Category Archives: Scouts

The Media and the NFL Draft

19 Tuesday Aug 2014

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In the course of interviewing former Dolphins scout Mike Murphy about his experiences in 18 years as an NFL scout with four teams, I asked a question I always pose to ex-scouts: what effect, if any, does the media (beat writers, draft ‘gurus,’ ‘Twitter’ scouts, etc.) have on the draft process? Does it ever influence what teams do?

I found his answer interesting.

“I know if you are a good scout, then all other outside influences will not impact one’s opinion. Scouts (for the most part) are paid well and paid for ‘their opinion.’ Stick to it, right or wrong. You are trying to make your team the best it can be, and most GM or head coaches do not want ‘yes’ people.

“I have been around a few that would (pay attention to Internet scouts and media) and (who) have been influenced tremendously by what mock drafts say, and have gotten themselves and the organization in trouble. Those individuals in the media, etc., get their information from somewhere. Most of the time it comes from someone in an organization. Those individuals don’t know what your team needs are (and) what your emphasis is on a position. They could be wrong, not know the rest of the country and how a player stacks up against others, medical history or mental issues. So why would you listen to it or let it sway your opinion? Trust in your scouts, and scouts, trust in your ability to evaluate players.  The other is best left for the armchair QB.”

Mike makes the presumption that draft scouts “get their information from somewhere.” I’m not sure I agree. Obviously, the Mayocks, the Kipers and the McShays of the world get insider info to compile their reports and form their opinions, but I’m not sure how pervasive this is. My experience has been that the overwhelming majority of mock drafts are modifications of other mock drafts. It’s a ‘monkey see, monkey do’ proposition. Still, if NFL scouts are aware enough of what’s out there that they actually have formed an opinion, there’s no question it’s having an effect on things.

I had a conversation with former Redskins and Texans GM Charley Casserly many years ago, and he basically dismissed mock drafts and the like as bathroom reading material.

However, I interviewed Patrice Brown, an agent who had a third-round draft pick in her first year certified by the NFLPA, what she’d learned in her first year as a player rep, and she had this response: “I would say how important relationships with the media are. The media, people may want to discount it, but these teams, everybody’s human. The way the media responded, it appeared to have some impact. We’re not in those war rooms, and the teams have these highly paid staffs that handle that, but hey, everybody’s human. Even after the season was over, I would have worked harder to connect and get himself some (recognition). Hey, even locally, I’m reaching out to sportswriters and where’s the hometown love? I would have done all those things better.”

The media’s real impact on the draft is still something I’m trying to figure out. I’m open to others’ thoughts on this. The human element really holds true in draft rooms, no matter how much it’s dismissed by NFL officials. I guess that will always be true.

A week with a former NFL scout

18 Monday Aug 2014

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We’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback from last week’s series with former Jets Director of Football Administration Ari Nissim, so we thought we’d try a similar tack this week with Mike Murphy. Mike served almost two decades as an NFL scout before getting let go in Miami when the team made a chance at general manager. As a scout, your life rises and falls with the fate of your GM; when a team brings in someone new at that position, he regularly cleans house and hires his own ‘team,’ similar to when a new head coach comes in and builds out his staff.

In his 18 years evaluating talent for NFL teams, Mike worked for the Chiefs, Seahawks and Cowboys before his most recent stint with the Dolphins. He’s also got a CFL background, having coached for Ottawa and worked in personnel for Winnipeg. Here’s his full bio.

Mike has CFL bloodlines; his father, Cal, was a legendary coach and GM up north, and is even a member of the league’s Hall of Fame. However, there are plenty of people who never translate their Canadian roots to the NFL, and Mike was able to make that jump, to his credit.

