Category Archives: Scouts

Can Scouts Identify and Project Divisive Players?

31 Wednesday Aug 2016

Posted by in Scouts

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

If you’re an NFL fan, you’re well aware of the situation surrounding 49ers QB Colin Kaepernick. And I think even if we can’t all agree on his stand, we can agree that it’s an emotionally charged issue that could potentially divide the locker room and create ramifications that coaches and team officials don’t want to face.

I wondered if there’s any way such a situation could have been avoided in the scouting process. In other words, could scouts find out, with any degree of certainty, if a player — though honest, high in character, and far away from anything criminal — is prone to sparking this kind of situation? I asked several of my friends in scouting and I got these responses.

  • “Yes, you can get this information. I believe most scouts are lazy. There’s a lot of different ways you can (get this information), and (scouts are) in a power position with an NFL shield on their chests and a logo that everyone’s like, ‘wow.’ The more you go (to a school) and talk to people (and you) make it a whole day trip, you learn about how they handle scouts and how you can get info from teams. If you give them good info (about the NFL and how evaluation works), next thing you know, (teams and their coaches are) gonna think you walk on water, and pretty soon, they’re telling you, ‘he’s really a (jerk).’ And you got that extra piece of info that all it took was a couple extra hours to get. Does it take time? 100 percent! From Year 1 to Year 2, as a scout, I figured it out, but it just takes time.”
  • “Definitely you could and would find those guys. There are numerous guys through the years that you would learn of because they were different. I never (scouted) Colin, but it seems to me he had some different things in his character profile.”
  • “Well, I think it’s a different circumstance (with Kaepernick), but with a lot of other players you scout, it comes up from sources at the school(, for example,) that he has “gang affiliations” but there’s been no bad behavior on his part at the school, but you know there’s a small chance something bad could happen down the road. With Kaepernick, I think he’s shifted his personality so drastically the last year or so that it would have been very tough to tell he would do something like this coming out of college. A lot of times, though, scouts may ask, ‘Is this guy a locker room lawyer?,’ or they try to find out if he’s ever been a divisive force in the building.”

Exploring the Patriots’ Draft Philosophy

25 Thursday Aug 2016

Posted by in Scouts

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

,

On the advice of a friend who’s a former scout, I’m reading War Room by Michael Holley. The book details the development of the Patriots’ evaluation methods and how the New England scouting tree produced GMs in Atlanta (Thomas Dimitroff) and Kansas City (Scott Pioli). Though normally I hate football books (and especially football movies), this book has a lot of good info and makes a lot of good points.

The book quotes Bill Belichick as citing knowledge of what other teams are going to do as invaluable in how he selects players.

“It’s such a process, and part of it is knowing what the league thinks,” he says. “We have players on our board and we look up there and say, ‘We’re probably higher on this player than any other team in the league.’ You see mock drafts out there and the player is not mentioned in the first round. In any of them. Scouts talk, and you kind of get a feel that no one else sees the player quite like we do. On the flip side, there are guys that we might take, say, in the third round and we know someone’s going to take him in the first. So, again, it comes back to homework.”

To me, that’s a real revelation. So many scouts and administrators take pride in how much they don’t talk to scouts from other teams, and how their evaluations are their own and no one else’s (indeed, then-Patriots scout Lionel Vital makes almost that exact point later in the book), but Belichick freely admits that he keeps up on what others think and uses that info. It got me thinking — do other teams feel the same way? Knowing the prospects in the draft is critical, but how important is knowing your own team’s weaknesses, and even more importantly, how key is it to know what others think about the draft?

I reached out to a few friends on the road and got various responses. One scout said it’s 50 percent knowing the prospects, and 50 percent “blind luck.” I thought that was an admirable (and honest) response. He cited the fact that Tom Brady was a sixth-rounder in 2000, but the guy who “stood on the table” to get him drafted, Bobby Grier, was run off by the team shortly after that draft. Grier recently retired from the Texans.

