Face time

10 Monday Nov 2014

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Today I had a conversation with a friend of mine who’s between jobs in football right now, and starting to look outside pro football for a way to support his family. However, before he completely moves on with his life, he wants to give it one last shot, so we talked today about how he might get in front of some real difference-makers, and our discussion turned to the Senior Bowl.

There are a lot of college all-star games, but only one Senior Bowl. It’s the one place you can go (outside of maybe the combine) where you know you’ll see representatives from all 32 NFL teams and often their decision-makers (the GM and/or head coach), plus a good number of top media types who are there to get interviews and chronicle things. The Senior Bowl may be the last, best-kept secret in pro football. It’s like the Super Bowl, but for people inside the game. I’m always hearing about people who want to crack the NFL, and they go to the Super Bowl and hope to bump into someone. To me, that’s a mistake. I’ve never been to a Super Bowl, but I’ve been to every Senior Bowl but one since about 1999.

The best part about the Senior Bowl is that you don’t have to have credentials to ‘get in.’ Practices at Ladd-Peebles Stadium are open on one side of the stands, and every day, lots of students from nearby high schools, fans, parents of players or whatever show up and check out the proceedings. Meanwhile, the team hotel is pretty much where everyone congregates. It’s very similar to The Omni in Indianapolis at combine time. Though the Omni is not where combine invitees stay, it’s become the place where football types seem to congregate. The Renaissance Riverview Plaza, which does house the players, is the nerve center in Mobile. Especially early in the week, it’s the place to be, hands down. At some point, everyone moves through the Riverview. I always tell people that the first time they pass Bill Belichick or Michael Irvin or whoever in the john, they’re starstruck; the second and third times, you’re more like, ‘get out of my way.’

At any rate, getting your foot in the door with top agencies or NFL teams involves cutting through the clutter and getting face to face with someone who can make a decision. While that can be daunting, you don’t get a hit if you don’t get an at-bat. If you’re thinking the NFL is the only way you can fulfill your life professionally, start by thinking of a way to get to Mobile.

More from Miller

07 Friday Nov 2014

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I wanted to pass along a few more thoughts from my lunch with former NFL scout Miller McCalmon, whom I’ll interview for the Rice University Sports Business Society on Tuesday, Nov. 18. One of the striking things from our two hours-plus conversation was how big a role the team’s owner can play, even in personnel matters.

Miller was with the Texans for their 2006 draft, which netted them LB DeMeco Ryans, OT Eric Winston, TE Owen Daniels and, of course, DE Mario Williams. Not only are each of them still active today, well beyond the average length of an NFL career, but they were instrumental in the team’s run of success in the 2011 and 2012 seasons. Though he was on the pro side, he was brought in to help on the college draft that year as the team tried to decide what it would do with the No. 1 pick. That year, of course, the media already had the Texans with Heisman-winning running back Reggie Bush on the heels of his sterling junior season at Southern Cal. But the team was very dilligent in its selection process, and wound up selecting Williams, to everyone’s surprise.

What caught me off-guard is that Miller says owner Bob McNair was part of the decision-making process. He didn’t make the call on who the team would take, of course, but he did take part as, a week before the draft, two of the team’s coaches made lengthy cases each for Williams and Bush. McNair took in all the points made during the video, heard the coaches point out the qualities that made each special, and considered the impact each would make on the team.

That year, like this year, there was a talented local quarterback that people around Houston hoped the Texans would take; in 2006, it was Texas’ Vince Young, while this year, it was Texas A&M’s Johnny Manziel.  The difference is that while McNair never pressured GM Charley Casserly or head coach Gary Kubiak into selecting Young, it’s been widely reported that Titans owner Bud Adams was pretty heavy-handed about his desire to take Young, a Houston high school legend. Maybe that’s why the Texans’ dip won’t be as pronounced as the Titans’ struggles have been.

On the other hand, Miller also worked for the Lions. Detroit’s ownership, the Ford family, has been aggressively hands-off for the most part, and that hasn’t led to results, per se. I guess it’s always hard to draw conclusions, and one size doesn’t fit all.

 

WST: Relationship-building

06 Thursday Nov 2014

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On Tuesday, Nov. 18, at 7:30 p.m., I’ll be interviewing former NFL scout Miller McCalmon before an audience from the Rice Sports Business Society. We’ll talk about his experiences in scouting and he’ll tell a few war stories, as well as imparting his advice on how to break into the the sports business in general and professional football specifically. Today I did the pre-interview over lunch at a Houston restaurant.

