Tag Archives: Senior Bowl

Week 2: More Sights, Sounds and Notes from the Road

20 Friday Jan 2017

Posted by in Scouts

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, ,

It was another week on the road for me with two all-star games, the Tropical Bowl (played in Daytona Beach) and the Shrine Game (St. Petersburg) played in Florida. Here are a few things I thought interesting from this week.

  • I got to tour IMG Academy in Bradenton on Tuesday. In many ways it gave me a chance to see the future of athletics; it was an unbelievable place. You might have seen my tweet, which included an attempt at a panoramic shot of the place. The picture doesn’t do the place justice anyway. By next year, it will include 700 acres of  fields, stadiums, classrooms, parking lots, auditoriums, cafeterias, scenic ponds and lakes, weight rooms, roads, pathways and green space. Yes, even with all of this, there’s plenty of green space, in addition to hundreds of students from literally all over the world dressed from head to toe in IMG-logoed, Under Armour attire.
  • There are two things I’ll remember most. One, when a draft prospect arrives, the first thing IMG officials do is test his sweat to measure the electrolytes he loses. Then they design a concoction at the Gatorade Sports Science Institute (which is right there on the grounds, one of three in the world) and voila! He’s got his own specific Gatorade blend, and it’s available whenever he wants it. That’s pretty cool. The other thing was that IMG has developed a combine — for e-sports. Yes, the good people at IMG have even figured out a way to make money off the nerds who aspire to go from their mother’s couch to a stadium somewhere, where other nerds will pay money to watch them play video games.
  • One thing I always hear from scouts is how disappointed they are in the lack of talent at the various all-star games. The older scouts, especially, lament the fact that fewer stars play in the Senior Bowl, Shrine Game and lesser games. There’s a good reason for that — most of those would-be seniors are already in the NFL — but the fact remains that some of these games have grown a little stale. That’s why it was so refreshing this year to see the Shrine Game involving assistant coaches from  all over the NFL as the assistants for this week’s game. It brought a new energy to this week’s workouts.
  • Here’s another big plus: referees were on site to throw flags during the team portions of the drills. It made everyone sharper and gave every workout a game-like intensity. This was one of the better Shrine weeks in recent memory.
  • One longtime friend told several stories about former Miami (Fla.), Oklahoma, Louisville and Florida Atlantic head coach Howard Schnellenberger, who has also coached several all-star games. As the story was told, Schnellenberger was not so adept when it comes to pop culture, especially the music scene. One time, he proudly announced to his coaches that “one of the hottest band in music” would be playing at the stadium at a future date. The band? “Trickshot!” he proudly exclaimed. When he got blank stares from his staff, he excoriated them for living closed, uncultured lives. “You guys gotta get out more and live life,” he urged them. Of course, the blank stares were warranted, as the band was really Cheap Trick.
  • Another time, the Rolling Stones were playing Louisville’s football stadium, and shortly before the show, Schnellenberger found a member of the band’s entourage checking out the school’s trophy case. “Hold it! Hold it! Hold it!,” said the coach with outstretched arms. “If you’re with the band, back in the visitors locker room!” When the band member obliged, another coach chided him with, “Coach, do you know who that was?” When Schnellenberger was told it was Mick Jagger, he responded with, “well, he didn’t know who I was.”

Questions of the Season

30 Friday Dec 2016

Posted by in ITL, Scouts

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, ,

The 60 days from about Thanksgiving to the Senior Bowl are the busiest ‘behind the scenes’ times of the football business, or at least, they are for me and most ITL clients. It’s also when I spend most of my time on the road, hopping from all-star game to all-star game.

It’s a wild and crazy time when my wife and kids rarely see me, but it’s also the time when I get to see ‘my people,’ face to face. When you run a business like mine, you spend hours texting, emailing and talking on the phone with people, but you never see their faces unless it’s on a Facebook post. There’s still value in meeting with people, shaking hands, and talking shop.

Of course, there’s very little time to waste, so I try not to spend a lot of time on small talk. Here are a few questions I’ll be asking my contacts and colleagues over the next few weeks.

Three percent? 1.5 percent? Something else?: As you know, if you read this blog, we’ve spent a lot of time on the new SRA, which defaults to a 1.5 percent agent fee unless otherwise marked. There was a pretty high level of interest (and worry) on the part of agents when the NFLPA released the new SRA with these standards set. Were these worries warranted? Are players willing to pay 3 percent? Are they demanding training be paid in return for paying 3 percent? Do they even have any idea about the 3 percent vs. 1.5 percent issue?