“The key is proper fall evaluation not spring numbers,” my friend added.

Another scout said, though he didn’t break it down by percentages, that he puts far more on the prospects themselves than his own team’s weaknesses or what other teams might be thinking. He added that he feels teams most often miss on players when they draft for need rather than quality. That’s a sentiment I’m starting to hear regularly from area scouts, and very insightful, I think.

A third scout broke it down as 70 percent the talent in the draft, 15 percent his own team’s weaknesses, and 15 percent what others think about the players.

I guess this is just another illustration of how the Patriots do things in non-traditional ways.

 

A Scout’s Words of Wisdom: Scott Aligo

26 Tuesday Jul 2016

Posted by in Scouts

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

,

We wrap up our conversations with scouts today with a conversation with former Browns scout Scott Aligo, who’s pretty wise for a young scout. Scott worked with us during the ’16 draft helping connect agents and their clients with teams, and his work really made a difference. I knew he’d be willing to help out on this project, and I knew he’d have good things to say.

From here, I’ll turn it over to Scott and Mark.

  1. What is the one thing NFL draft fans don’t understand about the evaluation process, and about how NFL teams scout players, that they should know? 

“The biggest misconception is (that creating a scouting profile for a prospect is not) a 2-3 year process, instead of just the hot name. The time that is invested . . . no one really has a concept of (and) how much digging we have to do on that. Fans are usually like, “how did you not know that?” It’s about building relationships at the schools and getting to know the players without doing illegal activity. It’s underlooked.”

  1. We all know the best advice for a young man hoping to play in the NFL is to play his best football this fall. However, as a former scout, what would you tell a young man’s parents? 

“The agent is not the most important deal. The scout and the agent are going to be embedded with each other, no matter what anyone wants to say. There’s a lot of (agents) who say, “we hate scouts,” and there’s a lot of scouts who say, “we hate agents,” but no matter what, they will always be embedded together. And whether they admit it or not, it’s a beneficial relationship. I think the parents need to know that the evaluation on the field is probably the most important thing. All the other fluff, when it comes down to it, is, can he play?”

  1. If a young person asked you how to break into the scouting business, what advice would you have for him? 

“Quick advice is, you better have thick skin and you better look up the word ‘sacrifice,’ because if you are going to be in this business, you are going to have to sacrifice a lot. Be patient. Everybody says they want to be the GM by 30, and you have to be patient and embrace the grind of it. You might make ($17,000) for five years while all of your other buddies are making $70-80,000 going to happy hour three times a week. Well, you might get to go once a month or you only get one month a year to do stuff. The young group needs to embrace the whole ‘grind’ aspect of it and know that they have to be 100 percent patient and that it is not going to be a quick-and-easy process. You are going to sacrifice everything. Family. Friends. Girlfriends. Where you live. Everything.”

A Scout’s Words of Wisdom: Matt Boockmeier

25 Monday Jul 2016

Posted by in Scouts

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

,

If you’ve been keeping up with our current series getting feedback from ex-scouts on some hot topics related to the football business, hopefully you agree that we’ve provided insights you don’t often find. Today, I think we have one of the strongest pieces in our series as we talk to Matt Boockmeier.

Matt not only has been an area scout with two NFL teams (the Packers and Saints), but he’s also been a scout in the CFL (Saskatchewan) and even served at the director level in probably the most successful alternative league in the last 10 years, the UFL (with the Omaha Nighthawks). That gives him perspective that few can offer.

From here, I’ll turn it over to our own Mark Skol and Matt.

  1. What is the one thing NFL draft fans don’t understand about the evaluation process, and about how NFL teams scout players, that they should know? 

