Tag Archives: NFL scout

Where Do Today’s NFL Scouts Come From?

22 Friday May 2020

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The bulk of the work done evaluating players for the NFL Draft is done by area scouts, the foot soldiers of the profession. At Inside the League, we spend a lot of time telling their stories and trying to make their jobs a little easier with our salary survey, helping out with pro days in March, and anything else.

Normally, May is when scouts get hired and fired. Obviously, this has not been a normal May, so rather than covering who’s coming and going, this week, we decided to take a long look at our Scouting Changes Grids from 2015-2019 to see where scouts are coming from, as well as what’s happening to the people who hold that title.

The perception is that older, more seasoned evaluators are no longer en vogue, and there’s a definite shelf life for old-school college scouts. At the same time, fresh-faced youngsters are more hirable than ever. But what do the numbers say?

We counted 90 NFL personnel professionals who took a job as area scout between 2015 and 2019 (college side only, not pro scout). Some ascended to the position from lower jobs. Some were area scouts who moved laterally to other teams, or who changed areas. Some had previously held more senior jobs and went back on the road simply to get back into the league. Here’s what we found.

  • For 71 of the 90, achieving area scout was a clear promotion.
  • Of the 71, almost half (31) were promoted from scouting assistant, which has become the most common way teams hire college evaluators.
  • Eighteen of the 70 were combine scouts (BLESTO or NFS), probably the second-most common route.
  • Eleven were in pro roles or assisted on both the pro and college side.
  • Four other scouts moved over from the pro side. All four were young scouts who were most likely being promoted, though it’s unclear if they received a bump in pay. Either way, probably good news for young scouts.
  • Three more came from non-NFL scouting services, though it’s important to note that two of the three had extensive pro football backgrounds and weren’t plucked capriciously from #DraftTwitter.
  • Another two hopped directly from other leagues (the CFL and Arena League) into area roles.
  • One was a college scouting coordinator who was sent on the road.
  • One moved over from the coaching side.

Another note: this is a hiring trend that has been sustained over the last five years. At least 10 new area scouts per year have been hired from within every year since 2015 (not counting this year, of course). In 2017, 22 (!) were elevated from scouting assistant and combine scout roles.

Of course, it wasn’t all good news for new area scouts. We identified 17 of the 90 who were taking a step down from national scout or a director-level position, presumably after a period of unemployment. Bottom line, the overwhelming majority of new area scout hires (81 percent) were people with limited experience who were promoted from within.

Two others didn’t fit any specific category and were hard to quantify.

We also counted 148 area scouts over the same time period (2015-2019) who experienced a change in job status. The news for these experienced evaluators was not as positive. We go into detail on how many received a promotion, mostly stayed static, or were pushed out of the business in the last five years in today’s Friday Wrap.

You can register for it here. It comes out this evening (6:30 p.m. CT), and if you’re interested in being an NFL scout, or you are one already, we recommend you give it a look.

 

A Look at Why NFL Scouts Get Hired and Fired

07 Thursday May 2020

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In the last week, two seasoned area scouts have been non-renewed by their NFL teams. When I was new to the game, this used to puzzle me — why would you remove seasoned evaluators? Now that I’ve watched hiring practices for about a decade, it makes a lot more sense.

I’ve spent most of Thursday texting with several scouts and discussing the ‘brain drain’ in NFL scouting. This time of year, especially, I get asked about how you get (and keep) a job as an NFL scout. I’ll take a few of the texts I’ve received today and expand on them in an attempt to illustrate how modern teams hire and fire.

