Feb. 3-9

Well, here we are. The 49ers vs. the Chiefs for the title. It’s the biggest weekend of the year for the NFL, and maybe even the biggest weekend in pro sports in America. Traditionally, about a third of everyone in America will tune in Sunday evening to see who comes out on top. 

However, while it’s an unquestionably big weekend for the league, the biggest two days of the year for Inside the League are the last two of this month: Wednesday and Thursday, Feb. 28-29. It’s on those days we’ll first celebrate the scouting industry, then educate the player representation business about a trend many are missing. Let’s take you through what we’ve got planned for Indianapolis. We hope you can join us at both events. 

The 2024 USI Insurance ITL Combine Seminar Presented by The Tatnuck Group (Wednesday, 6:30 p.m., Room 125 of the Indiana Convention Center): We’re incredibly excited about what has become the industry’s annual celebration of NFL scouting. Last year, we hosted 150-200 active NFL evaluators who were on hand to accept awards or to celebrate those who are. We’re well-aware our event takes place during a busy time, and we think it’s the fastest hour in the football business. By 7:30 that evening, we’ll have handed out the following awards:

• The seventh annual Best Draft Award, which goes to the team voted to have performed best on Draft Weekend 2023
• The complete BART List awards, which will honor the top scouts in each conference in three categories: pro scouting, college/executive (director-level and above) and college/road (area and national scouts). This year, for the first time, we’ll also honor the scouts voted best in pure evaluation, in running a pro day, and in gathering character information.
• The C.O. Brocato Award, which, for the fifth year, will go to the NFL evaluator who’s unsung service to the industry deserves to be honored.
• The Eugene Parker Award, which will go to one established player representative for his decades of service to the game and its players.
• NFL Liaison of the Year, our second year honoring the college professional who best serves today’s scouts.
• College Strength Coach of the Year, which will go to the fitness professional who is the biggest help to modern evaluators. This will be our first year presenting the award.

We’ll also present the results of our annual salary survey. Remember, our open bar kicks off at 6 p.m., and we’ll get started at 6:30 sharp. Attendance is free. Hope to see you there. 

The 2024 Vestible ITL Symposium (Thursday, 9-10:30 a.m., Room 103 of the Indiana Convention Center): We at Inside the League believe the player representation business is at a turning point, with revenue sources quickly drying up in the traditional NFL agent space. However, we see great potential for today’s NFLPA professional aiding players navigate the transfer portal. To that end, for this year’s program, ITL’s Neil Stratton will host transfer and recruiting specialist Oscar Monnier, who has headed all portal activity at five P5 schools: Northwestern, Oregon, Stanford, Duke and, most recently, Texas A&M. Stratton will interview Monnier over an hour, followed by questions and answers from attendees. Monnier will address topics such as: 

• The real state of NIL (how schools acquire and retain talent)
• How family members and ex-coaches have become key players in the transfer process, mostly eclipsing actual NFL agents
• The inefficiencies of the market as it stands
• The player pipeline, when and how to identify top talent, and the timeline for doing so
• How high school and transfer portal recruiting differ (and how the players have changed)
• Plus much, much more. 

Cost is $100 per attendee or $400 per agency (maximum eight agency attendees). We anticipate room for about 100 guests, so space will be limited. To register, and for more details, click here.

By the way, we’re really excited about our sponsors this year, and we think you should be, as well. USI Insurance Services, our title sponsor Wednesday, has more than $2.5 billion in revenue and over 10,000 associates across more than 200 offices across the nation. The company has served more than half a million clients on their property and casualty, employee benefit, personal risk and retirement needs. USI has more than 150 years of consulting and brokerage experience, with local offices dating back as far as the late 1800s. 

Through pre-draft interviewing and consulting, The Tatnuck Group, Wednesday’s presenting sponsor, helps dozens of NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA, NASCAR and La Liga soccer teams select better performers and better people. Since 2019, NFL clubs have partnered with Tatnuck to interview prospects at the Senior Bowl and NFL Combine, as well as post-combine via zoom. Tatnuck focuses on assessing character, culture-fit, leadership capacity and the ability to handle the stressors and rigors of being a pro. 