“One thing they don’t understand – (though) height, weight, and speed are important, I’m not going to lie – you have to have athletic ability and you better have instinctive characteristics as a player. Fans may not understand that nothing beats what the film shows. I say that prefacing a very important point. How many times have you seen a guy who didn’t fit any characteristics you were looking for but he was a football player? And how many times did those people make it? They’re littered throughout the league. I would say that’s the biggest thing that you have to look at. Finally, the hardest thing to do is look at the guy’s mentality toward the games, his temperament. Everybody thinks they can judge it. Everybody can see he has all the will, but that’s not measurable. Your best scouts understand what that guy brings without even saying a word to him based upon what they’ve seen in the past.”

  1. We all know the best advice for a young man hoping to play in the NFL is to play his best football this fall. However, as a former scout, what would you tell a young man’s parents? 

“Slow down. Be engaged in the process, but don’t necessarily control the process for your son. Be there for guidance as a player would for their son in any situation like this. The most important thing I would tell them is to be realistic and to be prepared for a letdown. I can talk about a player. You can talk about a player. There is all this noise. Get rid of the noise. Be there to filter the noise. Be realistic. Be hopeful. Prepare for the worst but expect the best. Finally, you, your son and the agent are not in control.”

3. If a young person asked you how to break into the scouting business, what advice would you have for him?

“No. 1, research. No. 2, persistence. No. 3, don’t be afraid to think outside the box to develop a relationship with the person who makes the hiring decisions. No. 4, get lucky. And all of this applies across the spectrum. If you were going in for an interview with Apple, you would want to know everything about Jim Smith (the boss). . . You (may not) have the best GPA and you (may not) have that big of an interest in technology on your resume. That doesn’t matter. If you get in front of Jim and you have the charisma, the personality, and you know how to interact with people on a mature level and he’s looking to hire somebody, he’s not going to forget that. It’s not about the degree, it’s not about the GPA, it’s how you fit in with the team that matters.”

A Scout’s Words of Wisdom: Marcus Hendrickson

22 Friday Jul 2016

Posted by in Scouts

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

,

Former Dolphins scout Marcus Hendrickson is a more recent acquaintance of mine. I met him through friends only this summer, so I wasn’t sure if he’d even agree to do an interview in this series. But boy, am I glad he did.

He’s done a lot of thinking about the business and he’s very insightful, and though today’s interview is about twice as long as any of the ones we’ve published this week, my guess is you’ll read it more than once.

I’ll turn it over to Marcus and our Mark Skol for today’s three questions.

  1. What is the one thing NFL draft fans don’t understand about the evaluation process, and about how NFL teams scout players, that they should know? 

“A lot of fans think we pick it up at the combine but we’ve actually been watching guys for two years sometimes. It’s a process. We’ve been gathering information on these guys for 18 months, but it’s not just what the guys did at the combine.

“The risers and fallers thing is kind of a farce in a sense. It’s a piece of the puzzle, but it’s not the whole picture. A lot of times, the background that comes out a week before or a day before has been known for months. Size, speed and production are all keys, but also character, being able to fit in the scheme and intelligence. It’s way more complicated than the actual fan realizes. There’s a lot of hours that go into these decisions.

“It’s very rarely a gut feeling. It’s more programmed and thought out. A lot of guys think we picked this guy just because Mel Kiper liked him. And just because Mel Kiper likes a guy and a team doesn’t like the guys, it doesn’t make the team wrong. I have all of the respect in the world for Mel Kiper, but they are not talking to position coaches, they aren’t talking to parents, they are not talking to high school coaches. I’ve talked to their high school teachers before. It’s very in-depth, especially when it’s a guy who could be drafted in the top two or three rounds. You reach out to tons of people to try and get a good picture on who the kid is. You can evaluate the player off of the tape, but at the same time, if you are drafting a guy in the first round, he will be attached to your franchise forever, so there’s a lot of pressure on those picks. There’s so much that goes into it. It’s more than he threw for 4,000 yards and ran a 4.4 at the combine. I don’t think people really appreciate how much work goes into the evaluation process.”

