job takes the Wonderlic, the same exam scouts have administered to prospects for decades. It is clear to me that the Niners are looking for lifers, and focus on true evaluators, not fact-gatherers, as so many modern teams have come to seek.

Mike Sholiton, Director of College Scouting, Vikings: From Mike, I learned that the Vikings are looking for someone who will be a seamless member of the team. Mike related a story about Scott Studwell, who once ran the draft for the team. When he’d solicit opinions from scouts on a player, if he disagreed with their assessment, he would never challenge or belittle them. Instead, he’d allow that the scout might have a different opinion, but that didn’t make him wrong. To be a Vikings scout, you must be poised, professional and able to handle adversity smoothly, never losing sight of your respect for your fellow scouts. I don’t know all of Minnesota’s scouts, but my sense is that the Vikings have a tight-knit group.

Kevin Kelly, Director of College Scouting, Chargers: From Kevin, I got the impression that Los Angeles is looking for competitors. He wants scouts who are willing to stay after practice to get the extra interview from a coach, or watch the extra game film, or seek out one more doctor’s opinion on a player’s injury before making a final evaluation. Like the Vikings, the Chargers aren’t looking for a polished evaluator, per se. They’re looking for someone with the heart of a champion who has a burning passion to win and to get things right. And in case you didn’t think Kevin was giving, he gave out his email address — and cell number — when he got done.

Brian Woods, President of Football Operations, USFL: Though Brian isn’t a scout, he is no less engaged in team-building or, in his case, league-building. I went into the session believing the USFL would just be The Spring League 2.0, a bigger and better version of Brian’s previous project. What I learned was that he has much bigger plans for the league, and while it won’t compete with the NFL, obviously, it will compete with college teams, especially G5 teams. The USFL will grow to become a contender for players who enter the transfer portal and others who are at least three years removed from high school graduation. The USFL will not be the place for six- and seven-year veterans looking to cash a few last checks before cycling out of pro football.

If you saw any of our numerous tweets about this week and you considered joining us, but didn’t, you missed out. Everyone who participated got relevant, critical insights on how to get a job in the game. If we do this again next year, I hope you’ll give us a shot. In the meantime, make sure to register for our Friday Wrap for more information on how to get into the game.

Last night, former Falcons area scout Rodrik David (if you don’t know his story, read this) joined ITL clients in an online Zoom session. Here are a few highlights:

On whether he could see big backs coming back into popularity on the NFL level: “I absolutely believe it’s it’s a cyclical game, and there is a growing place for that big back as you get more safeties playing down in the box and schemes change. . . Then you start bringing all the other factors of those guys, and they’re talking now about 18 games in a year and those guys take a beating. You know, the war of attrition comes in.”

On dwindling scout access at schools during the Covid era: “There are schools . . . where you are living on the phone with anybody you can find from that school that you can talk to, when you almost hope that you have some coaches get hired there that you’ve met along the way because they can be your resource.”

On how schools that bar scouts from practice penalize the the Day 3 prospects: “You’re focused on those top-round guys in game warmups. Some of those guys that you really like late, it’s harder to watch those guys (in pre-game). Those are the guys that are, a lot of times, you just kind of (see) reps in practice because they’re workers, they’re dudes that are just doing everything right, giving themselves a chance. . . And so those types of guys, that was where after the 2021 draft, that is where it felt like it was hard to really pound the table for any of those guys.”

On how to parse through the info you get from friendly sources when evaluating a prospect: “So you probably won’t get the warts, but it is with anybody you talk to, what you want to hear is is really what I would call a consistency of message. You know, (Bears QB) Justin Fields, I was just speaking specifically about Justin. I mean, if I hear one thing, like he was a leader from when he came in, had a voice from Day 1, and then somebody else talked about, it took him time to get going, then all of a sudden, I’ve got to reconcile that, and that’s where the phone calls keep going. Now if I get the high school coach, maybe a coach that was with him early . . . and he says it took him time to compete . . . like, OK, like this is who this kid is. He’s going to to take time, but when he takes a room, he takes a room. That consistency of message for me was always really, really important. You get that same message, and it’s probably going to tell you that’s a that’s a pretty good indicator that this is this is all lining up.”

On how technology is changing the way scouts and college personnel directors talk: “Most big colleges, Power Fives, I know a number of the MACs, will (use Catapult). It’s basically your tracer. It’s tracking steps, yardage and then it’s going to measure that top speed and then top speed for how long. . . This is part of the normal strength and conditioning cycle. . . Now it’s got to match (what we see with our own eyes). If we’re getting stuff that says things at 22 and he looks like he’s about a 20.5 Catapult . . . you may get those guys that may have a little bit of an asterisk or something like, hey, we just got to go back double-check this. But it is absolutely accepted and colleges are really leaning on that because they understand. I mean they want to put their best information on their players out. . . And it is absolutely something that’s in reports, it’s talked about, it is leaned on, especially as we don’t have some of that good testing data that’s kind of always been part of your spring process that guys have gotten used to.”

