ITL Friday Wrap -- 11.26.21

ITL Friday Wrap

Nov. 20-26

On Wednesday, we wrapped up our Know Your Scouts series for the ’21 season. We think it’s one of the undiscovered gems of our regular features at ITL, especially if you aspire to be a scout yourself one of these days. In it, we try to tell the origin stories of the 500+ pro and college scouts employed by the 32 NFL teams.

Sorting through each of the teams’ front offices, a lot of scouts’ and directors’ stories are not surprising. As you might expect, you’ll find hundreds of former high school, college and even pro players, and many others are veterans of college recruiting and personnel departments. Every team has at least one son of a former NFL player, coach or scout, and some even enlist one or more children of the team’s owner.

Still, there are plenty of frontage roads, dirt paths and other byways that are less traveled but end up in the same place. We reviewed all 32 teams to ferret out a few of the unique and/or unlikely ways that today’s scouts found their respective ways to NFL posts.

It’s not how you start . . . : One scout was a detective for years before launching a career in scouting. One active executive was actually a heavyweight boxer for four years, achieving a record of 27-1-1. One is the son of a notable boxing trainer and had limited, if any, prior gridiron playing experience. One scout worked in pharmaceuticals out of college. Another worked in finance. One scout spent a decade in the Coast Guard before even going to college.

Follow the bouncing ball: One scout worked for Madison Square Garden. One worked for an NBA team and an indoor soccer team. Several have worked for minor league baseball teams. One scout played three seasons of college basketballand just one season of football.

Media matters: One scout is the son of a legendary former broadcaster. One pro scout and one area scout spent time as analysts at Pro Football Focus. One contributed to NFL Draft Diamonds; one contributed to Optimum Scouting; one worked for STATS LLC; one wrote for Ourlad’s; one area scout spent 10 years as an ESPN draft analyst before getting into scouting, and another was a researcher for ESPN. One scout spent five years with NFL films as a researcher. Two have served in roles with ITL, one an area scout and one a more senior advisor. One scout originally worked for a high school recruiting service.

Succeeding in Football: Two directors, one on the pro side and one on the college side, played in the 2008 Hula Bowl, which was run by ITL’s Neil Stratton.

Representing: One director is a former NFL agent; another director is the brother of an agent; and two others are the sons of agents, one in the AFC South and one in the AFC North.

Law on their side: The 49ers, Colts, Patriots and Chiefs have scouts who are law school grads.

Up from the minors: The Colts, Dolphins, Saints, Steelers, Giants and Cowboys each have at least one front office staffer who served in scouting or administrative roles with Arena Football teams. Also, the Bills, Browns, Patriots,Cowboys, Dolphins and Jets have hired former CFL scouts.

Bottom line, there’s no one way to make it into scouting. If you’re pursuing work in the NFL and feeling a little discouraged, we hope this provides a little sunshine. Dogged determination and relentless relationship-building still matter, and an evolving game creates a need for new skill sets every day, so be not dismayed. With 285 people heading in, out, up or down in scouting over the past year, the league’s not going to stop making moves anytime soon.

If your aim is to be an NFL evaluator someday, make sure to check out our Know Your Scouts series. We’re sure there’s someone already in the league who was once where you are.

Here’s a look at what else we saw, heard, read or said in the world of pro and college football over the past week.

New agents start here: Thanksgiving is the unofficial launch of signing season as it relates to the coming NFL draft class. Unfortunately, at this point, the newest agent class has only been able to practice for about two months, an impossibly short time in a multi-layered and contact-driven profession like contract advising. This week, we decided to give new agents a head start with five things they need to know culled from 20 years covering the industry and working with player reps of every stripe. How do you find players worth signing? How much money must you spend to get a kid on a roster? Is the kid I’ve known all my life really going to sign with me? We discuss all of that and more in making our five points. If you’re a new agent, or you are planning on being one someday, this is all need-to-know information, and you don’t even have to be an ITL client to get it. Make sure to check out this week’s post, as well as all our posts at Succeed in Football going back almost seven years, here.

ITL Scouting Reports: Remember, before you sign a player, make sure he’s worth signing. Former NFL executive Blake Beddingfield can turn around a report on any player in college football, at any level, for $100 plus tax. You’ll get it back in 1-3 days. It’s a whole lot cheaper than signing a player and training him, only to find out the NFL has no interest. Can you afford not to get a report on your clients? Give us a try and see what all the fuss is about. All we need is a name, school and position, and we’ll do the rest. Get started here.

Agent Changes: This week, we had our monthly look at the players who’ve switched agents in the last 30 days, and it was a surprise. Never before have we identified only two players who made switches in a month, as we did this week as Ravens OG James Carpenter and Texans IB Connor Strachan returned to the league with agents different from the ones they last had. We counted 13 changes a year ago at the same time and 13 in 2019, as well. You can go back more than 10 years to see how who’s fired whom in the NFL at our Master Agent Changes Page.