I’ve interviewed five or six former NFL scouts (and have the videos archived at ITL), and every time I do it, the pre-interview is a lot of fun for a football weirdo like me. You get to hear all kinds of stories about players and front office types that you’d never read anywhere else, and I always learn something, or at least get something reinforced that I already know. Today was no exception.

Miller has almost four decades in the game (38 years, to be exact). His story of getting hired by the Redskins as a scout (his first job in pro football) will probably turn up in a War Story Wednesday one day because it’s quite interesting, but the real takeaway I got from his story was that he came in just one year ahead of Charley Casserly, who went on to be a GM with the Redskins and Texans. They were both hired by legendary Redskins head coach George Allen, and that’s about the last time Miller got a job from someone he didn’t know beforehand.

At that time in the early-to-mid 70s, Miller was head coach at a high school in Colorado, but wanted to move over to college coaching. He went into scouting because, frankly, Allen regarded the draft lightly and sent his interns into scouting. Miller eventually moved on to other teams (the Bills and Colts) before getting back into scouting with the Redskins. At that point, Casserly had moved up the ranks, and brought him back to Washington. Later in his career, Miller was working with the BLESTO scouting service when Casserly came to Houston to launch the Texans franchise as its GM and hired him again, this time as a pro scout.

After the Texans scouting staff got sacked in the late ’00s, Martin Mayhew had risen to GM in Detroit. Mayhew had played for the Redskins when Casserly and McCalmon were in Washington, and even interned in the front office at one point. Through that connection, Miller was able to finish out his career with the Lions before retiring in January.

If you read this blog regularly, you know that maintaining relationships and building strong bonds with your coworkers is a recurring theme. I thought I’d pass along today’s story just to reinforce that lesson.

 

 

War Story Weds: Desperation

05 Wednesday Nov 2014

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In my newsletter for parents of 2015 NFL draft prospects and the prospects themselves, I’ve been talking a lot about the all-star game process. How do invitations work? When do they come out? Who are they sent to? What if I don’t accept? What if I accept later? There are dozens of questions associated with the all-star process, and plenty at stake for those who don’t make the right moves, act promptly, etc.

These recent editions of my newsletter have been met with plenty of emails, calls and texts from readers. I’m glad to get these questions. It’s much better to handle these issues now, in early November, than some time in late December or even early January, when it’s far too late. Whenever I’m talking to parents concerned about their sons’ place in the process, it reminds me of January 2007.

I was working on my first-ever game here in Houston, the Inta Juice North-South All-Star Classic. It was pretty heady stuff for me back then, as I’d just launched ITL a few short years beforehand and I was already playing a central role in filling the rosters of a game that real NFL scouts would attend. It was a fun fall and winter. Part of what made it fun was that there were two games we were competing against for talent, one in Las Vegas and one in El Paso.

At times, we would hear that others were saying our game wouldn’t be played. This infuriated us, but there was little we could do about it. At the same time, we were hearing that the other two games wouldn’t be played. We had no way to know if this was true or not, though I’ll admit we had a lot of fun considering the possibilities of one or both games falling through.

As the weeks progressed, we moved closer and closer to the game itself in early January. We were scheduled head-to-head with two contests that year, the one in Las Vegas and the Hula Bowl in Honolulu (which, ironically, I would run the following year). On the Friday before our players were scheduled to start arriving on Sunday, we started to get credible evidence that the Las Vegas game would, indeed, be cancelled. Very soon, the phone calls started poring into our office line.

We fielded probably 70-80 calls that Friday night from people, mostly parents and the players themselves, that were irate, devastated, shocked, tearful, or all of the above. We wound up taking calls until around 1 a.m., then trudged home, bleary-eyed and empty. But the real calls started the next day.

When we arrived at the office that Saturday, we had more than a hundred messages (there’s no telling how many actual calls we had received). The voice mails they left were an incredible mess. Callers talked of suing the organizers of the Las Vegas game. They boasted about how scouts were infatuated with their sons, who would be a credit to our game. They begged. They pleaded. They threatened. Sometimes, they threatened, then called back, apologizing and begging to be invited. Some offered money. Some parents cried during the message. Some screamed. It was amazing. We wanted to help, but we were trapped. We wound up adding a handful to our roster, but couldn’t help many. The others, I guess, tried different options, but I doubt many of them found another game.

