Pro Day Thoughts

24 Tuesday Mar 2015

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Two or three times every March, I try to get out and hit pro days that are not too far from me in South Houston. Monday was one of those days; I attended the workout held by Packers scout Alonzo Highsmith at Lamar University in Beaumont, about two-and-a-half hours from me.

Here are a few things I found interesting.

  • Highsmith came to Beaumont to work out a handful of players, probably 10-12, who are far from blue-chip prospects. At best, two of them will be in camps, and it would be a real long shot if either get drafted. Still, Highsmith was there, doing his due diligence. That’s a real credit to him. He’s a true old-school scout who does his job the old-fashioned way, watching film and relying on his network to find undiscovered gems. He’s pretty much the antithesis of the modern view of scouting, which is moving way more to ‘analytics’ and a view of evaluation that is more related to measurables and less to what happens during a game.
  • This catch has made an indelible mark on players across the country, and maybe not in a good way. It’s become so bad that I saw multiple receivers yesterday catching the ball one-handed in warmups, as if this is supposed to impress Highsmith. One kid, a transfer from a bigger school who has had multiple off-field issues and didn’t even finish the season with Lamar, caught every pass thrown his way (warmup throws, drills, tosses from the ball-boy) one-handed, as if he thinks this will translate to the NFL. Want to impress a scout? Run good routes, put up good numbers, listen to your coaches, make plays, train hard and catch everything thrown your way with two hands.
  • Even though Lamar is a smallish school without a whole lot of tradition, yesterday was the school’s second of three pro days. The first was on March 10, which was run by scouts from the Texans and Chiefs. On Saturday, a Rams scout will have a workout for a handful of invited Cardinals. This is why, when it comes to college football and pursuing a chance in the NFL, geography counts. An FCS school that’s only been playing football for five years may not even have a pro day if it’s located in the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest or even parts of the Northeast, but the Cardinals seniors almost have to prove they can’t play after getting three separate audiences with NFL scouts. Texas and the Southeast are different, special, when it comes to football.
  • There are some parents that overdo it a little. I know they are well-intentioned, but that doesn’t help a young man’s prospects. I’ll leave it at that.
  • On the way back, I stopped at a restaurant. I was wearing my ITL gear and a waiter (probably about 5-8 and wiry, around 150 pounds) noticed the logo. We had this conversation:

Waiter: “What’s that (gesturing at my shirt)? What do you do?”

Me: “I have a football consulting service. I work with agents, financial planners, combine trainers, some scouts, some coaches, some parents, lots of people who are in college and pro football.”

Waiter (eyes lighting up): “Oh really? I need to get an agent. I was supposed to play in college but I had an incident in high school.”

Me: “Where did you wind up playing in college?”

Waiter: “I didn’t. I was supposed to but I didn’t.”

Me: “Have you played since then?”

Waiter: “No.”

I recommended he attend an open tryout for a CFL or Arena League team. Which is to say, I probably didn’t practice what I preach, which is to tell young men like that to move on with life. I guess my strategy was for him to attend a workout, find out how long his odds are, and hope that he comes to his own realization.

Commodities

19 Thursday Mar 2015

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You may be reading this from a tablet, laptop or phone while sitting in a sports management class. You might even be a sports management major. Ever wonder what kind of company you’re in?

Based on this link, there are 471 schools in America that offer either an undergrad or masters program in sports management. Let’s say that, conservatively, each program dumps 20 graduates with either a four-year degree or master’s degree in this discipline every year. That’s just under 10,000 men and women vying for a place in the world of sports business.

Now, if you’re trying to get a degree in sports management, I applaud you. Based on my research, more and more young NFL scouts have just such a degree (some a master’s, even). It’s not as common a degree for young agents, most of whom were pre-law in college, but I’m sure the number is growing. What’s more, I’m fully aware that not all young folks in these programs have the passion for football that I — and maybe you — have.

Still, I think it’s fair to presume that many, maybe most, are at least open to a career in football. Let’s say half. That means whatever year you graduate, you have to be better than about 5,000 people every year just to get an internship or entry-level job with an NFL team.

That means, in the business world, you’re a commodity. Generally speaking, unless your last name is Rooney or Kraft or you’re Jerry Jones’ nephew, you’re not a Ferrari but more of a Ford Taurus. Your job is to make yourself unique.

