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The 12th annual ITL Seminar will be held Wednesday, Feb. 24, at 8 p.m. ET. This year, as you know, there’s no NFL Combine, so we’re going online. I hope you can join us! Here are three reasons you should tune in.
This is your chance to hear from football business leaders: There was a time when we brought in people from around the industry to talk about the football business. Among our list of previous speakers includes former Bears GM Phil Emery and former Browns GM Ray Farmer; we’ve also had panels with ex-scouts; analytics seminars; and we were even honored to host the contract advisor conference led by Peter Schaffer of Authentic Athletix in 2019. This year, I’ll give closing remarks based on pay and hiring practices based on what I’m seeing this year. So many people want to get into scouting; my goal is to give them tips and a look at where the industry is headed.
If you want to work in the business, you need to know what’s going on: We’ve had people like Saints AGM Jeff Ireland, Colts GM Chris Ballard and 49ers GM John Lynch on hand to accept awards the last three years, along with Bears scout Jeff Shiver and Arizona State Director of Athletics Ray Anderson, just to name a few. People are always asking me how they can separate themselves from the pack when they are job-seeking. Well, one way is to celebrate with the people who are being honored. If you attended our seminars the last three years — or really, the last 11 years — you had multiple opportunities to meet and congratulate the leaders in the game. Sending an executive a congratulatory text, email or tweet when their team wins a game is easy. Lauding him when he wins an industry award provides far more resonance.
We’ll have you out in an hour: Normally, when we’re in person, the goal is to keep everyone no more than an hour and a half. Of course, during a normal year, we also offer an open bar and plenty of chances to network, so people are more eager to hang around. With none of those attractions this year, we’re going to make it short and sweet. The idea is to bring you an hour of education and information, then let you get back to your life.
We’ll be talking more about our program, and about the industry in general, in today’s Friday Wrap, that comes out this evening. You can register for it here.
I hope you can join us next week. As with everything since the virus changed our lives, this year’s seminar will be a little different. Still, I”m hoping we can preserve the spirit of things and honor some of the unsung heroes of the industry. See you Wednesday.