  • “Teams are hiring their buddies and using scout money on director positions. Creating spots but not hiring the workers.” — It’s a great point. If you want to surround yourself with people you trust, but the owner won’t increase your budget, you hire less-seasoned scouts. This has been a rising trend across the business for at least the last 2-3 years. It’s mainly because decision-making has become increasingly centralized while “metrics” for scouts are limited at best. When a scout is fired, you rarely hear from others that he was a bad scout (or even a good one). Very hard to pin accountability on any one scout, so reasons for dismissal are similarly elusive.
  • “Look at some of the staffs. Titans have two directors of player personnel. . . Buffalo has a director and assistant director at every position and a assistant GM.   Seattle has two directors of player personnel.  Miami has an asst GM and two personnel directors.” — I never thought about this before, but it makes a lot of sense. We’re seeing a lot of duplication of position in league front offices right now while we’re simultaneously seeing some pretty nebulous titles, like “executive scout” or “senior advisor.” It makes for a lot of chiefs and a limited number of Indians.
  • “I also think that guys can be slow to change at times and feel they have tenure in certain situations when they don’t and are making top dollar.” — This is another good point, and one that you don’t often hear from scouts. It’s the other side of the “why fire all the experienced scouts?” argument. Scouts often become entitled, especially after they have several years under their belts.
  • “. . . A scout’s presence at a school has to (include being) a good guest, too.” — I think this is as important as it’s ever been. As college head coaches’ salaries increase and the pressure to win grows higher than ever, there’s less transparency and sometimes less of an open-door policy for scouts. I hear often from college personnel directors and recruiting staffers that they’d love to accommodate scouts, but at the end of the day, that doesn’t keep them employed. I get it.

We’ll talk more about NFL scouting and what’s happening in the NFL evaluation community in the Friday Wrap, which comes out at 6:30 p.m. CT tomorrow. If you haven’t registered for it already, I’d love it if you did, and I think you would, too.

 

ITL Zoom Scouting Meetup: Some Words of Wisdom from ex-NFL Scout Bob Morris

15 Wednesday Apr 2020

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Tuesday night, we had our first Zoom meet-up for aspiring NFL scouts. I hosted it with guest Bob Morris, a longtime friend who’s spent time in the Alliance of American Football and XFL as well as 15 years in the league with the Browns and 49ers. You might also have seen him on our Twitter feed, as he led several ITL-assisted pro days over the last three weeks (like this one).

Bob spent an hour with five members of the college personnel community (Austin Schaffer of Cincinnati, Price Burton of Toledo, Drew Hixson of Kansas, Connor Anderson of Texas State and Zach Gold of Temple). Here are a few takeaways.

  • One question we got was, how do you make your case to a coach when the analytics fit but the coach rejects the player, or vice versa? Bob said it’s best to sit with the coach and calmly make your case. If you can point to a previous player that fits your mold and turned out to be a success, that’s the best way. Examples always trump theory, obviously.
  • Bob was also asked how old is too old when it comes to pursuing a scouting career. He didn’t put a number on things, instead referring to family and relationships to make that decision. With that said, teams are hiring younger and younger evaluators; it’s as simple as that. Bob also observed that, more and more, the job vacated by a veteran scout as he moves from Team A to Team B is usually filled from within by a scouting assistant at Team A.
  • Bob also guarded against spending too much time in self-promotion. He said longtime college head coach Bill Mallory (Indiana, Colorado, Miami of Ohio, Northern Illinois), who served as a mentor of sorts for Bob, always told him to let his work be his sales pitch.
  • One way to do that, Bob said, is to be totally prepared when a scout is in the building. Anticipate what he’ll need, what questions he’ll ask, and where he’ll need to go when he’s making his rounds, whether or not you’re the NFL liaison. I know that’s common sense, but it’s still true.
  • He also said that, while in San Francisco, GM Trent Baalke would ask all the scouts if there was someone they’d met on the road who had what it took to work for the 49ers. Bob mentioned Niners area scout Steve Rubio, formerly the director of player personnel at Tennessee, as one scout who made his way up that way.
  • Also common sense: if you’re at a school with more talent, you’ll have a better chance of getting recognized. Personnel directors and NFL liaisons at Alabama, Ohio State and Texas stand a better chance of becoming scouts because they’re just going to get more face time with NFL evaluators.