Here’s how it happened, in his own words:

“I was coaching in the CFL (Canadian Football League) and there were issues with the ownership at the time, with them bouncing checks to name a few things. I got to know an individual that worked with Kansas City who used to come to Canada and scout. We struck up a conversation about scouting, and they happened to have an opening. It took a little doing, by having people call on my behalf to the individual that was doing the hiring in the personnel department. As you would have guessed, it isn’t always what you know, but who you know. Once I got in, my boss told me that it was now my job to stay in, and that was 18 years ago.”

The thing I like about Mike is that I explained him the purpose and audience of this blog, and he ‘got it’ immediately. He sent me some very long, very nuanced answers to the 10 questions I sent him. It’s always a measure of the success of an interview with a scout when I find myself reading and re-reading the answers, soaking it in and finding plenty of information I hadn’t heard before. That’s true of Mike’s interview.

Maybe the best part of Mike’s interview is that when I asked him what advice he’d give someone looking to become an NFL scout, he gave me a 10-item, point-by-point breakdown of the things he’d do (and has done). I found it really illuminating.

Stick around this week. I think you’ll find it to be very educational.

A Summer of Sizzle

29 Tuesday Jul 2014

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Normally, the period from after the draft until camps start is the ‘low time’ for NFL news. Off the field, however, this is normally a time when major developments take place on the business side, from hiring and firing scouts to movements among NFL agencies. This has been the busiest summer in years for the latter of the two. Meanwhile, we’re seeing major investments with agents who have limited experience levels. Why is this? What are the factors accounting for such transition?

  • The agent business is poorly understood: Few people in other businesses understand the intricacies of the sports representation model. The upfront costs (travel for recruiting, licensing and NFLPA registration, combine training, marketing guarantees and/or signing bonuses) are formidable and it takes a long time to get a return on investment. That’s complicated by the fact that until a contract is signed, the player has virtually all the power.  The agent takes on all the risk. This makes for a treacherous career path.
  • It’s expected that success in this business requires major backing: Businessmen that I’ve encountered seem to accept that they’ll have to pour lots of money into its NFL ventures while not seeing any immediate returns. Once, when I was approaching agencies on behalf of a private equity firm, an agent I spoke to discussed the ‘multiple’ that comes with investing in his company. His message: this business has cache, and its barrier to entry is very high, and the failure rate is even higher, so the pure dollars and cents of the business aren’t the determinant for the investment level he’d need to give up a piece of ownership.
  • It’s a young man’s game: I’m of the opinion that there’s a greater chasm between older and younger generations today than there ever has been, for a number of reasons. This really manifests itself in the agent world. In this industry, you find that agents in their 40s and 50s have less success connecting with today’s athlete. While contract expertise is valuable, it has no value if you don’t have an ace recruiter. Younger agents who were once happy to bide their time with big firms, bringing them top players and accepting what was left over as compensation, aren’t happy with that anymore.
  • This business is really hard, so you want control of your own destiny: The biggest disconnect I’ve seen between the football fan and the football business member is a misunderstanding of the player mindset. There’s a perception that agents and their active NFL clients are always ‘palling’ around, hanging out, and otherwise enjoying a relationship built on mutual respect and fondness. It’s the Jerry Maguire model, and it’s usually not accurate. Typically, the higher the player gets drafted, the less he feels the agent was central to the process, and the more he expects his agent to be out there finding him marketing dollars and otherwise justifying his existence. There’s a sense of entitlement that can be confounding. When you have to deal with that on a day-to-day basis, you want to make sure you’re being compensated at the highest rate possible.

 

Finding sleepers

14 Monday Jul 2014

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If there’s one question I always get, especially from my newer agent clients but also from my more seasoned ones, it’s ‘how do you find a sleeper?’ Where are the seniors who come out of nowhere, climb the charts over the last weeks of the season, test well, and wind up on NFL rosters?