How small is too small? What off-the-field matter makes a player too hot to touch?: I’m not sure anyone can answer these questions, but 14 years after launching ITL, I’m still asking them. What makes one player with high production but size limitations a first-rounder, but another with almost exactly the same production and dimensions undraftable? I started a text conversation with an ex-NFL player a few weeks back regarding this question, and it got so detailed that I asked him to postpone it, with hopes that we’ll have time to expand on it at the combine or somewhere else on the all-star trail. Maybe the truth is out there. Ultimately, I think the answer lies in what’s ‘safe’ and defensible in scouting circles. My guess is that it’s got a lot to do with the media, and how much criticism a team will get or not get if it violates the scouting ‘book.’ Could the media and public perception really have that kind of impact on player evaluation? if so, it means analytics deserve much wider use in football circles, at least to me. But I don’t want to fall back on convenient solutions if there’s something concrete that I’m missing.

Anyway, if these questions interest you, I’ll be on a fact-finding mission over the next month-plus, and I’ll try to bring my findings back to this space. I hope you’ll check it out. And if you have your own ideas on these topics, please, fill me in via the comments section.

WSW: Up On The Table

16 Wednesday Sep 2015

Posted by in Scouts

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

,

The first time I ever heard the term “getting up on the table” in the draft room was one of my first years at the Senior Bowl. It was at a practice, and someone was congratulating Seahawks scout Derrick Jensen for a pick the team had made in the later rounds.

It was a defensive lineman, as I recall, though the exact player I can’t remember. “Yeah, I really had to get up on the table for him,” Jensen said.

Since then, I’ve heard the term dozens of times, but rarely have I heard exact stories of a scout aggressively lobbying for a player.

I dug this one up from former Bears GM Phil Emery. He told it at the 2015 ITL Seminar, the annual event we hold at the combine for our clients, after meeting former Dolphins wide receiver Chris Chambers at our event. Chris was there representing his combine prep facility, The Chamber, which is based in South Florida. If you’d rather listen to Phil tell it himself, click here. It starts at the 3:00 mark and runs until 4:37.

“It was 2001, OK? I was the positional cross-check guy for wide-outs for the Chicago Bears. It was my first go-round with the Bears during that time, and I’ll tell you a little story.

“(Chambers) will always be in my memory bank because I was pushing for (him) hard, right? I love those big hands, and that catch radius, and all that end zone work. (He) had a catch where (he) went up over the top in a corner of an end zone and grabbed a one-hander, and it was so beautiful. It was such a moment of grace and athleticism, and just beautiful to see. The reason I’m in (football), OK, is because I see this as art. This brings joy to my heart to watch somebody do something that no other human being can do. It’s special. It’s special, and that catch was special.

“So we’re having a little debate about (Chambers), OK? And so as the positional cross-check scout, I had wide-outs, so I stack all the wide-outs in the country from one down, OK? Well we were responsible at that time — this was way before digital, OK? This is VHS and 16 MM tape. We were responsible for making the profile (tape) and cut. So what I did is, I stuck it on that catch, and repeated (his) catch 10 consecutive times so that everybody got the feel about how I felt about (him), so Mark Hatley, our Vice President of Player Personnel at that time said, ‘hey, Phil, that’s enough.”

I think it’s an even more interesting story when you realize Phil was right about Chambers. The Bears took Michigan’s David Terrell that year with the eighth pick in the draft, and Terrell was an unmitigated bust. In addition to Terrell, wide receivers taken in the first round that year included Koren Robinson (the ninth pick, to Seattle), Rod Gardner (15, Redskins), Santana Moss (16, Jets), Freddie Mitchell (25, Eagles) and Reggie Wayne (30, Colts).

Taking it one step further, receivers taken in the second round before Chambers were Quincy Morgan (33, Browns), Chad Johnson (36, Bengals) and Robert Ferguson (41, Packers). I think you could argue persuasively that only two receivers in this group, Wayne and Johnson, had better careers than Chambers. I guess Phil was right.

Combine Week vs. Senior Bowl Week

16 Monday Feb 2015

Posted by in Agents, Scouts

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

Well, I leave Wednesday for Indianapolis. It’s National Invitational Camp (the official name of the combine) week. Combine Week is the second-best week of the year to someone like me after the Senior Bowl. If you’re a person who’ll be in Indy this week trying to make connections, let’s talk a bit about how it differs from Mobile.