We’ve got a pretty robust Zoom schedule ahead over the next couple months. Some sessions will be no cost, some are free to subscribers, and some are priced reasonably. Some deal with scouting/evaluation, some are aimed at new agents and learning the game, and some at NIL. For more details and to keep up, make sure you’re reading the Friday Wrap. You can register for it here.

The first time I ever even knew of Jim Hess was at the 2001 Blue-Gray Football Classic in Montgomery, Ala. He was an area scout for the Cowboys at the time, and as it happens, he was on the phone with another person who would become my mentor, then-Bears scout John Paul Young.

He was chiding John Paul, who had not arrived at practice yet, in his West Texas accent. With a smile on his face, Jim was needling him, accusing him of taking an early lunch break. I don’t remember much of what he said. I just remember the friendly ridicule, the way men bound by athletics do when they’ve been friends for years, and Jim saying “John Paul” a lot. 

The next time I remember talking to him was in June 2002 at the Angelo Football Clinic, of which Jim was one of the co-founders along with John Paul, Wade Phillips, Mike Martin and Jerry Vandegrift. I had driven out to San Angelo, Texas, alone in hopes of networking, knowing I would be launching a new website devoted to “inside football” in mere months. I stalked Jim for three days, like a hunter does his prey, hoping I could somehow talk him into giving up a few nuggets I could use for draft prep. In those days, ITL was very different from today’s iteration, and I needed something that would look good in a mock draft (“a scout I know told me . . . .”). At last, I found him alone on the second deck of the Junell Center at Angelo State University, taking in one of the lectures. I nervously approached, introduced myself, and asked if I could ask him about the 2003 draft. At the time, Jim was still in the midst of his decade scouting for the Cowboys. He politely declined, of course. “Neil, I just wouldn’t feel comfortable about it,” he said. 

There’s plenty more you could learn about Jim, from his sense of humor (I used to call him the Dean Martin of the plains for his dry wit and gregarious nature; he would always correct me with, “OK, but I don’t drink, though”) to his many accomplishments (too many to list here; here’s his Wikipedia page) to his humble nature (watch this video, in which he lists the various places he’s worked, then adds that he wouldn’t have gotten one of them without the help of a friend on the inside).

However, if you want two stories that describe Jim Hess’ character, those are the two best ones I have. If you were his friend, there was no better friend. Even though Jim had accomplished more in football than 10 men, winning a national championship and spending a decade scouting for America’s Team, he always treated me like I was as just as important as Bill Parcells, Tony Romo and Sean Payton, three people you might have heard of that counted Jim as a good friend and a trusted football man. Whenever I called, I didn’t have to identify myself, no matter if it had been months or even years since we had last spoken. “Hey Neil!,” he would always say as soon as he heard my voice.

Today, I and hundreds of others will say goodbye to Jim, who passed away at 87 Saturday night. As I write this, I sit in the lobby of a San Angelo hotel waiting to go to his celebration of life in a little more than an hour. Come early, I’ve been cautioned; the church is small and the crowd will be considerable. 

I hope to come across many more men of his stature, a true gentleman of the game who always made people feel comfortable and accepted even after he’d reached the heights of his profession. I hope to, but I doubt I will. 

You may already know that, for the first time ever (that we know of), NFL scouts have been asked to vote on the top 10 members of their profession in each conference. Actually, it’s we at Inside the League who are asking them, and after four weeks of voting in the first-ever BART List (named after former Rams area scout Danton Barto), we’re ready to announce the results.

OK, so you won’t find the results in this blog post — you’ll have to wait till tonight at 7:30 p.m. ET for that — but we’re going to talk about the poll and a few observations we made about the poll and what it took to make it happen.