I can’t say I have the answer to that. In fact, at last year’s combine, I had lunch with one of the more seasoned scouts in the game, a great guy and a great friend. I asked him this question, and he didn’t really have an answer, either. In discussing it with him, my takeaway was that most teams spend about two-thirds of their time on the guys who’ll be taken in the top third of the draft roughly, i.e., rounds 1-3. Most teams see these guys as the real difference-makers, the players that will make or break their rosters, so they want to spend an inordinate amount of time on these particular players. The ones who go in rounds 4-7 — most typically the players we’d characterize as sleepers — aren’t seen as players who will help you win titles. They may be solid starters in time, and might even develop into stars, but the risk isn’t worth the reward, generally. Teams get busy, they can’t apply the resources to evaluating everybody, and players fall through the cracks.

So what’s the best way to find guys that are ‘under the radar’ or ‘off the grid?’ Here’s my take on it.

  • One way is to find players who were jucos that don’t have a lengthy body of work at the four-year college level and bloom late. I know there is very little evaluation done at the JC level, mostly because players don’t go from a juco to the draft very often.
  • A second way is to find a college basketball player who just switched to football (i.e., the Saints’ Jimmy Graham or Chargers’ Antonio Gates). There’s a tight end at Indianapolis, Erik Swoope, whom we’ve mentioned previously that fits this profile for the 2014 draft class.
  • Another way is to find players who didn’t play football until college, or very little high school ball, especially if they came from other countries (a la Detroit’s Zeke Ansah or Indy’s Bjoern Woerner or Oakland’s Menelik Watson, all from the ‘13 draft class).
  • A fourth way is to find guys who switched to impact positions late (usually before their senior seasons, but maybe even mid-season). These are typically tight ends who move to OT, or maybe DTs who move to OG, or whatever. Less frequently, you find RBs or WRs that move to CB, or even QBs who move to WO. But all of these qualify.
  • The fifth way is to find a good player at an un-sexy position – he’s good, but not high-impact – who plays either in the far Northeast (Maine/New Hampshire/Rhode Island, etc.) or the Southwest/Mountain West (West Texas/Utah/Nevada/New Mexico/Idaho/Montana/Dakotas). A good example for the ’14 draft class is New Mexico C Dillon Farrell, who signed with the 49ers as an undrafted free agent this spring. They’re trying him at tackle.
  • A sixth way is to find pure track stars that will ‘test out of the gym’ but who aren’t really ‘football players’ yet (but want to give it a try). Florida WR Jeff Demps is an example of this from the ’13 draft class; he’s a guy that’s got great tools that is still developing as a player.

There may be other ways. I know no one has the ‘patent’ on this, but these seem to be the patterns for most players who come out of nowhere, figuratively speaking, and enjoy NFL success.

WSW: Pursuing a passer

09 Wednesday Jul 2014

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We’ve kind of danced around over the past couple weeks, touching on agent topics one day and scout topics the next, and rarely keeping a steady narrative. Once again, we’ll step away from our recent path for a story about agent recruiting.

I remember in the Fall of 2007 or 2008 watching a mid-week college game pitting Nevada and another mid-major team from out West, and the Wolfpack’s quarterback was sensational. His name was Colin Kaepernick, and he was tall and rangy (the new draft buzzword is “length”) and could really run. In fact, he left the pocket for several long gainers during the game. He also had a rocket for an arm; the broadcasters said he had an extensive baseball background with a fastball in the 90s, and I believed it. Though he ran an offense some considered gimmicky (the Pistol) and was still pretty raw, he had undeniable tools and was very productive. I filed him away mentally as a player to watch.

Sometime in late 2010, I remember speaking to Scott Smith of XAM Sports, and he let slip that he’d been recruiting Kaepernick. I was really enthusiastic about Kaep and I let him know, and pretty soon we were recounting how each of us had seen that same mid-week game some years ago and really become excited about his potential. As we continued our discussion, it became pretty clear that XAM had made recruiting Kaep the centerpiece of its efforts for the 2011 NFL draft, and though several mid-sized firms had reached out to the family, Scott liked his chances, having developed an excellent rapport with his parents. That turned out to be a real winning formula, as Kaep was leaning on his mom and dad to handle the vetting process for him.