Hey, that’s not impossible. This blog is about going for it and trying to beat the odds, and I’m hopeful that our daily read gives you an edge in that endeavor. But you’re gonna need to help yourself along by volunteering with a team, networking until you find that key mentor, or doing something that separates you from the pack. Here’s an interesting thought.

As I think I’ve mentioned in this space, I attended a conference on ‘EntreLeadership’ hosted by Dave Ramsey earlier this month. He said you don’t have to ‘kill’ the competition, or ridicule them, or even hate them to beat them. I’m paraphrasing, but he said you’re going to be smarter than about a third of your competitors, and you’re going to be able to outwork another 50 percent of them, so that leaves only about 20 percent of the competition that you really have to worry about. That really reduces the numbers. It doesn’t guarantee you anything, but your odds just got a lot better if you make that realization.

If you’re getting a sports management degree, good for you. I wish I’d had that chance when I was in college. But realize that attending the right classes and hearing the right lectures is a long way from guaranteeing you’re going to get where you want to go.

WSW: What Would You Pay?

18 Wednesday Mar 2015

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I think I’ve referenced today’s story before, but I thought I’d tell it in full in the words of my friend Miller McCalmon, a former scout with Washington, Houston and Detroit who also coached at several NFL stops. It goes well with our theme this week of pursuing jobs in March.

It details the lengths he had to go to in order to work for free as an NFL scout. Incidentally, if you’d rather watch him tell this story rather than reading it, click here.

“They didn’t know what to do with interns. It’s kind of interesting. Does anyone know who John Ralston (was)? He was head coach at Stanford University in the 70s, then he was the head football coach of the Denver Broncos (from 1972-76). Well, I was in high school coaching and I wrote him a letter . . . because I wanted to get into something besides high school coaching.

“I wrote him a letter and he visited with me, and I went down to his office, and we talked about it, and he was a great guy, great motivating coach and all that stuff, but he said, ‘well, we don’t have interns and graduate assistants like you have on the college level,’ so he kind of pooh-poohed it. But I still wrote (a letter to the Washington Redskins), because I remember in the Sports Illustrated article, (‘70s Redskins head coach) George (Allen) talking about (having an interest in hiring high school coaches as scouts).

“So I wrote the letter, and one of the stipulations of becoming an intern was my dad had to co-sign a letter of credit for me, because (Allen) didn’t want us to go there without any financial backing. . . What’s really interesting about the whole thing is that this was 1976, and I was the head football coach (at a Colorado high school), assistant basketball coach, and I taught history and earth science, and I was making $15,000 a year doing all those things. I went to the NFL for nothing, with a $10,000 line of credit, but they would give me $600 to go out on the road, so I actually ended up making more money working for nothing than I did as a high school coach, which tells you something about high school and public education and that sort of thing. Which is kind of sad, but it is kind of a commentary about it.”

You may want to be an NFL scout with all your heart. But would you be willing to ask your parents to go $10,000 into debt to make your dreams come true? And to work for free while they were taking on that debt?

It’s something to think about. There’s always a price to pay, and a risk to take. But if you succeed, as Miller did, it’s well worth it.

Opportunities

17 Tuesday Mar 2015

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From time to time, I see big events that appeal to the sports law crowd. Conferences, meetings, panels, seminars. They draw a lot of students and often have impressive speakers, by any standard. They’re a place to start if you’re looking at a career in football. But know the weaknesses of such gatherings.

There are a lot of people who regularly speak at these events that aren’t going to give you a lot of practical guidance. Oh, you’ll get ethics, and you’ll get people raging against the machine (the NFL, the NCAA, or whatever the perceived monolithic exploiter of the day is), and that’s all well and good, but are you getting practical guidance? Are you getting the answers to your questions? Are you in a setting where you feel confident seeking guidance on a specific area of the job search? Do you get closer to knowing what you really want to be?

Here’s one example. Every year at the combine, a company that is a semi-rival of ITL holds a big event for their clients. They bring in several people holding NFL jobs in evaluation, and they bring in a handful of agents and others from across the industry, and it’s a very impressive, star-studded list. For a day, all of those clients get to feel like big shots, hear war stories, tell their friends about who they’re rubbing elbows with, and maybe take a few cool selfies. But do they really directly benefit from this? The organization has lots of members, but I haven’t seen a record of success that indicates they’re giving any real value beyond entertainment.