This won’t be our last meet-up, and I look forward to connecting other former members of the NFL scouting world with aspiring scouts from the college evaluation community. Interested in joining us? Hit us up on Twitter or contact us here.

Ask the Scouts: How Does the Coronavirus Shutdown Affect the NFL Draft?

13 Friday Mar 2020

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The coronavirus is here. Some famous people have contracted it. Some people (the elderly, the infirm, the very young) are especially vulnerable to it. Social distancing, hand-washing and other measures are important. If you’re already sick, you need to stay home, and take every precaution to not make others ill. All of this we know.

Still, sometimes, there’s a thin line between caution and panic, and we don’t live in a vacuum. We won’t know for weeks, maybe years, if the various league shutdowns, postponements and delays were warranted, but we know, categorically, that the response to the medical emergency will have an unintended impact on many people. Among them are the thousands of players competing to land on 90-man rosters in 41 days.

Without trivializing those for whom coronavirus may prove harmful or fatal, we reached out to several NFL scouts to see how the cancellation of pro days and T-30 visits would affect the draft. Did they see it having a substantial impact?

  • “Hard to say. Like the spread of the virus itself, lots of unknowns. (T-30) visits are a great opportunity for many to endear themselves to decision-makers above and beyond the tape. Pro days can have the same effects on area scouts, where a positive impression can motivate a scout to push all-in on a recommendation.”
  • “Really will affect the guys who would’ve tested well who were under the radar who warrant another look, as well as the small-school guys who pop out of nowhere. Film will matter more than ever for sure.”
  • “Uncharted territory. We would probably be more accurate if we drafted now before the fog of confusion sets in. They haven’t played a game since January. Biggest concern would be medical scores for non-combine guys.”
  • “It’s going to have an effect across the board. Teams won’t be able to relieve character or mental concerns on players who they have questions on. Late-round and undrafted guys who can usually separate themselves by testing well won’t have that opportunity. Who knows how combine medical rechecks will be effected?”
  • “Huge repercussions. Affects every level of the draft. The film will take precedence. Combine performances will be bigger influences now, more than pro days. Teams always want more info, (and) they’ll feel restricted.”

We’ll look at the impact the of the virus and the way various schools, conferences and leagues have responded to it in today’s Friday Wrap. It comes out this evening at 6:30 p.m., and if you’re in the business (or aspire to be), we encourage you to check it out. You can register for it here.

 

Want To Be An NFL Scout? Start with the XFL

14 Friday Feb 2020

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The XFL’s opening weekend was a smashing success, both from a broadcast standpoint as well as attendance, and it has the full attention of those in the football business community. Still, there’s a facet to the excitement that I think many are missing.

What do Bears Assistant Director of Player Personnel Champ Kelly (indoor football GM), Browns area scout Gerald McCully (CFL scout), Tampa Bay scouting coordinator Cesar Rivera (AFL scout), Chiefs national scout Cassidy Kaminski (scouted for an Australian team), Colts NFS scout Mike Lacy (AFL scout) and many other NFL evaluators have in common? They all got their start in alternative leagues. The XFL has a long way to go before it shows the staying power of the CFL (or even the now-defunct Arena Football League), but the early returns are promising.

This is great news for aspiring NFL scouts. While the best routes into scouting remain working in college personnel or, even better, having a father who’s in the NFL, there’s an opportunity here. However, you have to know how to take advantage. Here’s what I recommend.