This wasn’t a life-or-death situation, but it sure felt that way to those parents and those players. And while no one could have predicted that the Vegas game would fail, and so late in the process, it does help to get as educated as possible on these games and really know the ins and outs of things.

If you’re a parent who’s got questions, I’m here to help. Reach me at nstratton@insidetheleague.com

Knowledge is power

04 Tuesday Nov 2014

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On Monday night, I spent an hour on the phone with a new agent. It was really refreshing.

This agent had lots and lots of questions, and she was clearly taking notes as I discussed the various answers to her questions. There are a lot of people who come into this business thinking they already know the answers. There are still others who’ve spent a little time in the industry and think nothing’s changing. Wow, is that ever wrong. . . .

Here’s an example. There’s a new all-star game added to the slate this year called the College Gridiron Showcase (CGS). This is the fifth game in January and will take place the same week as another game, the Medal of Honor Bowl, which was pretty well-received in its first year (2013). It would be easy to dismiss a new game, and already I’ve gotten lots of questions from clients asking if the CGS is even worth considering. I’m sure lots of agents don’t even know about this new game, and others have already dismissed it as a waste of time. This is where it’s an advantage to stay up to date on the business.

Though the CGS is a new game, the people running it aren’t new. The organizers have spent a great deal of time putting all the pieces in place, and have developed a solid base of sponsors to help give them the resources to do a good job. One of the game’s co-founders is Craig Redd, who’s himself a former NFLPA-certified contract advisor who knows the drill quite well (in addition to being a high-character, standup guy). Among Craig’s smart moves is bringing in John Murphy to run the personnel side of things. In addition to being the Assistant GM of the CFL’s Calgary franchise, John has been involved in more all-star games than I can count. He’s super-familiar with the process and knows what NFL talent looks like.

I haven’t personally checked out the hotel sponsoring the game, but I’m sure it’s more than adequate. They’ve been smart about assembling broadcast partners, and they’ve got a good field for the game. They’ve also been aggressive about reaching out to NFL teams and they’ll have a great group of scouts there. But you might not know that if you don’t read ITL (sorry for the shameless plug), or if you are serious about staying up to date on things.

If you read this blog regularly, you know I feel that you can be successful in the football business, but you must be vigilant about information-gathering to ensure victory. This is just another example of that. Don’t ever presume the learning process has ended and that you know all you need to know.

Endorsing early exits

03 Monday Nov 2014

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Now that we’ve reached the start of November, college players are starting to think post-college playing days. So are all-star game organizers, and slowly but surely, news is starting to trickle out about all-star game invites. One such invite caught my attention last week.

The NFLPA Collegiate Bowl, currently the No. 3 game in the all-star cycle, invited Syracuse FS Durell Eskridge to play in its game slated for Jan. 17 in Los Angeles. Normally, that wouldn’t be a big deal. What makes it a little unusual, however, is that Eskridge will not (technically) be done with his playing career in January, as he’s a redshirt junior.

As the college game moves inch by inch into an official minor league for the NFL, I guess this isn’t particularly surprising. However, it is disappointing. When the Senior Bowl began inviting redshirt seniors to its game in 2013, it was billed as a special circumstance, and one only arrived at after receiving permission from the school’s head coach. What’s more, the player invited only received his invite after the season and after he’d already declared his intention to enter the draft a year early. To my knowledge, Eskridge has made no such declaration, though given that the NFLPA has deemed him to be a legitimate NFL prospect, I’d be surprised if such an announcement isn’t forthcoming.

Look, I know these players aren’t competing in major college football for the fun of hanging out with their friends, but it’s still a major leap to start inviting players who could conceivably improve their lots in life by spending another season on the college level. Of course, in its zeal to show that it hosts the biggest and best all-star game, the NFLPA has already shown an inclination to invite juniors in its own, ham-handed way several years ago.

This resulted in embarrassment and a scarcity of NFL scouts at the game in 2012, but the PA appears to be headed to no such change of direction this year. It seems to be juniors invited, full speed ahead.