  1. We all know the best advice for a young man hoping to play in the NFL is to play his best football this fall. However, as a former scout, what would you tell a young man’s parents? 

“The hardest part for parents and for the kids is (that) when they don’t go to a program that produces talent, they sometimes don’t understand the process as well. They don’t understand the league as well. I always tell their parents to make sure they are on track to graduate. Don’t get me wrong: you make a lot of money playing in the NFL but there’s not guarantees in the NFL. The average career for a player is like three years. Get your degree and make sure you are smart with your money, because everyone thinks they are going to play forever and get that second contract, but a lot of guys don’t. You have to be smart with the people you put around yourself both personal and financially. Be smart. You might be a blown Achilles or a concussion away from your career being over.

“(Also,) if there’s a scout around, don’t be afraid to introduce yourself. Guys love talking to you and getting able to pick your brain to know you. At the end of the day, if you are a fringe guy or if I see you the same as another guy, but I’ve gotten to know you a little bit, those things change the balance when you are on the fence with two guys. Putting yourself out there or introducing yourself at a tryout helps put the bar in your favor when being compared with someone with similar characteristics.”

  1. If a young person asked you how to break into the scouting business, what advice would you have for him? 

“It’s a very cutthroat business. It’s a small business and it’s hard to get in because a lot of people want to do it and there are not a lot of jobs. It’s a very limited field. But one thing that is important is to immerse yourself in football in any way that you can. If you’re a kid in college and you’ve never played before, work the equipment or video for your team. A lot of guys make their first steps in the game that way. Show that you are working. It’s not just putting your foot in the door it’s someone being able to say that you work hard. If you work in video or you are a coach’s assistant of some kind, from that, just absorb everything around you. Maybe a scout comes into your school and you are helping with the video, introduce yourself. He may pick your brain. Find a way to make a connection with someone in the game but also show that you can bring that work ethic or that awareness. If you are around athletes, pick up on, how does that guy treat other people or what is he like personally away from the cameras, away from the spotlight. Also, watch as much film as you can. If you have the ability to get your hands on a coach’s tape, write reports. Evaluate positions you don’t necessarily understand; show progress and show growth that way. I played linebacker in college and I played offensive line in high school, so those things came more naturally to me (more) than wide receiver and DB. So I had to force myself to watch DB tape and pick up on nuances. Put yourself out there. Volunteer if you have to. Do those little things to show you are committed. Also, watch as much football as you possibly can. You aren’t out of your realm because you have basic knowledge on what to pick up on.”

A Scout’s Words of Wisdom: Harrison Ritcher

21 Thursday Jul 2016

Posted by in Scouts

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

,

By now, you know the questions and you know the direction of this week’s series. Today, we present the thoughts of Harrison Ritcher, who was let go in the Browns’ pre-draft purge this year. Harrison has also worked in the personnel department at Florida State and played fullback at N.C. State

  1. What is the one thing NFL draft fans don’t understand about the evaluation process, and about how NFL teams scout players, that they should know? 

“How extensive the process is. There’s a lot more that goes into it other than, ‘is he a good player?’ What might be a great player for the Miami Dolphins might not be the best player for the Pittsburgh Steelers. It’s about understanding the fit. It’s not just about how good a player is, it’s how does he fit in the culture? Does he fit in our scheme? Questions like that, you have to answer.

  1. We all know the best advice for a young man hoping to play in the NFL is to play his best football this fall. However, as a former scout, what would you tell a young man’s parents? 

“Be supportive. The process is long and drawn out. Your son is going to be poked and prodded a thousand different ways. Just be as supportive as you can. Worry about the things under his control. Don’t overthink it. Take it one day at a time. Just worry about your kid playing ball and focusing on school.”