  • Reach out: Daryl Johnston and Bob Morris (Dallas), Blake Beddingfield and Randy Mueller (Houston), Trip MacCracken (New York), Jeff Bauer (St. Louis) and Tony Softli (Seattle) are all XFL (and former NFL) scouts and evaluators on Twitter. Most of them are also my friends, and I can attest to them being good people. If you reach out to them with the right attitude, you’ve got a great shot at making contact. God knows they have plenty on their plate and could probably use some help. But first . . . .
  • Make it clear you’ll do anything: Every XFL team has a bare-bones evaluation staff, and that’s by design; the league has made an affirmative decision to reduce costs by centralizing evaluation. Still, these teams are playing to win and they need help sorting out the good players from the bad. But first, you have to prove that you are hard-working and reliable. That means you might have to run errands, load and unload, make copies, bring coffee, whatever. Make it clear you are elated to do this.
  • Don’t send scouting reports: Believe me, I get it. You want to show your passion for football. You want to show that you are fluent in the game. All those things are important. Still, the first thing most aspiring scouts want to send is a resume and scouting reports, and the last thing most scouts I know want is same. You need to impress upon them your willingness to do anything before you assert your eye for talent.
  • Be there: This is the one thing that is most often overlooked. If you already live in an XFL city, you have a huge advantage over everyone else. The same is true if you’re trying to volunteer with virtually any team in any league. Maybe it was Woody Allen who said, “showing up is 80 percent of success. Maybe it wasn’t. It’s still true.

Do all these things and maybe you’re the next Will McClay, Vice President of Player Personnel for the Cowboys. Back in 2001, he was Director of Player Personnel of the XFL’s Orlando Rage.

Want more ideas on how to break into the NFL? It starts with knowing what’s going on behind the scenes. You can get a really good handle on that by reading our Friday Wrap, which comes out this afternoon. You can register for it here.

2019 NFL Scouting Salaries: Our Survey Breakdown

15 Friday Mar 2019

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This year, like last year, we sent a 13-question survey to active NFL scouts. We asked them several questions about their job, including pay, contracts, pension and other benefits. We also asked about which team they felt had the best draft last year, and we announced those results in Indianapolis.

We’ll break down the info we gathered on salaries, sorted by number of years in the league, in today’s Friday Wrap. Here’s a question-by-question look at the other info we gathered from scouts this year.

  • As of Jan. 1, 2019, how many years have you been a scout, not counting any years spent as a scouting assistant or intern?: We got a pretty homogeneous mixture this year, with 28 percent of respondents having five years or less and 34 percent with 11 or more. The 6-10 and 11-14 groups split the remainder evenly. Last year, almost 90 percent of our respondents came from the three upper-tier groups, with just 11.6 percent from the 0-5 group.
  • How long is your current contract?: This question might get struck next year. Last year, about 74 percent of respondents had two-year deals, while this year, 72 percent do. Last year, the bulk of scouts without two-year deals were on one-year contracts. This year, responses were split evenly between one year and three years, which I found unusual.
  • Have you ever served in a director-level NFL role (Director of College, Director of Pro, DPP, AGM/GM)?: As last year, the overwhelming majority of respondents had no director-level experience (81 percent both years).
  • Pension?: This offered a bit of good news, as the percentage of scouts with a pension actually ticked up slightly (58 percent over 56 percent last year). The perception across the industry is that pensions are disappearing, and that still may be true. As we continue with the survey, time will tell if this is really a trend.
  • 401(k) match: The results here are really too diverse to read. We offered nine options on our survey, with no real consensus. The two biggest percentages are in basic match and five percent or less match (about 22 percent each). Last year, match up to a fixed (and not designated in our survey) match led the way with about 28 percent. The bad news: last year, only two percent of respondents had no match at all; this year, it’s more than 12 percent.
  • Per diem: These numbers basically didn’t move. About 70 percent of the industry gets between $50-$60 per day.
  • Car allowance: Not many scouts are driving around in company cars, with less than 10 percent checking that box each of the last two years. The majority of scouts seem to be getting $600-$700 (31 percent this year) or $700-plus (28 percent this year). Those numbers are similar to last year.
  • Receipts/miles for gas: About two-thirds of scouts must turn in their receipts for reimbursement; those results are basically unchanged from last year. Among those that get paid per mile, the going rate is 41 cents per mile or higher for about 30 percent of respondents.
  • Buy Super Bowl tickets?: These numbers didn’t change in any meaningful way. More than half (53 percent both years) don’t get a chance to buy. Of those that do, about 30 percent (both years) get to buy two, and a little less than 10 percent get to buy four. I’ve heard that some teams in military towns donate tickets to bases, which cuts back on the number available to scouts.
  • Playoff share: Both years, about a third of respondents said playoff share is up to the owner’s discretion, while about another third get a 25 percent share. Last year, about a quarter got a half share, while this year that number fell to about 15 percent. 
  • Does your current contract make any provisions for a possible lockout?: Not good news here. Last year, only about a quarter of respondents reported provisions for a reduction in pay due to a lockout. This year, that percentage is up to almost half. Clearly, owners see storm clouds looming.

