redman
Footballguy
I thought that this was interesting:
Today we will talk about the role of college scouts during the football season.
We have seven college scouts throughout the country. They are at schools everyday. They start traveling to all of the colleges that have prospects around the second week of August. Each of the seven scouts will have around 30 schools to visit. They usually will go to each school twice during the fall.
When the scouts go to a school, they watch and evaluate tape. They also talk to coaches, trainers, strength coaches about character, work habits and medical issues. Then they will watch the player at practice, write a report on each prospect, and go to the game on Saturday.
What you want to do is be able to get a look at a guy at practices and games to see how he moves, see his athletic ability, and his skills. For example, for receivers, you want to see his hands and how he catches. For quarterbacks, you want to see his size, the release he has, and his velocity on the ball.
You want to see all the prospective players and what they look like physically, in person. That's one of the main reasons for being at their practice. The key thing a scout wants to get from going to the school, other than watching film, is finding out what kind of person and what type of worker he is--all of those things that are so important with the Redskins.
We are looking for the right type of people to fit in our locker room. We want a student of the game, who is football smart, has good character, is solid in the locker room, who believes in the team, and most importantly has the ability to play the position at the professional level.
Most of these things are not things you can find out on film. Finding out these types of things requires digging and grinding to find out from teammates, professors, any one on campus that knows the player. That is what our scouts get paid for.
This week, Shemy Schembechler, our midwest scout is at Central Missouri State. Jim Zeches, our west coast scout, is at Oregon. Mike Faulkiner, our southwest scout, is at Texas Southern. Tim Gribble, our northeast scout is at Buffalo. Russ Bolinger, our national scout, is at Texas El Paso. Scott Campbell, director of college scouting, and Joel Patten, our national scout, are at Miami.
There are two guys at Miami because there are only two weeks in the fall that Miami allows scouts to evaluate the players. The time a scout spends at a school depends on the number of prospects at a school. If there are six prospects or more prospects, scouts will typically spend two days at the school.
Otherwise, scouts are at the university between 7-8 in the morning, watch film until 2 p.m., have interviews with coaches, trainers and strength coaches until practice starts. They'll write a report on every guy and send it in. The following morning they will drive to the next school.
Tomorrow, Shemy goes from Central Missouri to Missouri. Mike Faulkiner goes from Texas Southern to Houston. Tim Gribble will go to Buffalo to Indiana, Pa. Scott Campbell has two days at Miami. Joel Patten was at Miami on Tuesday and Wednesday and then he's going to Florida International. Russ Bolinger goes from Oregon to Nevada.
What's hard is a lot of college teams don't practice on Monday. Tuesdays and Wednesdays are the best practices where you get the most out of it. Some schools will only let you in on Mondays and Fridays when they are not practicing that much because they don't want you to watch what they are doing in practice. It makes it that much more difficult. That's why scouts try to get in early during two-a-day practices.
They are evaluating seven days a week. You can still go in and watch film at a lot of places on Sunday. They'll do this all the way in August, September, October, and they are done and usually finishing up around Thanksgiving.
They'll come in and we'll bring them in for a game in December and set up the board a little bit and let them evaluate our players. They have to have all their reports in by the second week of December. We'll start our initial meetings, then follow the bowl games. We'll get ready for the NFL Scouting combine, hold draft meetings, and prepare for the draft. It's a year-long process for them.
On the weekend, a lot of the guys will see games. I know that Russ Bolinger on Friday night is going to a game--Northwestern at Nevada. Saturday, Shemy is at Ohio-Missouri. Jim Zeches is going to Hawaii-Boise State. Joel Patten is at Kentucky-Florida.
After two weeks of being on the road, scouts can fly home the third weekend. They usually get home on Friday and then are at the school again on Monday. Sometimes they will fly their wife to their location. The thing about it is that our scouts, between visiting schools, aren't flying--they are driving. They'll pack up their cars in the fall and they drive to all of these schools.
Take this week, for example: Shemy was at Illinois on Monday, Purdue on Tuesday, Indiana on Wednesday, Toledo on Thursday and Friday, and Saturday he's at Akron-Toledo. Mike Faulkiner, who is down in the Southwest, is at West Texas on Monday Texas Tech on Tuesday, TCU on Wednesday, Texas A&M on Thursday and Texas on Friday. That's a typical flow of a week.
The scouts have a job where no one knows who they are but they have a very important role in the success of a team.
