I’m always looking for crazy stories of pure work ethic that espouses the will, persistence and sheer single-mindedness that characterizes people who succeed in football. Fortunately, in my correspondence with former Jets Director of Football Administration Ari Nissim, I was able to find a great one. He relates a story of a project he worked on during his internship that was probably integral in that internship turning into a paying NFL job.

At this point, I’ll turn it over to Ari.

“It always amazed me the people that got an internship and thought just by getting the internship they made it. Nope, you haven’t made anything; you got your foot in the door. Now, what are you going to do with it?

“I remember during my internship, I was asked to do this study on playtime in the preseason which at that point could only be done by watching every single play of every single preseason game and jotting down every player’s number on each play, and they asked me to do it for the entire league.  It literally wasn’t possible to do in the time frame wanted, but I was like, ‘screw it, we are going to get it done anyway.'”

Now before you say to yourself, ‘I’m a football junkie, and I’d do this for free,’ think about what this job would entail. This would involve accessing the NFL Films film bank for every game played in the preseason (about 130 games) and breaking them down, play by play, to log in numbers for each team. And by the way, you would have only a few weeks to do this.

We return to Ari’s story.

“One night, it was about midnight and in walks Herm Edwards (the Jets HC at the time). He looks at me and was like, ‘What you doing?’ And so I tell him about the study, (and) he looks at me, kind of scratches his head like I’m out of my mind, and turns around and walks out of the room.  So it’s midnight and there are two people in the facility, the head coach and this out-of-his-mind intern.

“That’s the passion I look for in my interns, and  I’m happy to say that two of the people that interned under me at the Jets are currently working for NFL teams, and another works for a sports agency, and it’s because you could tell they loved it.

“There are a lot of smart people in this world. What makes you stand out? Because trust me, when you don’t think we notice, we do.”

I think this story is excellent for two reasons. One, it illustrates what an UNPAID intern is asked to do. Two, it illustrates that the head coach — the guy who gets all the glory (and the $$$$) when the team wins — is also keeping intern hours.

I think this is something to consider if you’re really dedicated to working in the NFL. This is what it takes.

I think before we go any further, I have to address the one question everyone asks, and that is, ‘how did you get your job?’ In the case of former Jets Director of Football Administration Ari Nissim, it was a case of developing a vision, choosing a school that fit that vision, then aggressively pursuing the opportunities that school brought him.

“I wanted to work in the NFL since I was in high school, which was right about the time the salary cap came into effect.  Having no ‘in’s’ in the industry, I knew I would need to go to law school after college to have a chance, so I focused on going to the law school with the best sports program, and ended up at Tulane. Let’s not kid anyone: if I got into Harvard Law, I would have gone, but Tulane was an amazing experience, where I had the opportunity to meet a lot of people in the industry when they came down to speak.

“One of those people happened to be Mike Tannenbaum, then the Asst. GM for the NY Jets (and now a member of Chicago-based player agency Priority Sports).  There is a fine line between persistence and harassment, and I was able to successfully navigate that line into a one-week internship after my second year of law school.  I turned that one-week internship into a two-week internship, into a six-week internship, and then parlayed that into an internship at the NFL league labor operations department for the 2004 season, then had the opportunity to work with Jimmy Sexton in his sports agency (at the time, Memphis-based Athletic Resource Management, though Sexton is now with CAA), which gave me such a perspective of the agent/player side which I feel helped me working on the team side.  Then in 2006 when Mike Tannenbaum was promoted to GM, Dawn Aponte was leaving to go work at the league office and they had an opening and I got the call to work in the Jets football administration department.”

Ari is a big believer in relationships. I asked him what, besides good grades, would give someone the best shot at success in landing an NFL job?

“Networking. You want to make connections and keep connecting with people.  I am a big believer in relationships.  Sports is such a small group of people (that) the more relationships you build the more doors you have the ability to have opened.  I always tell students in law school to go to the sports lawyers conference every year.  Now you see the sports analytics conferences; those would be good for networking as well.  You never know who knows who.”

For War Story Wednesday, a story about persistence and doing whatever it takes that Ari tells. See you tomorrow.

I write this blog for people who want to work in the football business. One reason I do this is because working in football was a life goal for me and I’ve been blessed to be able to do it. However, I wanted to take today to talk about a mistake a lot of people make in this business, and that mistake is, forgetting it’s a business.

I was talking to a friend in Houston this weekend who was discussing an employee who regularly works in various football-related promotions. It turns out that none of these promotions are profitable to the company or to the employee. So why do they continue, when they aren’t profitable? Well, two reasons. The company’s owner is too big-hearted and fond of the employee to pull the plug on these promotions (and the time wasted on organizing them). The other reason is that the employee gets a real buzz out of plastering photos of these promotions all over Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

This is not uncommon. I’ve worked on some fairly involved projects that had no clear mission except to gets its participants involved in the football business. I’ve seen people get involved in the business for altruistic reasons — some of them admitted they really had little interest in the football biz — and in the space of 6-8 months they’re throwing thousands of dollars at shady characters while chasing the excitement and glory of representing NFL players. I’ve had new clients come to me the weeks after the draft claiming they’ve spent more than $20,000 training a player who not only didn’t get drafted but who didn’t even sign as an undrafted free agent. I’ve seen people pour a half-million dollars into all-star games — sometimes letting bills go unpaid for and telling lies to win approval of key parties — with no hope of recouping the investment. All of these people spent their money chasing the thrill of being even a small part of professional athletics. They lost sight of the fact that this is a game for grownups, and that lives can be ruined this way. The dollars just have to add up, but often they don’t.

So how do you keep from being pulled into the same deep hole? You’ve got to apply old-fashioned, traditional, maybe even boring principles to your pursuit of a place in the biz. Come up with a budget, not just for money, but time. You have to decide on a reasonable amount of money you are willing to spend and a reasonable amount of time you are willing to spend chasing your dream. Because this business can be so addictive, most of those who fail leave feet first. There’s absolutely no shame in walking out of this business if it’s not happening for you.