Curley Wealth Management of Wells Fargo Advisors, our awards sponsor, is based in New York. The company’s managing director, Ed Curley, a certified financial planner (CFP), has worked as a financial advisor for three decades and is an NFLPA-registered player financial advisor. He works with a number of players and coaches and returns as a partner in the ITL Combine Seminar.

As for Thursday, Vestible returns as our title sponsor. The company allows fans to invest, literally, in their favorite players, then watch their respective stocks rise and fall with the player’s fortunes on the field. Investors earn a monthly distribution based directly on the athlete’s professional on-field compensation. This allows them to be paid throughout the athlete’s entire professional sports career. 

Still not sold? Check out our complete Wednesday seminar, with every award presentation plus interviews with many of the winners, on the ITL YouTube page here. Now let’s take a look at what else was happening in the business of college and pro football this week.

Scouting Changes aplenty: With new GMs in several places, front offices are seeing lots of changes lately. Here’s a recap of what happened this week:

• The Patriots are continuing to move on from the Belichick era, giving Director of Scouting Eliot Wolfmore power (and maybe the GM title soon) while also adding veteran evaluator Alonzo Highsmith, late of Miami (Fla.).
• New Chargers GM Joe Hortiz has lured two of his former colleagues with Baltimore, Chad Alexander (Jets) and Corey Krawiec (Ravens), to Los Angeles. 
•  JoJo Wooden is leaving the Chargers to join his former boss, new Raiders GM Tom Telesco, in Las Vegas.
• Bobby Brown is headed back to New England to run cap matters.
• Also, since September: Donovan Moore has joined the Steelers as a football analyst; Michael Venit did the same with the Saints; and Andrew Hoyle moved up to Player Personnel Scout, while Nick Bayhbecame Pro Personnel Assistant, in Indianapolis. All of this was recorded in Thursday’s Rep Rumblings.

Make sure to get the blow by blow on all the moves in our Scouting Changes Grid.

Scouting isn’t simple: A questionable tweet aimed at a Patriots executive stuck in the craw of ITL’s Neil Stratton, prompting a quick overview of the scouting process (and an impromptu defense of the selection of Alabama QB Mac Jones in the 2021 draft). Check out this week’s post at Succeed in Football here.

Breaking it Down with Blake B: Former Titans scouting executive Blake Beddingfield is a familiar person to the ITL family as he’s been writing most of the on-demand scouting reports for several years now. He has also hosted numerous sleeper Zoom sessions and guested on other broadcasts over the years. This week, however, he made is debut on the Scouting the League podcast, joining Rodrik David and Neil Stratton for a near-hour to discuss what happens in NFL scouting departments between the close of all-star games and the NFL Combine. He also weighed in on how he’d view players who skipped their all-star game after practicing all week; how NIL money might enter into his questions during all-star and combine interviews; whether or not the first-ever Big 12 Pro Day, which includes all of the conference's schools, is a good thing; and how analytics might be integrated during February meetings. Make sure to check out this week’s podcast here, and review all the Scouting the League podcasts so far here.

Catching Up: Matt Lindsey, 32, spent four years with the Eagles on the pro side in addition to nine in college personnel. These days, he’s working on the other side as a member of one of the top agencies in the business. We caught up with him this week.

• Where are you living and what are you doing now?: “I’m living in Atlanta for the last two years and working for Athletes First.” 

• Do you miss the job? What do you miss most?: “I do. I miss the people. I miss that, and always enjoy my time around scouts. I think scouts are some of the most interesting people in sports. I miss that and I relish every chance I get to be around them, talking shop with scouts. To me, that’s the most fun thing.” 

• Do you keep in touch with any of your former colleagues?: “I do. Thankfully, I’m in a position where I get to see those guys a decent amount, but I stay in touch with a lot of guys. I don’t want to start naming them because I’ll leave someone out, but I do get to keep in touch with a lot of them.”

• Do you go to any live games (HS/college/pro)?: “Some college, some NFL games. Being here in Atlanta with the Falcons here, with Georgia Tech, with Georgia just down the road, and with a lot of neutral site games coming here in the beginning of the year and in bowl season, it’s a good hub to be at. I love going to games, hearing the sounds of the pads popping, that kind of stuff. There’s no replacement for live football.”

