April 9-15
Monday at 8 p.m. ET, Executive VP of Football Operations Marc Ross, Senior VP of Player Personnel Doug Whaley and Senior Director of Player Administration and Officiating Operations Russ Giglio will join the football business community on a Zoom hosted by Inside the League’s Neil Stratton. They’ll discuss the details of player acquisition and talent evaluation, rosters, season length, game play and other issues related to the health and maintenance of its most important assets, the men who will take the field next spring. Time permitting, they will also take questions from members of the audience.
“I met with player representatives at the ITL Combine Seminar in Indianapolis in 2019 prior to our 2020 relaunch, because at the XFL, we prioritize our relationships with our partners,” Whaley said. “This time around, we are no less interested in maintaining those relationships, so we want to make sure the people we will be working with know, upfront, what to expect.”
Zoom links will be distributed to registered NFLPA contract advisors Sunday night and again Monday afternoon. Want to make sure you’re not left out? Contact us here.
Stratton will host the interactive session, which is expected to take less than an hour. Guests will briefly address the attendees on a number of issues, and questions will be welcome. Excerpts will be posted afterwards, and Inside the League will highlight some of the key responses in its post-Zoom coverage next week.
“Even though we aren’t a complete stranger to the football industry, the fact is we will be coming off a three-year absence,” Giglio said. “We want to be as transparent as possible with how we will do business.”
Though Whaley, Giglio and Ross will be the main contributors Monday night, there may be surprise appearances by other key officials, including, perhaps, Garcia herself. It’s all part of the league’s desire to impress upon player representatives the importance they and their clients play in the league.
“Having spent a long time in the NFL, I know nothing happens if game day isn’t seamless and professional,” Ross said. “That all starts with the players, and that’s why we want to start now addressing what’s on their minds.”
We at ITL are excited to partner with the XFL in its efforts to be proactive in communications with the football business community. We hope to see you Monday. In the meantime, here’s a look at what else we saw, heard, read and said in the business of college and pro football this week.
Catching Up: John Becker, 79, was in the league for 31 years, spending time in coaching and scouting and working with the Rams and Colts. We caught up with him earlier this month.
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Where are you living and what are you doing now?: “I’m sitting on my ass, doing nothing, and living in Bow, Wash., which is north of Seattle toward Canada, about 45-50 minutes away. It’s right around a place called Mount Vernon. I can see the Puget Sound from my window. I play a lot of chess on the computer. I play with all my friends, guys I don’t know and the computer. I love to fish, and always have, but I’m a trout and steelhead fisherman on streams. . . the Puget Sound is suffering a major decline in fishing.”
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Do you miss the job? What do you miss most?: “I love football, absolutely love it, and I have always loved it since I was coaching eighth-graders. I coached in high school, and I was the head coach of a high school when I was 20, and we won a championship when I was 21. So I’ve been doing this all my life. There’s obviously something that attracted me very early. I love the competition of the game itself, and I love the interaction with the players. Not so much the fans and media, but the players and other coaches. Just a lot of great friends, a lot of great laughs, a lot of wonderful things. The game itself is an absolute (joy), and the people, the players, I hardly ever had (a jerk). Almost everyone I coached with I really liked. There were a lot of great people in the business, and the routine. You take a year, and you can pretty much know what‘s gonna occur, and it’s very cyclical, and the cyclical nature of the deal has a real diversity aspect. What occurs in January is very different from what occurs in April. There’s a real variety to it, so if you don’t like the preseason, you’re more likely to like the draft and the combine. There’s enough for everybody.”
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Do you keep in touch with any of your former colleagues?: “I’m not really much of a phone guy. You wouldn’t think that once you get me talking, but I don’t. I talked to (former NFL head coach Dick) Vermeil last week, and I talked to (former college head coach) Pat Hill, who was at Fresno State, and he played for me, so I keep in touch with him. Guys are dying like flies, so a guy who’s 79 doesn’t have as many people to keep in touch with as one who retired at 60. I don’t stay in touch with many of them. (Former NFL coach) Rusty Tillman, (former NFL executive) Dom Anile, a lot of my guys are not only out of the business but they’re either in heaven or hell. They’re not around to talk to.”
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Do you go to any live games (HS/college/pro)?: “I don’t like traffic, and you can see it so well right in front of your face on TV. I’ve been invited a number of times, and the University of Washington is only an hour away. I can go, but part of it is health, part of it is convenience, and part of it is it’s easier to sit there and be warm and have a sandwich or a beer and stay home. So the answer is no. After I resigned from the Colts, I left that job and went to a Super Bowl, and could have gone to a Super Bowl the following year. (Former NFL GM) Bill Polian offered to treat me, and I had a hell of a time making up my mind. I did, and it was a nice offer, but I barely made up my mind to go.”