For a closer look at what scouts take home in actual pay, check out the Friday Wrap. It comes out at 7:30 p.m. EST, and you can register for it here.

 

Safe and Getting Safer: Goodell’s Green Shield Strengthening

01 Friday Feb 2019

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The following column is courtesy of NFL Draft Bible’s Ric Serritella, who has previously written on tech issues for Succeed in Football and also is a contributor to NFL Draft Scout. 

When it comes to sponsorships and generating new revenue streams, the NFL reigns supreme. Despite its controversies (CTE, anthem protests, blown calls that affect Super Bowl participants and more) the league continues to produce ‘must-see TV’ up to four nights weekly.

Consider this: the four highest-rated TV programs in 2018 were Super Bowl LII, the Super Bowl LII post-game, the NFC Championship and NFC divisional round playoff game.

For more, let’s rewind to the year 2010. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell addressed ownership during league meetings in Orlando, with the declaration that the NFL plans to earn $25 billion per year in revenue by the year 2027.

That’s correct. $25 billion. A ‘b,’ not an ‘m.’

At the time, it seemed like a lofty goal and a long way off, as the entire league had just taken in $8.35 billion in revenue that year. The plan was to generate an additional billion dollars in revenue each year, and as we approach the end of the 2018 season, it now appears that the league might get there even sooner than expected. While official numbers have yet to be released for 2018, revenue is expected to be nearly double that figure from eight years ago, according to this chart.

One big reason for the spike in revenue is the Thursday Night television package rights. In 2016, the NFL increased its TV deal with CBS and NBC to $450M, up from the $300M package sold in 2014. Last January, it was announced that FOX will pay $3 billion over the next five years for the new deal. That is quite a significant increase in a short period time. It’s also roughly $21M in revenue for each NFL owner every year, just from TNF alone.

When the next round of TV packages are put up for bids, negotiations could mirror a scene from the Wild West. New players such as Twitter, Facebook, Amazon and others will be chomping at the bit to secure NFL television licensing rights.

Another factor in the NFL’s rising revenue stream is in this latest report by IEG Research, which states that total sponsorship spending on the NFL and its 32 teams rose 5.1% to $1.39 billion in the 2018-2019 season. A big reason for the spike in sponsorship revenue is the league’s changing attitude toward gambling and fantasy sites. The NFL recently struck a deal with Caesars Entertainment to become the league’s first-ever official casino partner. The deal is reportedly worth $30 million per year. According to IEG’s findings, additional growth was also driven by a spate of new league-wide sponsorships including Intuit, McDonald’s, Pizza Hut and Sleep Number.

From a category perspective, beer companies were the biggest NFL investors, spending 4.3 times more than any other category. Autos and telecoms spent 4.0 times more, while soft drink and technology companies spent 2.9 times as much on football than any other sports category.

The most invested brands were Ticketmaster, which has sponsorships with 100% of NFL Properties. Next up is Budweiser/Bud Light at 88% of the league; Gatorade works with 79% of teams, Microsoft 73%, and Bose 70%. With the NFL increasing its presence globally into new markets such as Mexico and Japan, while expanding the slate of games scheduled in London for 2019 to five and increasing the number of regular-season games abroad, the continued spike of revenue could be even greater in years to come.

While it’s easy for the media to paint Goodell as a villain and question why he remains the commissioner, remember, he’s a hero to the 32 owners who hired him.