• We only included on the ballots full-time scouts who had been with an NFL team on draft day five of the last six years, with no GMs and no one who has an operations, analytics or cap-related role. For the most part, we were looking at area scouts, not scouting assistants, and those a couple rungs above them (all the way up to Assistant GM). In other words, we didn’t get votes on the people who’ve already arrived, but on those who are the up-and-comers. By the time we sifted out all those who didn’t meet those specs, we came up with 200 scouts on the NFC side and 177 in the AFC.
• There were 21 NFC scouts and 17 AFC scouts who got no votes. It was hard to make any observations on those who polled nothing. They came from multiple teams, some good and some bad. The only commonality is that scouts in this group are on the extreme ends of the scale, i.e., very young scouts and pretty old scouts. Obviously, younger scouts have had fewer years to distinguish themselves. It’s harder to figure out why the veteran scouts — some of them former GMs — netted no votes. Maybe, like many evaluators in the profession, they studiously avoided any form of fraternization or networking all along the way, and that manifested itself in fewer votes. 
• Only 38 of 200 NFC scouts (19 percent) received at least 10 votes, while 36 of 177 (20 percent) reached the same total on the AFC side. I took this as good news. It makes it clear to me that scouts took the vote seriously, and that there is a clear consensus on who does it best. 
• About a fourth of all scouts who received the ballots voted in the poll. We found that interesting give that only about a fifth fill out our annual salary survey. I would have guessed that establishing baselines on pay would be of more interest to today’s NFL evaluator, but maybe not. On the other hand, scouts are more diverted and scattered in the January/February lead-up to the combine, so maybe the timing is just better. 
• I expected the vote to be dominated by the teams that are traditionally the best on draft day, i.e., teams like Baltimore, Green Bay, Pittsburgh, Seattle, New Orleans, San Francisco, Indianapolis, Chicago, Minnesota and Seattle. However, that wasn’t the case at all, and several of those teams had no one in the top 10. That tells me that scouts recognize that evaluation is a team effort, and you can have a good scout covering a region but that’s no guarantee his team will consistently find the late-round gems and get things right on Days 1 and 2.
• Similarly, there were dozens of scouts that I know are good, yet they didn’t collect many votes. Most of these evaluators are more old-school and have worked mostly with one team. I think that makes it harder for word to spread about their work. 

Anyway, those are a few thoughts. We encourage you to check out tonight’s Friday Wrap (register here), in which we’ll roll out the entire list of 10 scouts in each conference who have won the respect of their peers, and make your own observations. We look forward to making this an annual feature and, hopefully, to give more recognition to the talented people in the industry.  

Tuesday, NFL teams made their cuts to 53 for opening week, and Wednesday, they started populating their practice squads. Though teams will continue to tweak their rosters during the run-up to next weekend, we thought it would be interesting to take a snapshot of the rosters to get a sense of how the 2021 draft class shaped up.

The complete list of drafted and undrafted players who made rosters or practice squads in some form or fashion is here (sorry, pay link). As for analysis, here’s what we came up with.

• We counted a total of 715 players who signed standard representation agreements with agents in the ’21 class. Of that total, 517 were either drafted or signed to UDFA deals (an unheard-of 72 percent of signees; usually, that number is closer to a third, at best). It’s important to note that there were no three-day mini-camp invitees this year; if there had been, and we would have included them in the total, the number of players who received some level of NFL engagement would have been near 90 percent. In other words, players who opted to stick around this year — especially fringe prospects — made a big mistake.
• Eighty-one undrafted free agents made practice squads, while 42 made the 53, injured reserve, the non-football injury (NFI) or Covid lists.
• The practice squad is usually the repository of a team’s draft picks and UDFAs that didn’t make the 53, but other teams look elsewhere to fill their slots. The Giants were the most aggressive about looking outside the team to stock its roster this year, with one player on its 53 (Ohio State OB Justin Hilliard, who signed post-draft with the Niners) and two on its practice squad (Auburn FS Jordyn Peters, who originally signed with the Jets, and Ohio State TE Jake Hausmann, late of the Lions).
• For what it’s worth, the Falcons cast the widest net post-draft. They are the only team with more than 10 UDFAs (12, to be exact) now on the street. On the other hand, three teams saw all of their UDFAs make a roster of some sort: the Giants (who signed only three UDFAs, with one making their 53 and two making their PS), Washington (both their UDFAs made the 53) and New England (one UDFA, PK Quinn Nordin, and he made the 53).
• Only three draftees are not on NFL rosters in some form or fashion, as of early afternoon today: Michigan FB Ben Mason (Ravens, 5/184); Georgia Tech WO Jalen Camp (Jaguars, 6/209); and Penn State OC Michal Menet (7/247, Cardinals).
• Six cornerbacks made NFL rosters (active, IR, NFI or Covid list) after going undrafted (one is on IR). Also, six undrafted tight ends made it (two are on IR). This isn’t surprising news, given that every team is looking for an impact cornerback it can “coach up”, and tight end has become one of the sexiest positions in the league. Next most common was offensive tackle (5), which is again not surprising. If you’re an NFL agent or scout, you’re pretty much always looking for developmental players at these positions.
• As for practice squad, oddly enough, the numbers were very different. Teams carried 14 wide receivers, far and away the most at any position, with 11 running backs next-most. Maybe this is a reaction to the success of undrafted 1,000-yard rushers like Jacksonville’s James Robinson and Houston’s Phillip Lindsay. At any rate, no other position had as many as 10 on practice squad.

If you like digging into the numbers and discussion of NFL scouts, how NFL agents work, how the NIL era is shaping up and anything else associated with what happens “backstage” in the NFL, consider signing up for our Friday Wrap, which will be out tomorrow evening. You can sign up for it here.