In the grand scheme of things, I guess this matters little. However, as this policy is expanded and the other games fall in line, inviting their own juniors and eventually even encouraging underclassmen to leave early, it’s going to be a net negative for the game, in my opinion. But time will tell. Hopefully, there will remain at least a few collegiate players who take the long view on an NFL career. We’ll see.

Taking stock of NFL players by their college’s states

30 Thursday Oct 2014

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We decided to go back inside the numbers to take a look at a few trends related to the states in which NFL players went to college. There weren’t many surprises, and the numbers were very similar to the states by high school. We also checked into the twisting paths some players took to the league.

  • California is tops with 179 players from Golden State colleges. Texas is next with 162, while Florida is just behind with 160. Those three states also make up the top three if you go by players by hometowns (California, 277; Florida, 255 and Texas, 242).
  • The only other state with more than 100 of its college players in the NFL is Alabama (102).
  • Georgia doesn’t do a great job of keeping its high school talent in-state. Though the Peach State is fourth (125) in NFL players at the high school level, it’s just No. 12 (69) in players from Georgia colleges.
  • Ohio is fifth in NFL players from its high schools (101) and its colleges (96).
  • There are a lot of schools that serve as football factories, and even some junior colleges that produce their share of future pros. However, there’s only one player in the NFL who went to the Military Academy Prep School, i.e., the ‘juco’ for people wanting to attend West Point. It’s Seahawks DE Julius Warmsley, who finished up at Tulane.
  • Vikings DT Tom Johnson is, unofficially, the only active player who has experience in NFL Europe, which dissolved in 2007. Actually, Johnson has a closet full of jerseys as he’s also played in the Arena League and the CFL after he finished up at Southern Miss.
  • Broncos DE Chase Vaughn has played in more leagues even than Johnson, having experinence in the CFL, IFL, AFL and UFL. By the way, he played at Adams State before finishing up at CSU-Pueblo. There’s also Cowboys FB Tyler Clutts, who’s played in the CFL, AFL and UFL.
  • Only one player we tracked has played with three Division I-A (FBS) programs. It’s Texans QB Tom Savage (Pittsburgh, Arizona and Rutgers), drafted 4/135 this spring.

War Story Wednesday: Trouble

29 Wednesday Oct 2014

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On Tuesday, I touched on the subject of players that just can’t be saved. Today, I want to expand on a story I glossed over in that post.

About a year ago, I was on the phone with Marco Marciano, who was then working with XL Sports Agency, which is based in Miami. Marco is not a certified contract advisor, but was part of XL’s recruiting team (Marco has since left XL). At any rate, Marco became a client after I had reported that former Oregon TE Colt Lyerla had signed with his then-firm.

Keep in mind that this was late October with many weeks of college football left to play, and Lyerla had departed from the team voluntarily and, obviously, in response to a pending suspension from the team. Already, people in draft circles knew Lyerla had unlimited physical ability but numerous struggles off the field. As I spoke to Marco, whom I like a great deal, I didn’t quite know what to say. Already, it was clear they had signed a troubled young man who would most likely not be willing, or able, to change. I wanted to warn Marco but didn’t know how, given the commitments already made.

Marco told me his agency had set Lyerla up to train with Tom Shaw in Orlando, Fla. Though Tom is not an ITL client, he is nonetheless very good in his field and also a pioneer in combine prep. As such, a normal training program would be costly, but Lyerla was going to be starting in October. That adds two months and several thousand dollars to his training package. And all this money would be spent on a player who would most surely not be drafted due to all his baggage, meaning his agency would be chasing that money for years.

As I recall, it was just days later that Lyerla had his first offseason arrest. Marco called me decrying the fact that they had not gotten him out of Eugene quickly enough, and that had they just gotten him on a plane to Orlando, it never would have happened. I didn’t know how to tell him that it didn’t look like it would have mattered where he was, that drugs were a major problem for him.

That was one of the last times I spoke to Marco, and also one of the last times XL Sports was still representing the former Duck. Just as I expected, Lyerla was dogged with several other problems last offseason, and in fact changed agencies twice in the space of six months, going from XL to Morgan Advisory Group to Elevate Sports, which reps him now. All three firms are reputable and able, even though Colt has not been.

Today, as then, Lyerla has tantalizing athletic ability, though he’s out for the season after experiencing a knee injury in camp. Due to his talent, he will not lack for suitors, either in the NFL or among agents. I hope he learns his lesson, though there are no guarantees. But I hope everyone who reads this and aspires to work in sports learns the lesson Marco and many others had to learn the hard way.