  1. If a young person asked you how to break into the scouting business, what advice would you have for him? 

“Make sure you have some background in football. Maybe you were a player or worked with some of the colleges. Scouting is evolving. With analytics, you don’t necessarily have to take the traditional route of starting in football. With analytics, some guys have made their way up through the charting process into a building. It is evolving that way, but the rule of thumb is you have a background in football. Your network is pivotal when you are trying to break in. Knowing someone who can get your resume from someone else to (speak) on your behalf. All of these teams get thousands of emails every year and I don’t know if they look at them all, but most of the time it’s knowing someone who can put your name in front of someone who can look at your resume and give you an interview.”

A Scout’s Words of Wisdom: Matt Lindsey

20 Wednesday Jul 2016

Posted by in Scouts

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

,

Today, ITL’s Mark Skol talks to Matt Lindsey, who until February was the Eagles’ Scouting Coordinator. Matt worked his way up, starting as an intern in Philly after first working for Nick Saban in personnel at Alabama. Though he worked for the top program in college football, then rose pretty quickly up the ranks for the Eagles, he was the victim of a regime change, as so often happens in the NFL.

Here’s the second edition in our series.

  1. What is the one thing NFL draft fans don’t understand about the evaluation process, and about how NFL teams scout players, that they should know? 

“I think the biggest thing is how much time goes into it and the amount of work leading up to the draft. It goes back a year, two years, and sometimes even three years. An area scout is going to go into a school three times. There’s going to be another guy who goes in there twice, and there’s probably going to be another person who goes to a game. There are hundreds of hours dedicated to a single player taken in the draft regardless if it’s first round, fifth round or undrafted. They are putting in the work, not only to figure out who the player is on the field, but also off the field. I think fans see a 6-foot-5 player who is 250 pounds and had 10 sacks and automatically think he should be a first-round pick. Well, maybe he shouldn’t be. Maybe he doesn’t have the instincts, or the strength, or the explosion that we look for. Maybe he’s bad off of the field. I don’t think your average NFL fan has a full scope of understanding what all goes in to projecting a player in the NFL.”

  1. We all know the best advice for a young man hoping to play in the NFL is to play his best football this fall. However, as a former scout, what would you tell a young man’s parents?

“The most important thing they can do for their son is to be supportive. Going into their senior year, there is a lot of pressure on them, and they feel like they need to perform. Whether it comes from their coaches, player or parents, there is a lot of pressure on them. After their senior season, they go into all-star games, combines, pro days, and working out for teams, and it’s a very stressful process for the players. The last thing the parents should do is add stress to that. We see that a lot of times when a family is more of a drain on the player than actually helping the player. The most important thing for the parents is to be supportive, to be the rock for the player and not add stress to what’s already a stressful process for them.”

  1. If a young person asked you how to break into the scouting business, what advice would you have for him? 

“The most important thing is to be involved. Find a way to be involved. Your resume should show you have a passion for football, whether it’s coaching high school football or helping out at the college level or finding a way to work for an arena team or whatever it may be. The door is not always open as far as NFL scouting jobs go, but every single person who works at that level did something before that. If you can get involved in some way, then that’s going to go a long way as far as getting your foot in the door somewhere else. For me, I didn’t play college football. I got my foot in the door in the weight room.  From there, I worked at football operations and recruiting at a big college, and then I met people and got a chance to go to the NFL at an entry-level job. I think you just have to find a way to get involved and stay involved. It speaks to the person’s passion if you see them being involved with it.”

A Scout’s Words of Wisdom: Morocco Brown

19 Tuesday Jul 2016

Posted by in Scouts

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

,

We’re just days from NFL scouts descending on training camps, agent hopefuls taking the NFLPA exam, and college players reporting to school to prep for the 2016 schedule. This means that there are several groups focusing on being their best for the ’16 season.

With that in mind, this week, we’re asking former NFL scouts three common questions we get from fans, aspiring scouts and parents of prospects, three major groups that read this blog. Today, we’ll kick things off with former Browns Vice President of Player Personnel Morocco Brown. Roc, as his friends know him, has plenty of words of advice for almost anyone interested in the game behind the game. Here’s a transcript of his conversation with ITL’s Mark Skol.