Follow Ric on Twitter @NFLDraftBible or on his personal account, @RicSerritella.

Introducing Our New Book, Moving the Chains: A Parent’s Guide to the NFL Draft

09 Friday Nov 2018

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Today’s a day that’s been years in the making.

When you get into the business of helping people succeed in football, you get a grass-roots understanding of the problems they face. When I launched Inside the League in 2002, the idea was to root out and expose the bad agents in the business as well as cracking the scouting code and figuring out why some players make it to the NFL and others don’t. We’re pretty much 0-for-2 on those goals, but there’s something we have gotten pretty good at: helping parents and their sons negotiate the obstacles of the NFL Draft process.

The parents of players like Giants DE Connor Barwin (2/46, Texans, 2009), Cardinals WO Christian Kirk (2/47, Cardinals, 2018), Dolphins OC Travis Swanson (3/76, Lions, 2014), Jaguars DT Taven Bryan (1/29, Jaguars, 2018), Redskins OT Morgan Moses (3/66, Redskins, 2014) and many more have read our newsletter during the run-up to their sons’ respective selections in the draft. Many of them have been kind enough to give us testimonials.

I think they’ve found our series helpful because it breaks down what NFL scouts do, how all-star games work, what you should expect from an agent, who gets invited to the NFL Combine, and a number of other topics. You can get an overview of our series here. For five years now, we’ve cold-called the parents of rising seniors and pitched them on our free newsletter. We’ve gotten some interesting responses for sure, but enough people took us up on our offer that we’re still reaching out to parents even today.

However, there’s more to the topic than can be covered in four weeks, so we expanded our newsletter into a book, and today, we introduce Moving the Chains: A Parent’s Guide to the NFL Draft. If you’ve read our newsletter, the first quarter of the book will look very familiar to you. However, in the rest of the book, we develop all the things we touch on and really tell stories, provide numbers, and share nuggets that we just can’t provide within the bounds of a newsletter series.

Maybe you’re the parent of a young man who will be eligible in this or a coming draft cycle. Maybe you’re an aspiring NFL player who’s still a few years away, or you’re close to someone who is. Maybe you hope to be an agent someday, or you’re a college student majoring in sport management and thinking hard about being a contract advisor or scout. My book is something you should read. We go inside the process in a way that I always sought before I launched my site. And believe me, all of this matters. You can learn it the hard way, but why would you?

Here’s the best part. It’s just $12.95. It’s about the cost of a burger and fries at your favorite fast-food joint, or a piece of pie at one of those fancy dessert places.

Here’s the next-best part. It’s only 150 pages. You can read it in a couple hours. I mean, come on, it’s football. Our idea of a big word is “substantial” or “Indianapolis.” You can handle it. If your wacko uncle starts going off about politics at the Thanksgiving table, you can excuse yourself, read our book, and by the time you’re done, he’ll be sleeping off the turkey. You’ll be all set.

Want to learn more? We’ll talk about it more in today’s Friday Wrap, which comes out at 7:30 p.m. EST. It’s free, and you can register for it here.

WSW: Two Years, Two Scouts’ Projections

09 Wednesday Mar 2016

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I heard a story in Indianapolis that I’ve hesitated to run, not because it’s controversial, but because I can’t figure out what to make of it. It was told to me by Andy Ross, a top agent with a top firm, Houston-based Select Sports Group (though Andy is based in Virginia).

Andy recruited Wake Forest OB Aaron Curry in late ’07 and January of ’08 when he was considering entering the draft as a junior. As most top prospects do, Curry put in for his draft projection with the NFL’s College Advisory Committee, and he received a third-round grade. Maybe that would have proven to be true; maybe it wouldn’t have.