The Benefit of the Doubt

28 Tuesday Oct 2014

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When you talk to a contract advisor about his draft class, you rarely hear him refer to them as anything other than ‘his kids.’ It’s a little strange to hear of 21- and 22-year-old men who could lift a car as ‘kids’ regularly, but that’s part of the game.

Now, if one of an agent’s clients is known to have had a series of legal missteps, or was suspended several times, or was kicked out of several schools, or is known to be less than admired by coaches on staff, expect to hear what a ‘great kid’ he is. The agent will usually go on and on about how the player was misunderstood, or how the coach(es) didn’t like him, or how he was a victim of terrible circumstances. I guess I’d do the same thing were I in their shoes, but it gets a little old.

Last year was a prime example. I had a marketing associate who had signed a player known as a big bag of trouble. I mean, even the most casual fan knew this ‘kid’ was bad news, but my friend insisted that the young man had seen the light. He didn’t run away from the young man’s troubles, to his credit — usually, an agent is well-rehearsed in dismissing any bad stories about a client — but he was adamant that it was all in the past.

Within the next week, the (a) marketing professional’s agency had spent a lot of money flying the player around and putting him up in fancy accommodations, (b) had set him up in top-rate (i.e., expensive) training, and (c) had seen him arrested on a drug offense, the most recent of several. Within another week or so, the agency had been fired by ‘the kid.’ I wish I could say I was surprised.

What I’m about to say is going to sound very cold and dismissive, but in this game, you can’t save the world. You’ll come across a lot of broken people who are phenomenal athletes in this business, and the idea of working with them can be tantalizing, but most of the time, they aren’t going to change.

By the time an extraordinary athlete has reached his 20s, he’s established a comfort zone, a behavior template that has never been corrected adequately (and that has probably been enabled everywhere he’s played). If you think you can turn that around, you’re crazy.

If you’re reading this blog because you want to be in the football business, I’m here to help, and I want you to succeed. But I also want you to have a happy life, and no one has time to beg to help someone. It’s OK to want to help, but set a boundary, and understand that you need to be able to walk when a line gets crossed.

 

The Season of Excitement

27 Monday Oct 2014

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Here are five reasons why this is the time of year to get excited about the business of football if you’re in the biz already, or aspire to be someday.

1. College recruiting is heating up: Many of the bigger agencies don’t get started talking to players in earnest until October, and sometimes even November and December. I know that goes against the grain of common belief, but it’s true. I’ve had representatives of several bigger firms asking pointed questions about players in the ’15 draft in the past week-and-a-half. It’s pretty clear they’re just getting started.

2. Trade deadline is this week: Football is way less exciting than baseball when it comes to the trade deadline, but every once in a while a legitimate player gets swapped. Will this be the year? We’ll know by close of business Tuesday.

3. New agent class is being published: As we’ve detailed in this space as well as our Twitter page, the contract advisors who passed the CBA exam this summer are being rolled out on the NFLPA’s website. At the same time, agents who’ve decided enough is enough are being pulled from the site. The entire new class has not been posted yet, and I know of several agents whose names are still posted though they didn’t pay their dues. But changes are coming.

4. NFL dreams get real: As I’ve chronicled in this space, over the last week I’ve begun to speak to several parents about how their sons can improve their NFL chances. In fact, I’m supposed to get a call from a parent in just a few minutes. That’s really common this time of year. I rarely, if ever, get these calls before October 1, and the lion’s share come in after Halloween.

5. Speculation about the No. 1 pick ramps up: As someone who tries to watch NFL draft buzz objectively, it’s always fascinating to see what player (usually a quarterback) the media appoints as the no-doubt top pick next spring. In the late fall of 2011 it was Matt Barkley (presuming he left after his junior year). In 2005, it was Matt Leinart of USC. Go back to 2008 and it was Brian Brohm of Louisville, and a year before, most tabbed Notre Dame’s Brady Quinn. Just last year, the lock was Louisville’s Teddy Bridgewater. As we know now, none of them was No. 1 overall, and most went toward the end of Round 1. Some (Barkley and Brohm) didn’t even go in the first round. Talk is cheap, especially talk about the NFL draft.