• Are there any players you love to watch and/or feel close to due to your work in the game?: “It’s different now. I definitely root for people, whether it’s friends of mine working in the league or players we represent. I have a ton of friends on the Texans, and then Athletes First represents (QB) C.J. Stroud, so it’s a lot of fun rooting for the Texans and what they’re building. Just rooting for players, for coaches and for front office members is what I find myself doing most Sundays. I don’t really have a specific team that I root for.”

Review the latest from other former NFL scouts and executives by accessing our Catching Up archive here. Want to hear from a former scout, or know someone who may be interested in being interviewed? Let us know.

Class in session (soon): With the registration deadline for the 2024 NFLPA Exam now passed, we’ve gotten plenty of inquiries about when we’d start our exam prep Zoom series with Chicago-based Ian Greengross. Well, the time is now. Thursday at 9:30 p.m. ET, we’ll launch our first study hour of the 2024 term. As always, it’s $50 plus tax to join us during the session (plus receive a recording of the session), or $35 plus tax for the video afterwards. Here’s what we’ll cover in Session 1:

• Given a signing bonus and Year 4 cap number, calculate rookie salary
• Calculation of problems re: June 1 rule
• Calculation of agent fees, including split between two agents after one has been terminated
• Plus whatever questions fit into the hour 

Getting ready for the exam? Make sure to prepare extensively. Hope to see you Thursday.

Agents by Total Clients: We didn’t make as much progress on our agents changes this week, but we did get a little more caught up on our contract advisor list. Monday, we had Total Clients by Agent for December, and what we found were 121 player reps with at least 10 active clients as of the last month of 2023. Among the leaders, there weren’t many changes, with Rosenhaus Sports’ Drew Rosenhaus in first place, CAA’s Jimmy Sexton second, Athletes First’s David Mulugheta third, GSE Worldwide’s David Canter fourth and CAA’s Tory Dandy and WME’s Joel Segal tied for fifth. Make sure to get a good look at the entire list here.

Coaching Changes Grid: Normally, February is the time when college head coaches are making final preparations for spring ball, but these are not normal times. This week, Boston College seems poised to name Bill O’Brien as its new head coach, replacing new Packers defensive coordinator Jeff Hafley. Meanwhile, UCLA is now looking for a replacement for Chip Kelly, who will take over for O’Brien as offensive coordinator at Ohio State. It’s a remarkable number of dominoes falling so late in the year, and it’s not easy to keep up with it all . . . unless you’re checking our grid, where we list all the outgoing and ingoing coaches; athletic directors making the hires; the search firms helping with the process; and more. It’s all here. 

Next week: We’re closing in on the Combine, but there’s plenty of work to be done before we head to the airport. 

• We’d hoped to make more progress on our Agent Changes and Agents by Total Clients list by now, but planning for our combine events got in the way. We’ll do better next week. 
• We said we’d create our NFL head coaches and agents grid this week, but we didn’t. That will be a top priority next week. 
• We may get the college coaches and agents grid updated this week, as well, but no promises. Who knows how many openings there will be seven days from now? Check out all the changes so far here.
• The scouting changes just keep on coming. We’ll keep adding the ones we, and others, break to our Scouting Changes Grid.
• We’re expecting the full 2024 NFL Combine list to come out this week. Once it does, we’ll break out the list from our 2024 Signings Grid, but we’ll keep working on both of them. 
• Will our Pro Day Grid come out this week? Maybe. Here’s last year’s.
• Our Rep Rumblings will be back with analysis, notes and discussion of what’s new in the industry. Make sure reading them is a priority.
•  We’ll look at the industry in a unique way with our next post on our Succeed in Football blog. 
• We’ll convene on Zoom, with Chicago-based agent Ian Greengross leading the way, for everyone taking the exam this summer on Thursday (9:30 p.m. ET). Cost is $50 plus tax to sit in, or $35 plus tax for the recording afterwards. Can’t make it, but want to get caught up on all the key content? Check out the tools to get you ready here. 

It’s busier than ever in the football world, and not always easy to keep up. It’s easier, however, if you’re part of our team.