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I'll update this constantly through to April's draft.
Campus visits critical for NFL scouts
August, 12, 2010Aug 121:15PM ETEmail Print Comments By Kevin WeidlIf Alabama coach Nick Saban's decision to ban NFL scouts from campus catches on with other schools, it could seriously affect NFL teams' ability to gather information about pro prospects.
Yes, scouts and front offices learn a lot about players based on film study, and campus visits used to be where scouts watched the bulk of a prospect's game tape. However, advances in technology have given scouts the ability to watch hours of film on their laptop computers, and you can't draft a player based on film alone. You have to know what kind of person he is, and campus visits may have become the best way to assess a prospect's character.
Area scouts drive hundreds of miles from school to school in an effort to get to know players and build relationships. They talk to the coaching staff about a player's skills, strength coaches about a his work ethic in the weight room, trainers about his injury history and willingness to play through pain and to academic advisers about his smarts and work ethic in the classroom.
Campus visits are also an opportunity for scouts to observe how a player interacts with his teammates in the weight room and during practice, how he treats people outside the team and/or program and how he interacts with the media. They also provide a time to learn about a player's background and family situation.
Finally, scouts can get an up-close look at a player's body type. How thick is his lower body? Does he have the sand in his rear to anchor along the line of scrimmage? Does he have a lean frame, and how is his upper body put together? Does he have a sloppy build, or is he chiseled? These are things that can't always be deduced from game video, and with the character observations mentioned above, they form the foundation of the evaluation process.
Many NFL prospects are multimillion-dollar investments, and teams have to know what kind of people they're getting, especially given the emphasis that commissioner Roger Goodell and the league office put on character. Area scouts put in hard work and long hours to build relationships, often while spending weeks away from their homes and families, and their information is invaluable to NFL franchises. Restricting their access to information would make the scouting process even tougher.
And don't forget about the travel schedules that are set weeks and months in advance and have to be shuffled. Scouts we talked to have had to make all kinds of adjustments in the wake of Alabama's decision.
Make no mistake, teams would eventually gather the information that area scouts provide, but taking it away would create a major hurdle for every team in the league. Still, Saban's crackdown on scouts might have an unintended, beneficial side effect.
Some of the motivation for the ban is surely an abundance of caution given all the problems that big-time schools are having with agents on campus. Perhaps prohibiting scouts from being on campus and affecting how teams go about building their rosters will turn up the pressure on the league and the NFL Players Association to deal with the problem of agents working too closely with college athletes.
The NFL is a business, after all. Teams want all the information they can get to run their businesses successfully, and the union surely wants to look out for its future members.
Whether this kind of restricted access expands to other schools remains to be seen, but for now, at least, it shines a light on the valuable contributions that area scouts make to NFL front offices and the potential problems that a wider ban might present.
Campus visits critical for NFL scouts
August, 12, 2010Aug 121:15PM ETEmail Print Comments By Kevin WeidlIf Alabama coach Nick Saban's decision to ban NFL scouts from campus catches on with other schools, it could seriously affect NFL teams' ability to gather information about pro prospects.
Yes, scouts and front offices learn a lot about players based on film study, and campus visits used to be where scouts watched the bulk of a prospect's game tape. However, advances in technology have given scouts the ability to watch hours of film on their laptop computers, and you can't draft a player based on film alone. You have to know what kind of person he is, and campus visits may have become the best way to assess a prospect's character.
Area scouts drive hundreds of miles from school to school in an effort to get to know players and build relationships. They talk to the coaching staff about a player's skills, strength coaches about a his work ethic in the weight room, trainers about his injury history and willingness to play through pain and to academic advisers about his smarts and work ethic in the classroom.
Campus visits are also an opportunity for scouts to observe how a player interacts with his teammates in the weight room and during practice, how he treats people outside the team and/or program and how he interacts with the media. They also provide a time to learn about a player's background and family situation.
Finally, scouts can get an up-close look at a player's body type. How thick is his lower body? Does he have the sand in his rear to anchor along the line of scrimmage? Does he have a lean frame, and how is his upper body put together? Does he have a sloppy build, or is he chiseled? These are things that can't always be deduced from game video, and with the character observations mentioned above, they form the foundation of the evaluation process.
Many NFL prospects are multimillion-dollar investments, and teams have to know what kind of people they're getting, especially given the emphasis that commissioner Roger Goodell and the league office put on character. Area scouts put in hard work and long hours to build relationships, often while spending weeks away from their homes and families, and their information is invaluable to NFL franchises. Restricting their access to information would make the scouting process even tougher.
And don't forget about the travel schedules that are set weeks and months in advance and have to be shuffled. Scouts we talked to have had to make all kinds of adjustments in the wake of Alabama's decision.
Make no mistake, teams would eventually gather the information that area scouts provide, but taking it away would create a major hurdle for every team in the league. Still, Saban's crackdown on scouts might have an unintended, beneficial side effect.
Some of the motivation for the ban is surely an abundance of caution given all the problems that big-time schools are having with agents on campus. Perhaps prohibiting scouts from being on campus and affecting how teams go about building their rosters will turn up the pressure on the league and the NFL Players Association to deal with the problem of agents working too closely with college athletes.
The NFL is a business, after all. Teams want all the information they can get to run their businesses successfully, and the union surely wants to look out for its future members.
Whether this kind of restricted access expands to other schools remains to be seen, but for now, at least, it shines a light on the valuable contributions that area scouts make to NFL front offices and the potential problems that a wider ban might present.