As his senior season progressed and it became obvious that he was a special player, some of the big firms moved in. I remember finding out that CAA’s Ken Kremer entered the recruiting process very late and made a strong push because the agency had (and has) so much juice, but eventually, Scott called me to tell me XAM was getting Kaepernick. He signed, was drafted early in the second round by the 49ers in 2011, and remains a player who’s not ‘there’ yet, but whose needle is certainly pointing up. You could certainly argue that he’s the best quarterback in his draft class.

It’s truly a rarity for a mid-sized firm to ‘steal’ a big player, but it was a bit of a perfect storm of conditions surrounding Kaep. They were:

His head coach, Chris Ault, is old-school, with no agent ties: Many big-school head coaches make little or no secret of their relationships to agents and regularly make referrals. There are absolutely no rules restricting this practice. However, Nevada’s head coach at the time is not that way. Not at all.

Parents played a key role: Sometimes, a player’s parents make no effort to get educated or assist in the process. Even when they do, many prospects make their agent choices without consulting their parents. Neither was the case with Kaep. His parents were an essential part of the process.

He played at remote school: Even in the age of air travel and the Internet, prospects who play at schools in the less populous states in the Southwest and ‘Mountain West’ — Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, etc. — are more prone to getting overlooked, both by NFL scouts and agents.

He was rated as barely draftable: Agents lean heavily on the ratings services the NFL uses to gauge players’ ability going into their senior seasons, and he was registering as a seventh-rounder who was firmly on the draft bubble going into his senior season.

Other QBs were getting all the press: Remember, in ’11, Cam Newton was the clear ‘it’ player and went No. 1 overall, and three other signal-callers went in the first round (Locker, Gabbert and Ponder), all from BCS schools with strong pedigrees. It’s been my experience that the media, and even NFL teams in some cases, get more excited about junior prospects as there’s some measure of ‘senior fatigue.’ Kaepernick was perceived as far less safe than the five signal-callers (Newton, Locker, Gabbert, Ponder and Dalton) who went before him.

We’ll have more about the game inside the game Thursday.

More on the roots of NFL scouts

27 Friday Jun 2014

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Today we thought we’d wrap up the week with a few more notes on NFL scouts, and where they come from.

  • One of my AFL friends, Scott Bailey with the Los Angeles Kiss, let me know that Colts GM Ryan Grigson was Director of Player Personnel for the AFL’s Buffalo Destroyers just 15 years ago (1999). So, that’s one more recent connection between arena football and high-level people in the game.
  • Though the UFL never turned out to be the pipeline to the pros its founders hoped it would be, the league did help a few budding personnel types hone their skills. Though the Redskins’ Bret Munsey is the only NFL scout who was also a scout for the UFL, Eagles area scout Trey Brown (UCLA) played in the UFL, while Jets scout Rick Courtright coached in the UFL and Rams scout Brian Shields was a personnel intern in the league.
  • One might expect that people in the scouting world got their jobs by playing or coaching at powerhouse college programs that send players to the NFL by the bucketful. Not true. For example, as of last fall, there were three NFL area scouts from Florida State, but also three from Heidelberg and North Carolina A&T; four from DePauw, UMass and Richmond; and even five from that powerhouse of powerhouses, Princeton!
  • If Miami (Ohio) is the ‘cradle of coaches,’ the University of Tennessee is the Cradle of Scouts. As of last fall, there were eight former Vols at the area or regional scout level in the NFL, including Jeremy Breit (Giants), Reggie Cobb (49ers), C.J. Leak (Bills), Mickey Marvin (Raiders), Raleigh McKenzie (Raiders), Kevin Simon (Cowboys), Jon Salge (Titans) and Mike Yowarsky (Titans). That doesn’t even count Raiders GM Reggie McKenzie or Raiders Director of Player Personnel Joey Clinkscales, also UT grads.
  • Being an area scout — the person who goes on the road 11 months out of the year and often lives out of hotels while driving thousands of miles annually — is, no surprise, a young man’s game. Out of 286 scouts from the Director of College Scouting level down to area scout, we found only one (Oakland’s Mickey Marvin) who’s been on the road, in his current position, since 1977. The only other man with similar tenure was former Vikings Director of College Scouting Scott Studwell, who retired this year.
  • Expanding on that, there are six road scouts who started in the 80s; 29 who’ve been on the road since the 90s; 151 who started between 2000-2009; and 98 who got their start in 2010 or later.
  • Youth served again: 198 of the 286 have been on the job for 10 years or less, indicating that (a) there’s a high burnout factor and (b) area scouts are often seen as disposable, especially when a team is looking to tighten its belt.