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Are there any players you love to watch and/or feel close to due to your work in the game?: “Actually, the games I find most interesting to watch are games that are pivotal or meaningful in my career. But any big game with (former NFL QB) Kurt Warner (I loved). I was head coach of a junior college in Southern California (Los Angeles Valley College), and we were in a very good junior college conference. Then, when I was with the Rams, Al Luginbill (whom I had coached with in the JC conference) asked me if I’d ever heard of Kurt Warner, and he said, ‘this guy’s pretty good, work him out.’ Al was the head coach at Amsterdam (of NFL Europe) at the time, and wanted some help in placing Warner over there. I’d heard of him, but if Al doesn’t make that call to us, Warner’s not the next (big star QB). Al Luginbill should get most of the credit, and so we bring him in, and we don’t know what we have. We try him out, and the rest is history. Kurt Warner games are very interesting because he is what he is portrayed to be. When we were going through that miracle (the Super Bowl season), if you research it, the Rams (before) that time, we sucked. We were bad with (former head coach) Chuck Knox, and even with Vermeil first two years, then the third year of Vermeil’s tenure, in waltzes Kurt Warner, and by this time we have a pretty good team around him, like Marshall Faulk. Those teams I find very interesting because that story is an extremely interesting story. Any kind of meaningful game, yeah, I would watch it in a minute. But I watch all kind of football. I have a big ol’ callous on my ass from watching football.”
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.
An opportunity for aspiring scouts: On Friday and Saturday, May 20-21, the 2nd annual Personnel/Recruiting Spring Clinic will be held at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. The two-day event will be a celebration of roster-creation and team-building as it relates to college football, and kicks off with a social at 4 p.m. Friday followed by a full day of presentations, round-table discussions and networking that wraps up Saturday evening. And best of all, it’s completely free. Get to Vegas and find a place to stay (if you need the room block, it’s here), and you can socialize with others in the industry Friday and learn all day Saturday at no cost. And who knows? Maybe come back with a job. There’s plenty more to know, of course, and you can learn more by reading this week’s blog at Succeed in Football. We spoke to one of the event’s organizers, UNLV Director of Player Personnel Gaizka Crowley, about this exciting opportunity and how he hopes the event can grow. We hope to see you there.
Tipping our hats: This week, we learned that Lionel Vital, previously the Senior Personnel Executive for the Cowboys, rode off into the sunset in January. You could scarcely find a man whose career in football included more geographical locations, leagues and even roles. Vital, 58, started his career as a running back at Nicholls State, where he’s now a member of the school’s Athletic Hall of Fame. In 1985, he was drafted not just by an NFL team (Washington in the seventh round), but also by the USFL’s Arizona Outlaws, according to his Wikipedia page. Initially his playing career was short-lived -- though it included a stint in the CFL as well as the White Sox farm system -- but he got his break during the strike season of 1987. That year, he rushed for 346 yards in three replacement games, which would be the highest per-game rushing average ever (115.3) if he had a larger sample size. Soon after, the regulars returned, and his playing career was over, but he was far from done, launching his scouting career with the CFL’s Saskatchewan franchise. From there, he began climbing the ranks, working for Bill Belichick as a Browns scout (and surviving the team’s transition to the Baltimore Ravens) before joining the Jets, Patriots, Falcons and finally Dallas during a scouting career that spanned more than three decades and included four Super Bowls. We broke the news of his retirement on Twitter Thursday and expanded on his career in that day’s Rep Rumblings. We had more, of course, this week: USFL and scouting notes on Monday; agent changes and mini-camp scheduling notes on Tuesday; and a deeper look at the 2022 draft class based on SRAs signed (and what it means) in Wednesday’s report. Make sure you’re keeping up with everything going on in the football business world by checking out all our reports.
2023+ Profile Reports: This week, Arizona, Arizona State, Arkansas and Arkansas State went under the microscope as we broke down the top pro prospects, regardless of eligibility, at each school. That makes nine schools we’ve scouted so far, with plenty more on the way. You can go back 14 years checking out our reports on the top talent in college football here.
Next week: Wow. Two weeks until Draft Day 2022. It’s almost here, which means there are things we need to get done first. We’ll be working on our Scouts by Alma Mater and Coaches by Alma Mater features, which are a draft week tradition. We also hope to trot out our Agents by Total Clients and Agent Changes reports this week, so we’ll be at work churning those out. We also hope to present Profile Reports on five more schools (Auburn, Ball State, Baylor, Boise State and Boston College), and we’ll have four more Rep Rumblings reports as well as our Succeed in Football blog. Next week’s Wrap will also include our final look at seven top mock draft services and how they see the first round shaking out. Will the top pick be Hutchinson? Thibodeaux? Neal? Gardner? Walker? Willis? We’ll see what the experts say. Here’s what they said last time we checked. There’s plenty to come next week, and we hope you join us, but even more, we hope you have a wonderful and blessed Easter!
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