I’m not discounting networking. That’s important, especially at an early stage of your career, and you’ll find no shortage of places to go if you want to wear an official-looking nametag, shake lots of hands, and sit in rooms with people with lots of Twitter followers. However, there is no substitute for actually working in the business.

As you attend these events, make sure you’re aggressive, direct, and mission-focused. You want to come away with leads, especially if you’re attending an event in the next 2-3 weeks. Make sure your goal is to go in without an opportunity, but to come away with one. If you are mostly sure there won’t be such opportunities at an event, maybe your time is best spent somewhere else.

Know Your Audience

16 Monday Mar 2015

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As this is ‘application season’ if you’re seeking a position with an NFL team or a football agency, I thought I’d give a couple more thoughts on how to best position yourself for the internship of a lifetime.

This weekend I was speaking to an NFL scout who’s been a longtime friend. I had asked him to speak to a young man I know who’s seeking to work as a scouting assistant this summer or next fall (I work with several young people of this status), and in the course of our conversation, this young man’s name came up.

Unsolicited, my friend told me the young man would probably not fit in with his organization. The student’s mistake had been that, in his zeal to sound intelligent and organized, he had come across as too refined and ‘executive-level’ for the tastes of my friend. Maybe because of the way he had spoken, the scout saw him as a person who would not be as willing to do the ‘dirty work’ of scouts, such as entering phone numbers into a database, calling agents to get contact information, picking up interviewees from the airport as well as returning them to the airport, and all the kinds of player engagement duties and basic information-gathering that are less than glamorous.

This is unfortunate, because I know he read the young man wrong. He may be refined, but he’s in no way too good for such duties. In fact, I think he’d relish them, but it doesn’t matter now. He hadn’t come across as enough of a ‘regular guy’ for my scouting friend. And because of that, he’d sealed his fate.

On the other hand, his style of communication would work perfectly for an agency. There, the people interviewing him might have a legal background or at least the kind of high-level professional manner that would expect a certain polish. And as it turns out, this young man did, in fact, land a place with a high-level firm that handles top athletes across several sports. He’ll be with them this summer.

I guess the moral of the story is to know your audience. By a wide margin, scouting assistants and interns are hired by scouts themselves who are a bit more down-to-earth. They are used to hanging around the locker room, talking to ‘little people,’ and maybe even have coaching backgrounds. They’re used to getting sweaty and dirty and they talk like it. On the other hand, appealing to an agency might take a smoother approach. They’ll want to see that you can handle life around a boardroom, a courtroom, or the like.

This is just something to keep in mind as you position yourself for career enhancement this summer. Best of luck in your search.

It’s Time

13 Friday Mar 2015

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Ever thought about being an NFL scout? Ever wanted to intern for a major football agency? If the answer to either question is ‘yes,’ consider brushing up your resume. Fast.

There’s a lot going on in the football world these days between free agency, pro days and the various combines the NFL will be holding in the next two weeks. However, behind the scenes, where we ‘live,’ there’s plenty of maneuvering for what happens after the draft, namely, making a few hires.

I’ve been working with a couple college students on their applications with NFL teams over the past month, trying to find a good fit for a scouting internship. Now is the time to really start bearing down on this process. NFL teams gather resumes in March, start sifting through them and cutting to a few finalists in April, then choose a few lucky winners in May, when the draft is over and things slow down. The application process is tricky, of course, but you don’t want to wait if that’s something you’re entertaining. And of course, it doesn’t hurt if you know someone in the game.

The same is true of agencies or sports marketing firms. If you’re looking to help out at a big firm this summer, now is the time to start looking for options. Look locally first, but if you don’t find many agencies, you may have to throw out caution and just go for it, applying with whoever will take you. The bigger the firm, the less your responsibilities, usually, but the better your chances of early success in the business if you decide to pursue it.

Today, I learned that one of my top interns landed a summer internship with a firm that could be representing the top pick in the draft next month. I couldn’t be happier for him or more excited that he’s getting this opportunity, but it wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t started the process very early, applying this winter and interviewing over spring break.

It’s always tempting to put things off, but don’t make that mistake. Get rolling on making your dreams come true so that someone else who acted sooner doesn’t make them come true for them. And if you need help or have questions, and you’re serious about the business, let me know at nstratton@insidetheleague.com.

Quick Fix

12 Thursday Mar 2015

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What if combine prep could be distilled into a pill or a potion?