 

Volunteers

26 Thursday Jun 2014

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I wanted to take a minute today to talk about how important it is to volunteer in your quest for a career in football.

If you live in an NFL city, and you want to work in pro football, find a way to volunteer with your local team. If you have an FBS (or FCS, or good D2 or even D3) team in your city or town, go volunteer. Granted, volunteering for NFL teams may be a little harder, but usually if you poke around on a team’s website long enough you’ll find someone that will take you. As for colleges, summer camps have become a really big revenue stream for most coaching staffs, and if you’re willing to work for no pay, they can usually find something for you to do.

I’m always struck by how many people in awesome football jobs started off as volunteers, hung around, paid attention, showed their intelligence, and got hired. Dru Grigson started off as a volunteer scout with the Eagles in 2005, and 10 years later, he’s the Director of College Scouting for the Cardinals. Tom Ciskowski volunteered as a defensive coach with Butch Davis at Miami (Fla.) in 1985; in 2008, he was named Director of College and Pro Scouting for the Cowboys. Steven Price volunteered with the Panthers at the age of 16 and now he’s a scout with the Vikings.

Granted, some of them had an angle and had some assurances that if they put in work they’d get the first opening, but not all of them; Price started interning with the Panthers because his mother was a secretary there.

Can’t get an NFL team to even let you work for free? Have you tried the AFL route? Two Titans scouts, Jon Salge (Nashville Kats) and Brandon Taylor (Columbus Destroyers), were with AFL teams before landing a job in Tennessee. Bears scout Zach Truty was Director of Player Personnel with the Arizona Rattlers before coming to Chicago. Eagles scout Bret Munsey was Director of Player Personnel for the Orlando Predators before he latched on in Philly. Steelers area scout Mark Gorscak was the GM of Pittsburgh’s arena team in 1987 before moving over to the city’s NFL team.

I don’t know how many of these people got AFL positions by emailing resumes, knocking on doors or waiting in the parking lot to assail a top team executive. What’s more, there are lots of indoor teams of dubious nature that are not AFL teams, per se; they’re just teams trying to copy their model. Sometimes, these teams can be a little shaky and offer limited ability to provide reliable contacts.

Still, there are many routes into the game. We’ll discuss this at greater length tomorrow.

 

 

War Story Wednesday: NFL scouts edition

25 Wednesday Jun 2014

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Since it’s WSW, we thought we’d pass along a few stories about NFL scouts that we thought illustrated the inexact nature of the business.

I think there’s a perception that the evaluation process is very scientific, dry and unerring. Nothing could be further from the truth. No matter how many scouts a team has on staff, and no matter how long they’ve been evaluating personnel, there’s a human element to it, and people make mistakes. They always will.

One example of this is the Bears, who in 1991 drafted running back Darren Lewis out of Texas A&M in the sixth round (161 overall), though they didn’t mean to. In ’91, the combine was still in its early stages, but the league did perform drug tests on those they invited. Lewis failed his drug test, causing many teams to remove him from their boards. That includes the Bears. So how did they wind up drafting him? It turns out there were two running backs named Lewis in the 1991 NFL draft: Greg Lewis out of Washington in addition to the Aggies’ Lewis. According to reports, the Bears took the wrong Lewis off their board, then accidentally took the rusher struggling with off-field issues. Perhaps not surprisingly, the he lasted less than three seasons, getting cut by the Bears in 1993. As of last year, he was in jail after a series of petty crimes.