People think of the combine as the biggest week in football, at least from an NFL standpoint. The thing is, there are two ‘parties’ for the NFL, and they are the Senior Bowl and the combine. You’re pretty much going to get everyone from the NFL at both of these events, with two major differences.

One, at the Senior Bowl, two teams are still alive, so their staffs are a little abbreviated. You won’t see any of the coaches from those teams, and you might not see as many scouts or the GM.

Two, I always describe the Senior Bowl as a football party where everyone is invited, and to some degree that’s true. It’s far more ‘open’ and if you’re at least peripherally associated with the game, it’s relatively easy to get credentialed. It’s also true that the people of Mobile are super-friendly but also very welcoming and hospitable to football folks, because the Senior Bowl is the No. 1 event on their social calendar (though they take Mardi Gras pretty seriously there, as well). Each night, there’s a gala event sponsored by some major part of the football industry, and it’s by invitation only. People come out in their suits and evening dresses and it’s clearly a big deal.

On the other hand, at the combine, if you don’t have a badge around your neck, access is very limited. You won’t get any farther than the front door of the players hotel if you don’t have an NFL credential. You won’t get past the entrance to Lucas Oil Stadium if you don’t have a media badge. You won’t get into the NFLPA seminar without signing in and showing that you’re an agent.

Probably the biggest difference between the two is that in Mobile, the big event of the week is relatively open. Even if you don’t have a badge, you can come in and watch practices. And if you want to hobnob with NFL types but don’t have any real connections, you can just go to the team hotel, the Renaissance, and you’re good to go. At the combine, you’re not getting into the stadium to check out the workouts unless you work for the NFL or have otherwise obtained a badge, and they’re not so easy to acquire. Meanwhile, because the city is a bigger and more spread out, there’s not one hotel where everyone hangs out. I guess the closest thing to the Renaissance in Indy is the Omni; it’s become the place where all the vendors hoping to attract NFL business rent space and set up suites.

I’ll try to check in frequently from Indy this week, but don’t hold me to it. It’s going to be busy, but also fun. As always, I’ll let you know on Twitter whenever I’ve got something new.

A Football Extravaganza

21 Wednesday Jan 2015

Posted by in Scouts

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

,

This week is the Senior Bowl, which makes it a big week in the life of college and pro football. Though the media is starting to catch on to the energy, the personality and the football buzz of the week in Mobile, I still think this game (and this week) is one of the hidden gems of football. Here are a few thoughts.

  • I know of at least two people here this week that are budding members of the pro football business who have come here to find their place. No doubt there are many more. One of them is my assistant, Murphy, who’s invaluable to me, but who wants to get an unvarnished look at the life of a contract advisor. I’m happy to help push him out of the nest. Though this is his third Senior Bowl, this week he’s asked several top agents what it takes to be successful in this business. To their credit, they’ve pulled no punches. To Murphy’s credit, he hasn’t flinched at the answers. He’d be crazy not to be given pause by their responses, but so far, it looks like he’s unbowed. Everyone he’s spoken to is a leader in the business, with a lengthy career and a growing practice. You just can’t find that kind of expertise anywhere else in the league except at the Senior Bowl.
  • Of course, there’s more than just agents here. All 32 teams send most of their scouts and often their coaching staffs, too. You also get a lot of college coaches who come to go to bat for players on the rosters or to see if they can land a job in the NFL. It’s a little like a coaches convention, though my sense is that it’s not nearly as popular as a ‘jobs clearinghouse’ as it used to be. I think the AFCA Convention has replaced it in that vein.
  • Though you don’t necessarily have to be a credentialed part of the Senior Bowl to get a lot of out of it, getting credentials isn’t automatic. Yesterday was one of the rare times I got a first-person account of someone almost wasn’t approved. For the most part, if you’re in the business or can make a credible argument that you are, you’ll be approved. Many times, a person’s credential identifies him as merely a ‘friend’ of a player in the game or some other NFL official. I’ve seen it.
  • Even if you’re not credentialed, you can still come and be a part of the week. Having a tag around your neck gets you on the field and gets you into the various galas in the evening, but if you just want to go to practice, you can sit in the stands without getting hassled. What’s more, the Renaissance Riverview Plaza Hotel, the game’s nerve center, is open and the people are very hospitable. At night, people converge on a handful of bars in downtown Mobile, but only a handful, and they’re easy to find. Last night, walking thru the downtown area, it was clear there were several establishments that wanted Senior Bowl business, but only 2-3 that were actually getting it.