For perspective, the top five picks in the draft were Michigan OT Jake Long (Dolphins), Virginia DE Chris Long (Rams), Boston College QB Matt Ryan (Falcons), Arkansas OH Darren McFadden (Raiders) and LSU DT Glenn Dorsey (Chiefs). Two linebackers went in the first round that year, Southern Cal’s Keith Rivers (No. 9 to Cincinnati) and Tennessee’s Jerod Mayo (No. 10 to New England), while Oklahoma’s Curtis Lofton (more of a pure inside linebacker) went No. 37 overall to the Falcons. Maybe he would have proven to be a third-rounder; maybe he wouldn’t have.

Anyway, Curry chose to stay in school. The draft came and went, and then a couple weeks later, National Football Scouting, one of the two services that grades players for subscribing NFL teams, had him as the No. 1-rated player for the ’09 draft. National usually meets with teams around the Memorial Day weekend, so this was literally weeks after the ’08 draft. It’s possible he was rated No. 1 overall by BLESTO, the other scouting service used by NFL teams, as well. Either way, at the end of the day, he was seen as a truly elite player by two highly respected scouting services just a few months after he’d been rated as a third-rounder by NFL teams’ scouts.

Now, if you believe Cara Luterek (and we do — read our interview with her here), all 32 NFL teams are represented on the CAC, as well as National and BLESTO. Luterek used to work on the College Advisory Committee (CAC) for the NFL. Though only a handful of teams contributed to the report on Curry, clearly, several NFL evaluators must have graded Curry down quite a bit to counter BLESTO and National, which clearly liked him.

As a postscript, National and BLESTO both were right. Curry went No. 4 in ’09 to the Seahawks (and Andy signed him, doing quite well on his contract, by the way, getting him $34 million guaranteed, a tremendous sum). I guess that says a lot about the effectiveness of the two scouting services that year vs. the quality of evaluation for the handful of teams that graded Curry before the ’08 draft.

Volunteers

26 Thursday Jun 2014

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I wanted to take a minute today to talk about how important it is to volunteer in your quest for a career in football.

If you live in an NFL city, and you want to work in pro football, find a way to volunteer with your local team. If you have an FBS (or FCS, or good D2 or even D3) team in your city or town, go volunteer. Granted, volunteering for NFL teams may be a little harder, but usually if you poke around on a team’s website long enough you’ll find someone that will take you. As for colleges, summer camps have become a really big revenue stream for most coaching staffs, and if you’re willing to work for no pay, they can usually find something for you to do.

I’m always struck by how many people in awesome football jobs started off as volunteers, hung around, paid attention, showed their intelligence, and got hired. Dru Grigson started off as a volunteer scout with the Eagles in 2005, and 10 years later, he’s the Director of College Scouting for the Cardinals. Tom Ciskowski volunteered as a defensive coach with Butch Davis at Miami (Fla.) in 1985; in 2008, he was named Director of College and Pro Scouting for the Cowboys. Steven Price volunteered with the Panthers at the age of 16 and now he’s a scout with the Vikings.

Granted, some of them had an angle and had some assurances that if they put in work they’d get the first opening, but not all of them; Price started interning with the Panthers because his mother was a secretary there.

Can’t get an NFL team to even let you work for free? Have you tried the AFL route? Two Titans scouts, Jon Salge (Nashville Kats) and Brandon Taylor (Columbus Destroyers), were with AFL teams before landing a job in Tennessee. Bears scout Zach Truty was Director of Player Personnel with the Arizona Rattlers before coming to Chicago. Eagles scout Bret Munsey was Director of Player Personnel for the Orlando Predators before he latched on in Philly. Steelers area scout Mark Gorscak was the GM of Pittsburgh’s arena team in 1987 before moving over to the city’s NFL team.

I don’t know how many of these people got AFL positions by emailing resumes, knocking on doors or waiting in the parking lot to assail a top team executive. What’s more, there are lots of indoor teams of dubious nature that are not AFL teams, per se; they’re just teams trying to copy their model. Sometimes, these teams can be a little shaky and offer limited ability to provide reliable contacts.

Still, there are many routes into the game. We’ll discuss this at greater length tomorrow.