There are also a series of disagreements between scouts on teams that lead to players falling through the cracks. Longtime NFL scout Bill Groman illustrated this by telling this story at our first-ever seminar for parents of draft-eligible players in 2010.

“Dominic Rhodes was at Midwestern State, I think was the name of the school. . . Back then I was a national cross-check scout (for the Falcons), and I was in the Dallas area, up in that area, covering another school, and I thought I’d run into the school. Another guy had gone and seen him and given him a free agent grade. He was about 5-foot-8 and a half, 5-9, a short guy, and about 205 pounds, but I saw him run real fast, and I like speed, you know, and athletic ability, and I saw he had some stats, and he could really (play).

“I went and looked at film and tape on him, and then I stayed over on Saturday and went to the game. Shoot, the game I was at, I think he was at 200-some yards rushing, and did all kinds of stuff, so I wrote him up to be like a third- or fourth-round pick and make somebody’s team. The other (scout), I know what he was looking at was the fact that this was a Division II school, he doesn’t play against the great big guys, but I think offensive linemen, defensive linemen, from those schools, yeah, they aren’t playing against the big guys, but when you’re a skilled athlete, a receiver, a defensive back, a running back, I don’t care who you’re playing with. If you can do it, you can do it. He just stood out so much, and what ended up happening was, I was at Atlanta at the time and Dan Reeves was our coach, and so what happened is, I wrote him up good, and this other guy had just given him a free-agent grade, and for some reason or other, our Director of Player Personnel at the time put him as a free agent, and we didn’t talk about them, so we didn’t talk about him in our meetings, so Dan didn’t know anything about him.

“Well, he gets drafted late by the Indianapolis Colts (Rhodes was actually signed as an undrafted free agent after the ’01 draft), and doesn’t play, like, the first 5-6 games, and then they come and play at Atlanta, and the starting running back (Edgerrin James) gets hurt. Dominic starts the game and gets like 170-some yards rushing (Rhodes ran for 177 yards on 29 carries with two TDs in a 41-27 Colts win), and I get a telephone call Monday from Dan, and he said something about, well, this guy runs so well, and you know, I said just go look at my grade, which he did.”

For more stories from Bill, check out our video archive at Inside the League.

For another story discussing how players fall through the cracks, check out this interview I did with former Cowboys scout Jim Hess. In this YouTube clip (the interview starts at :34), Jim discusses how he, along with then-Cowboys quarterbacks coach Sean Payton, came to like an Eastern Illinois passer named Tony Romo. From obscurity, Hess and Payton came to champion Romo, so much so that he turned down a more lucrative UFA offer from Denver to sign with the Cowboys after the ’03 draft.

 

Dollars and cents

20 Friday Jun 2014

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If you’ve been reading us for our first week-plus in existence, you know we’re here to help people fight their way into the football business and climb the ladder against all odds. We’ve focused mainly on three areas: NFL scouts, NFL agents and high school football coaches, especially in Texas. Though all three have had popular modern movies made about them (Draft Day, Jerry Maguire and Friday Night Lights), some are a little more glorious than others.

Today I wanted to take a quick look at two career paths, scouts and prep coaches, at least in Texas.

Used to, entry-level scouts were called ’20-20 guys.’ That’s because they were hired in their early 20s and were making around $20,000-$25,000, at least in their first year or so. Based on texts from a handful of scouts this morning, new scouts are making in the $40,000-$50,000 range now. That’s about double the old days. The downside is that it’s a very volatile business, and changes at the GM level, and sometimes at the head coach spot, can mean you’re out and on the street. What’s more, it’s not always easy to find another job.