More specifically, what if you could take a tenth off your 40 time, just by drinking a couple ounces of a liquid or a handful of capsules?

I asked this question to Amanda Carlson-Phillips, the vice president of nutrition and research at EXOS, which today announced that it is launching EXOS Performance Nutrition, a new line of high-quality nutritional supplements. EXOS has long been a leader in the combine prep field and the company’s founder, Mark Verstegen, is one of the 2-3 men who can claim to be the ‘inventors’ of combine prep.

Perhaps to humor me, she didn’t laugh out loud when I posed the question to her. Indeed, she seemed to give it real consideration. She stopped short of saying significant athletic improvement could ever be as simple as ingesting a substance, but she did say that . . . well . . . she gave me a qualified ‘maybe.’

“How we see nutrition, when you’re training, or you’re working out and doing your position and skill work, you’re breaking down your body intentionally so it can come back stronger,” she said. “The body doesn’t magically fix itself, so if you can provide your body with something to heal that breakdown, that will help athletes recover faster.”

So maybe there’s something on the horizon that, though it would still require training and the right nutrition, could super-charge combine prep. Maybe there’s a pill that you could combine with max effort that could give you a supreme boost. Of course, there are caveats.

“If you don’t recover and don’t have the right nutrition, you’re leaving something on the table and not maximizing what you do,” Carlson-Phillips said. “They’re wearing the right cleats, the right gear that’s going to make them the best, but they’re fueling themselves from the outside but not from the inside out.”

So it’s not going to be as easy as swallowing something, snapping your fingers, and voila! You’re explosive. But still, it bodes for more interesting twists and turns in a business that is always changing. Something to look forward to, I guess.

WSW: Broadcast Bungle

11 Wednesday Mar 2015

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Well, it’s draft season, and everyone’s hearing from the various gurus and experts out there, so I figure it’s a good time to tell a War Story on me.

This is from my days as one of two partners in the precursor to ITL. It was called Lone Star Football. When I first moved to Houston in 1998, I met a dude who wanted to start a Mel Kiper Jr.-style draft magazine, and after meeting me, he knew I had a passion for the game that mirrored his, so he asked me to help him out. It wound up lasting four years before it folded. Troy handled the offense and I handled the defense. One of these days, I’ll tell more stories from my humble beginnings with Lone Star in this space. When I do, take some No-Doze.

At any rate, we didn’t have any money, so our main strategy for selling our draft magazine (yes, it was a print publication just as the Internet was taking off, which was among our inept business decisions) was doing radio shows. I’d poke around on search engines (pre-Google) for whatever stations I could find with a sports talk format, and we’d volunteer to do their shows. We never got paid, so we’d always hope they had a toll-free line, so at least we didn’t have to come out of pocket to give away free programming.

Anyway, one year we landed a couple segments on a station in Green Bay. The problem was that they wanted to do it mid-day (which is probably where they stashed the draft guys that weren’t ready for prime time). We liked to do them together because we had a pretty strict dividing line between offense and defense, and if we had to ‘solo’ a show, we could wind up looking stupid if a caller asked about the wrong player. This is why I was really, really nervous while waiting for call time for this show, because my partner had to work. That meant I was stuck. I had to roll without Troy and hope for the best.

Well, the show wasn’t going very well (I think the host had wrangled with me over my opinion on a player, which kinda pissed me off) when we got a question on a cornerback from a small Midwestern school. I immediately panicked. As we only had two people trying to watch hundreds of players, our focus was almost solely on the big schools. Obviously the wise thing to do would be to cop to my ignorance, admit I didn’t know him, and throw myself on the mercy of the caller.

But hey, screw wisdom. I decided to sell out. Go for it. Burn my ships. Throw caution to the wind. I said something along the lines of ‘great ball skills, plus tackler, needs to prove he can play on a bigger stage.’ You know, the usual blather you get about small-school players, and it might have worked. Problem is, the caller had said ‘quarterback.’

No easy way to wiggle out of that one. Obviously, this didn’t endear me much with the host, who was already not a fan. I don’t remember how we wound up the segment, but that pretty much took all the steam out of it.

Ever since then, when I do radio and I get stumped, I will admit it. I will own it. It’s awkward, but it’s a way better place to be than I was that woeful day on Green Bay radio.

 

Don’t do this

09 Monday Mar 2015

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I want to start this post out by saying that we probably have more information on draft prospects, and the draft process, than we’ve ever had. Most of it is based on good analysis. The has played a big role in this. Everyone with a Twitter account or a WordPress page can critique draft prospects, and with practice, can get pretty good at it.