  1. What is the one thing NFL draft fans don’t understand about the evaluation process, and about how NFL teams scout players, that they should know? 

“How deep teams dig to find out about the player’s personal character and football character. We really want to know who they are. The tape is one thing because it’s so accessible, and you can watch it from anywhere on the planet as long as you have Wi-Fi on your Ipad. That’s going to be there, and there is plenty of time to watch the tape. But going into the school, talking to them, finding out contacts, going to the guy’s high school and talking to people who grew up with them and talking to his family down the stretch . . . people don’t realize how much goes into that to really figure out who is this guy — not only who we will invest money in, but someone who we will let join our organization. A lot of resources are put into that. Psychologically. Background information. Who is this guy? Does he love football? I don’t think they understand the magnitude of what goes into it.”

  1. We all know the best advice for a young man hoping to play in the NFL is to play his best football this fall. However, as a former scout, what would you tell a young man’s parents? 

“During his senior year, I would tell them not to apply any extra pressure on him. Because then, it turns into what you get out of the game (more than) just playing the game. Your thought process turns and it’s not about going out and doing my best and helping my teammates and university win the game; it’s, ‘where am I getting picked here, and did I do this or do that?,’ rather than just playing the game and doing what you’ve done to get to where you are your whole life. When you start thinking about the monetary part of everything, it can be a dangerous slippery slope.”

  1. If a young person asked you how to break into the scouting business, what advice would you have for him? 

“Seek out contacts and follow up with them. If you do that, the main thing to do is to not quit or get discouraged when you are told no. In my case, I only had one team call back out of the 32 I sent my resume, and I wound up being one guy out of seven auditioning for an intern position. If I would have listened to all of those letters that said “no, no, no,” I would have just quit.”

Are All Supplemental Draft Prospects Character Risks?

05 Tuesday Jul 2016

Posted by in Scouts

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

,

These days, if you’re looking for a pro football fix, you’re pretty much left with the NFL’s Supplemental Draft, which is slated for later this month. Of course, comparing the supplemental draft with the NFL draft is like comparing a toy car with a Ferrari.

Finding supplemental draft success stories isn’t easy. It’s been quite a while since the ‘supp draft’ was turning out players like Miami’s Bernie Kosar and Steve Walsh, Ohio State’s Cris Carter, Alabama’s Bobby Humphrey and Syracuse’s Rob Moore in the late 80s. Since then, there have been solid players here and there but no consistency. In fact, the only one that really stands out in the past decade is Baylor’s Josh Gordon, who, ahem, turned out to have character issues.

It made me wonder if all such players that wind up on the post-draft scrap heap have obvious character warts, since so few ever get drafted and fewer still make a real impact. I reached out to six scouts this morning with just that question. Answers mostly confirmed my thesis, though some were mixed.

  • One scout said that in the “75-90 % range” of cases, it’s either character or an NCAA-related issue such as a player who was waiting on an eligibility ruling that came in late.
  • Another scout said most supp draft prospects are “not necessarily bad people,” though he allowed that sometimes such players are bad apples.
  • One strongly disagreed, calling my thesis way too broad. “I’ve never seen a study but personally I don’t believe that would be a very factual statement,” he said, and indicated that he feels most players in the supp draft are victims of circumstances beyond their control.
  • Another agreed with me, confirming that it’s “usually the case” that the player in question has off-field problems that are significant.
  • The final one I corresponded with said he wouldn’t say 90 percent had character issues, but said probably half did. “Lots of warts with supplemental drafting,” he admitted.

I guess the reason most teams pass on supplemental draft prospects is more because they don’t make the grade on the field than off the field. As always, however, character goes into each evaluation, and might tip the balance. How much is hard to determine.