Catching Up: Having met Craig Smith for the first time at the first Medal of Honor Bowl in Charleston, SC, in 2014, it didn’t take long to recognize how popular he is. Weigh-ins were more like a housewarming party for Craig, who, despite being a CFL scout with Saskatchewan, knew everyone in the room everywhere he went and greeted everyone with a smile. However, around 2018, Craig wasn’t such a common presence on the all-star trail, and after a while, word began to circulate that he was battling cancer. Though Craig has become a regular presence on social media, he’s not one to dwell on his own problems in the public space. That’s why we asked him to tell his story here, so all his friends could get a sense of where he stands and how he’s doing. He emailed the following to us earlier this month:

“It’s been quite a journey. (I) was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia on Oct. 19, 2017.

Had four rounds of chemo, full body radiation and a stem cell transplant. My donor was an excellent match. It was like I had a twin somewhere in the world.

“After the transplant, it was rough. The new foreign cells come in to the body and your body goes, ‘what’s going on here?’ Took a long while for my blood work to get good. Now it is excellent. In many ways, I am more healthy than pre-cancer. Blood pressure is normal, no cholesterol pill and I now weigh 190 lbs. My last 10 years in the CFL I ranged between 270 and 300. I still have some issues, but doing pretty good.

“My last trip was to a preseason game to Denver Aug 31, 2017. I was gone from the game and the job I love for a little more than four years. (However,) I was asked in September to scout Canada West for the Ottawa RedBlacks and I gladly accepted. Back in the game doing what I love.

“Love it all. The travel. The hotels -- spent five years of my life in a Marriott property. The practices. The games. The interaction with coaches and front office types. I missed those relationships. When you scout NFL camps for 15 years, you get to know a lot of people. Guys like Brian Gaine (Bills), Greg Nejmeh (Jets), Patrick Hanscomb (Giants), Chris Ballard (Colts), Mark Gorscak (Steelers), Sammy Garza (Cowboys), Ryan Monnens (Vikings), Rob Lohman (Lions). I could go on and on. Great people. Ain’t nothing better than going to a camp practice, talking with the personnel guys and watching several hours of film. Then (go) on the road and do it again.

“My agreement goes to the end of the year. Who knows what happens next? But I made it back! One day at a time.”

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.

Rep Rumblings: This week, we had three reports. On Monday, we took a long look at the weekend’s coaching changes, chronicling those who are in and which are out, which agencies represent those coaches, and which search firms are in play to find the next man up. We also had recruiting buzz and a look at the reemergence of the USFL. Tuesday, we looked at the progress of invitations to the Senior Bowl and other games, plus had a scouting note, portals by which you can monitor hires and apply for jobs in the XFL and USFL, and recruiting buzz. Today, for our final report of the week, we had wall-to-wall signing buzz and another scouting change we missed previously. Don’t forget: you can access all our reports going back to January of this year (and every report going back to 2013) here.

Next week: As we enter the last month of 2021, we’ve still got a lot of things on our to-do list. December is when our annual student rate specifically for aspiring NFL scouts, our Next Wave subscription, runs out, and we’re with the college season running out, we’re planning some Zoom meet-ups that will exceed anything we’ve ever done before. Our goal is to teach the next generation of evaluators what they need to know to get the job, and what to know once they have it. But that’s not all. We’re also working on something for contract advisors, and especially those seeking new opportunities for their clients from the ’21 draft class and other recent drafts. We’re even working on a second sleepers list courtesy of former Titans Director of College Scouting Blake Beddingfield. How much of it will we get to in the next seven days? We don’t know that yet. All we can say is, stay tuned. When we aren’t gathering experts to talk to members of the ITL family, we’ll be grabbing all the signings, all-star invites, NIL deals and more and plugging them into our big board. Well-stocked teams like Texas, Georgia Tech, Nebraska, Northwestern, Washington, Arizona and many other teams will be home for bowl season, which means dozens of talented players won’t need to wait around till January to choose their agencies and training facilities. Our Signings Grid is the only place you can track six categories (position, school, agency, training, NIL agency and all-star invite) for every player going into the draft. We’re also expecting a raft of head coach terminations as soon as Week 13 wraps up Saturday. That means there will be a lot of work to do with our Coaching Changes Grid and Head Coach-Agent Grid, and we’ll be rooting out which search firms each of the schools uses, which firm represents the new (and interim) coaches, the athletic directors who’ll be making the hires (sometimes after first firing the last head coach he brought in) and more. There’s a lot to track, and we’ll do our best to stay current and let you know what’s happening as it happens. With our Know Your Scouts series wrapped up, we’ll be doing a lot of work with our grids this week. In our weekly blog, Succeed in Football, we’ll dip into our Zoom sessions, our work on our various grids and lists, and whatever other content we provide this week and provide highlights, guidance and counsel, or both. Our Rep Rumblings will be brimming with content with so much going on in the all-star games, the USFL and XFL, signings, NIL deals, coaching changes and more. We’ll also have our popular Agents by Total Clients list. How many contract advisors will have at least 10 active clients? We’ll found out next week. It’s the most wonderful time of the year, and not just because we’re a month out from Christmas. Come along with us as we track the pulse of the college and pro football business.