I guess, at this point, I should tell you I strongly recommend you don’t pursue this avenue if you’re thinking of a career in football.

Evaluating talent is a lot of fun, and with a little studying of the process, you can learn all the buzzwords and figure out the things that make a player attractive to NFL teams. In fact, you can quickly do this well enough to impress your friends and maybe even sound like Todd McShay or Mike Mayock in no time. However, at the end of the day, this is (IMO) the wrong way to go, simply because the market is flooded with such people. It’s just far too difficult to distinguish yourself and gain real recognition for your efforts. Why?

Well, one reason is that simply making observations about players and ranking them is not that hard to do. After all, very rarely do we see analysis of a draft guru’s work 3-5 years later, when we can fairly analyze it. There’s so much info on the Web that you don’t really have to have original thoughts about things. You can gather up enough data to craft it in virtually any way you want. And after all, there’s really not a lot of variation among draft evaluators out there.

I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for someone to rank Marcus Mariota, Jameis Winston or Leonard Williams as a fourth- or fifth-rounder, even among those who have legitimate doubts about such players. Even scouts have difficulty expressing such reservations in the war room. There’s tremendous pressure to ‘go along;’ that’s one thing I’ve learned over years of talking to scouts about the process.

Of course, none of what I say precludes you from having opinions, conducting evaluations, and weighing your rankings against the experts. About two months ago, I posted info on a player who at the time was seeking representation, and soon after I got an unsolicited text from an agent who’s a former subscriber. “Although I am no longer a paying client I still read your tweeter fees,” the text began, then launched into a lengthy, blow-by-blow critique of the player, generously sprinkled with buzzwords and comparing him to previous draft prospects. My only reaction was to offer him thanks for his text, though I’m still not sure of his point in giving me a lengthy breakdown of his draft prospects. I guess there’s a little bit of Mel Kiper Jr. in all of us.

The Downside

05 Thursday Mar 2015

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In this space, I spend a lot of time encouraging you to ‘go for it’ in the football world, to roll the dice and pursue your passions. I haven’t retreated from that position one iota, but I wanted to give you a couple downsides to such a path.

This post is maybe only half-serious, but I guess the idea is that life changes as you make football not just your passion, but your profession.

You’ll never watch SportsCenter again: In the 90s, there’s nothing I wanted to be more than Craig Kilborn or Chris Berman. Today, I can’t remember the last time I watched more than 10 minutes of SportsCenter when I wasn’t on a hotel treadmill. There are a couple reasons for this. No. 1, in the rare instances I actually watch the show, they’re trying to sell me something or be too cutesy. No. 2, in the age of the Internet, I already have all the information I need. No. 3, shows like SportsCenter have little to no application to the football business. They’re more fan-driven. I understand this, obviously, but your tastes change once you’re in the business.

You can’t talk football with anyone: I live in Greater Houston, so once someone finds out I’m in the business, the first thing they ask me is something about the Texans. Hey, they’re just trying to be friendly and congenial, and once again, I get that. The thing is, my tiny corner of the business is so all-consuming that I don’t get to really be a fan as much anymore. I can’t remember the last time I watched all four quarters of a college game, and the only NFL games I watch are Saints games (I’m not a Texans fan, which is another problem). Even when I go places like the combine or all-star games or whatever, it’s rare when I meet a client and we talk about on-field, traditional football stuff. We wind up talking about our families, our common non-football interests, or about real ‘inside football’ stuff. Again, your tastes change.

You’ll never enjoy football movies again: About this time last year, the movie ‘Draft Day’ came out. My wife, who knows I hate sports movies, nonetheless declared that we were going to go see it. Well, I humored her and agreed to go, but for one reason or another we never made it while it was in theaters. I breathed a sigh of relief, and so far, I’ve ducked renting the DVD, as well. Most people don’t believe me when I tell them I haven’t seen ‘Jerry Maguire,’ either. They think it should be the one movie that I’ve seen, if any. Once you’ve seen the inside of this business, it ruins sports movies for you because they have to make so many concessions to drama, entertainment, selling tickets, whatever.

I know these issues seem pretty small in the greater scheme of things, and heck, maybe they apply only to me. Still, you should probably get used to thinking in different terms as you move into this world in a more official capacity.