 

Five Questions with NFL Network’s Aditi Kinkhabwala

01 Friday Jul 2016

Posted by in Agents, Scouts

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, ,

We try to offer plenty of tips, observations and other useful info for people aspiring to work in the business of football in this space, and we usually focus on folks who want to be scouts, agents, financial professionals or marketers. On the other hand, there’s the media track, and we haven’t done a lot with that. Today, however, that ends.

Technically, my inroad into the business came from the media, as I started off as a simple news writer for small papers before jumping to the Houston Chronicle, then to my own service, ITL. At any rate, our purpose is to give you ideas on how to break into the football world, so today, we talk to Aditi Kinkhabwala, who’s a national correspondent for the NFL Network.

Aditi started out with the San Antonio Express-News before moving on to the Bergen (N.J.) Record and the Wall Street Journal before landing with the network. Along the way, we traveled in similar circles and she became a friend. From here, I’ll turn it over to my super-intern, Mark Skol, who conducted this interview, and Aditi.

What is it like for you, day to day?: “On any given day, I can be sent to any team’s facilities. If it is during the week, then I’m covering, ‘what is the news of today or what is a story I feel is worthwhile to share with our readers?’ On game day, it’s different. On game day, I am on the field before the game and directing our viewers to what things to look for, what notable things happened during the week, and what can impact the game we are about to see. I do that right up until kickoff. I cover the game and after the game I secure a one-on-one interview and then I go into the locker room and talk to as many players as I can to get anything we may need as the week goes on. It’s a little bit different than when I was just a writer. You can’t edit yourself as much. When you’re writing, it’s different. For NFL.com, I don’t write as much as when I was a newspaper writer because there is more time spent on air, but I write a lot of columns or features.”

How did you get the job at NFL Network?: “It is almost serendipity. I was covering the New York Giants in their last Super Bowl run during the 2011 season. They were about to play the NFC Championship game in San Francisco. The NFL Network wanted a local ‘expert’ on air for a few minutes to discuss the Giants and this matchup. I went on air for I don’t even think four minutes. They asked me some questions and I guess the way that I answered caught the attention of the head of our newsroom David Eaton. David called me and said, ‘Have you ever thought about being on television?’ Thus began a couple-months-long process. We agreed to meet at the Super Bowl; we met for an hour and a half and began this process. I was very lucky because I loved my job at the Wall Street Journal. I loved my job and I wasn’t necessarily looking to leave and I wasn’t looking to leave newspapers. It was a great opportunity and here I am four years later.”

When did you think, ‘I have a cool job?:’ “I thought that all long. I wouldn’t have done what I do if I didn’t feel that way. I was always going to go to law school since I was 7 years old. My first aspiration was to pitch for the New York Yankees, (and) when I knew that wasn’t going to happen, I wanted to be a lawyer. I was an American Studies major at Cornell, and the sports writing in San Antonio was only supposed to be one year, maybe two years tops, and then I was supposed to go to law school. But somewhere, in the first two weeks working in Texas, I just thought, ‘this is awesome.’ It was because I was being paid to talk to people. It was my job to talk to people and find out their stories. I love to hear about other people and I was getting paid to do it. The craft of writing also appealed to me, the art of storytelling. I don’t know that one job has been cooler than a previous one. I’m not star-struck. Anytime I get to tell a story that is really meaningful, I think it’s really cool.”

What are some of the downs of the business?: “The travel can sometimes get very daunting when you are delayed for long periods of time and you are away from home. I have a young son. He just turned 11 months old. When my pregnancy was proceeding, it became a little bit difficult with the travel and the heat of the summer. Things like that are challenging but it doesn’t have anything to do with the nature of the job.”

What advice do you have for an aspiring journalist?: “Never be afraid to ask questions. Don’t ever think you know the story before you go in to find the story because if you have an open mind, you will often be surprised. Talk to people how you would want to be talked to. Know how you would want to be approached. Don’t be afraid of anyone. Treat people with respect and you will get respect in return.”