Last Wednesday, we featured Dan Hatman, who founded The Scouting Academy to help teach the fundamentals of evaluation to people whose one desire is to become NFL scouts. Though our interview focused on the exciting program the Academy will host at this year’s Senior Bowl, there are always things that don’t make it into a post. Often, those are some of the most interesting things an interviewee has to say.

With that in mind, I thought I’d focus on some of the insights Dan had on the scouting profession and the direction of the business for those folks who are looking for an edge. I’ll also add comments on Dan’s thoughts.

Dan: “I left the Eagles in Spring of 2013, a couple months into (head coach) Chip (Kelly)’s tenure, when I had an idea for Dynamic Sports Solutions. We were building software to value players, to take what the scouts do and run it through algorithms behind the scenes to evaluate the player.”

Analysis: Even though Dan had a job in the NFL, he was thinking of ways to address weaknesses in the business and identifying  markets. The tendency of a lot of people, once they reach the NFL, is to say, ‘well, I made it.’ That’s foolish, for a couple reasons. One, you’ll never advance if you are satisfied with where you are. Two, when you’re in the NFL, you better always be preparing for when you’re not in the NFL. It’s a volatile business.

Dan: “While guys were writing code (for Dynamic Sports Solutions) . . . I put up a post on Work in Sports, and said I’d be willing to help people that want to learn scouting, and I got 100 applications. That’s when the light bulb went off that people might pay for this.”

Analysis: I know I hammer on this point here at Succeed in Football, but if you ever want to get paid to work in sports, you’re going to have to start out working for free for a time. There are simply too many talented people with a strong desire to work in football to comb through, so you have to pay your dues (maybe several times) by providing your work for free. That may be in college, may be early in your post-college career, or may be much later in life. It’s the price of getting a chance.

Dan: “Scouting used to be former coaches who weren’t good at the X’s and O’s, or were of a certain age, and they’d be turned into scouts. But in the last 10 years, they’re hiring nothing but people under 25 who don’t have families, and they’re willing to work for $17,000 and no benefits. I made $17,000 with no benefits for a year. That’s intern pay. I made $18,000 for the Eagles. Once you’re full-time, you break the $40,000-$50,000 barrier, which is first-year scout pay. Once you have more than five years, you’re around $75,000, and directors are making six figures.”

Analysis: This is truth, and good info about the salary expectations if you’re looking to get into scouting. You have to work a long while to get into real money.

Dan Hatman was in his 20s, working as a pro scout for the Eagles, a few short years after making $17,000 a year (with no benefits) as an intern, when he realized there was a need for The Scouting Academy.

“It was 2012, and we were in camp with the Eagles. We had seven interns in camp. One had worked for a football team, one was a college player, and one had a crazy story who’s now the Director of Player Personnel at a major university.

“The back end of the (90-man camp roster) was hammered with injuries, and we were having trouble keeping our defensive line healthy and working that third unit. We had exhausted the (undrafted free agent) pool, and we needed to scout the (Arena Football League) for guys, so we got AFL film and had to grind that. These seven had made it through the door, and they didn’t know what to look for in a defensive lineman. While they’re watching the film, they liked sacks and size, but (we) needed a guy who could look for the mechanics. We (the Eagles) wanted a guy that wouldn’t get other players injured. The mechanisms we were looking for . . . what kind of athletic ability did they need? What kind of size?

“(Most of the interns) didn’t have a baseline for comparison, and they brought me a list of 25 guys that they thought could make it.”

The fact that seven people working for an NFL team — people that were barely removed from the scouting department — identified 25 players from the AFL that they thought could play pro football was an epiphany for Hatman.

“We ended up finding one guy, and we brought him in,” Hatman said. “Anyway, it was illuminating to me. I had seven human beings at my disposal, and we needed one guy for a week or two, and we still almost couldn’t find any.

“So I started asking myself, how do you do this online? The more people I talked to, the more people jumped at the cause, and wanted people coming in to be better developed.”

It was just a few months later that Hatman founded The Scouting Academy. Today, the Academy boasts of several big NFL names (former Bears GM Jerry Angelo, Broncos defensive coordinator Wade Phillips and former Browns head coach Chris Palmer among them) that help the Academy’s students learn X’s and O’s from people who do it for a living.

In January, at the 2016 Senior Bowl, Hatman will take 30 Scouting Academy students to Mobile, Ala., to spend a week watching film, grading the players and networking. Fifteen of those in attendance will be from the Academy’s rolls, and 15 more will be former NFL players learning the ropes so they, too, can one day become part of an NFL team’s war room.

“Our hope is that we can take those guys that have that passion (for scouting), so that if they get that chance, they have the tools to do it well,” Hatman said.