High school football coaches, at least in the Lone Star State, are probably starting off in the $50,000 range, too. That’s because entry-level teachers make around $40,000 in better school districts, and by the time you factor in the stipends involved with coaching a couple sports (football isn’t the only sport for most coaches), you’re in that $50K range. The big difference is that if your head coach gets reassigned, you’ve still got a job. The other big plus is that you’re not on the road 11 months out of the year, as a scout is. Of course, if you’re young and single, maybe that’s not such a big deal, but if you’re more focused on starting a family, coaching is pretty attractive.

We’ll continue to discuss various football careers next week. Happy weekend.

Dedication

19 Thursday Jun 2014

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On Tuesday, as I’ve mentioned in this space previously, I spoke at a football clinic in West Texas (San Angelo, to be exact). The clinic, which brings in hundreds of high school coaches from across the state of Texas and much farther away, is an annual fixture on the calendar for prep coaches in the Lone Star State. While there, I was struck by a couple things there that really espouse the focus, dedication and single-minded effort that you see in people who are trying to accomplish a goal, in this case, climbing the high school football mountain.

The first example involves me. I was scheduled to speak twice about resumes and interviews, once on Tuesday and once on Wednesday, 90 minutes each. As it happened, I was slated to speak in a small room well off the main floor from 5-6:30 p.m. Also speaking at 5 p.m. was former NFL head coach Wade Phillips (one of the clinic’s co-owners), who was scheduled to discuss the finer points of defensive line play. His talks are always one of the high points of the clinic, and it showed, as he was given a two-hour time block.

Then, at 5:15 p.m., perhaps the most talked-about man in Texas football today, new Texas head coach Charlie Strong, was taking the dais for 20 minutes. So if you were a wide-eyed coach looking to learn as much as you could sometime in the late afternoon around 5 p.m. on Tuesday, your choices were a former NFL coach with three of the state’s teams (Texans, Cowboys and Oilers), the new head coach at the state’s biggest and most storied football school, and . . . me.

I should mention that you also had the option of hearing me speak — on the same topic — on Wednesday at noon.

Given all these circumstances, I was pleasantly surprised that we had 11 attendees. At least one is a current head coach in South Texas. Another, Deer Park assistant coach Nolan Patterson, is a longtime friend and a hot name in coaching circles who’s made it to the finals for several coaching jobs so far but not quite gotten his first top post. There were several more, and I hope they all get to the summit. They certainly are willing to pay a price for the chance to improve themselves.

The second example involves a coach named Paul Banks. I was fortunate enough to be invited to a dinner Tuesday night that was a sort of reunion for former Oilers players, coaches and training staff. Oilers greats Dan Pastorini and Carl Mauck were there along with several coaches. Paul was also there as a guest. At one point, John Paul Young, whom I’ve mentioned previously in this space, asked him to stand up and raise his hand. Paul’s a coach in Memphis, Tenn., and on his finger was a state championship ring for a title his team won last year. Here’s the story of Paul and his devotion to Angelo Clinic.

Now, Paul didn’t win a state championship because he’s been coming to Angelo Clinic for almost 20 years, and he didn’t win it because he used to take a Greyhound bus to the clinic, by himself, every year. It’s also not because he chose to honeymoon in San Angelo when his wedding day conflicted with the clinic schedule. But it didn’t hurt. And here’s my point. You’re going to have to take some chances on the road to success, especially in football. It might be missing the opportunity to hear two coaching titans speak on the off chance you’ll hear something that will help you get a job. It might be riding long hours across the country, knowing you could learn some coaching tips you can apply to your own team. There will be no guarantees.

I know I’m not passing along any secrets here, but I’ve always found it helpful to see the kinds of sacrifices others make, especially when, in Paul’s case, they pay off.

I encourage you to keep believing, keep working, keep taking risks and keep doing what it takes to make your dream come true.