NFL Scouting in Preparation For the Draft

[inmate running the asylum]

With the draft only a few days away, I ran across an interesting article on scouting and the draft, which I will pass along to you guys.

http://www.jaguars.com/story/4206.asp

All of America on a wall

2/15/05

By Vic Ketchman, jaguars.com senior editor

Sometime this Friday afternoon or evening, Gene Smith will walk out of Alltel Stadium and leave behind six months of intense scouting and evaluation on the Jaguars' draft room wall. That work will be represented by about 250 names arranged in order of their football value.

It's called a “draft board,” and Smith, the Jaguars' director of college scouting, will make sure the “initial stacking” of that board is complete by the end of this week. Why is it important that it be done by this Friday? Because next week the NFL scouting world will gather in Indianapolis for the annual scouting combine and Smith is adamant about the board being arranged mostly on evaluations of what players did in pads, not in shorts.

“They don't play the game in shorts. It's based on football playability and how productive they were in the fall,” Smith said of his “draft board,” the holy grail of any college scouting department's collective effort.

Smith and his seven scouts began the process at the start of the college football season. Five of those scouts are responsible for specific regions of the country: Andy Dengler, midwest; Chris Driggers, southwest; Marty Miller, northeast; Tim Mingey, southeast; Art Perkins, west coast.

Kadar Hamilton is the Jaguars' Blesto representative and he's responsible for scouting the southeast for Blesto.

Smith and Terry McDonough do the top players nationally. Smith works his way across the country from west to east, while McDonough does the same east to west.

That about covers, right? You would think it would, but then there's something called cross-checking. In November, after each scout has completed the work in his specific area, he cross-checks another scout's work in his area.

“He's responsible for every prospect, for every draft-eligible senior,” Smith says of the area scout's task.

That means that Smith's scouting department will evaluate about 1,200 players over the course of the college football season. This Friday, that list will be condensed to about 250 names on the Jaguars' draft-room wall.

It all begins with the spring Blesto meetings. Blesto is one of two major scouting services NFL teams use; the other is National. The name Blesto speaks of its origins: Bears, Lions, Eagles, Steelers Talent Organization. Of course, the service has been greatly expanded and changed since those early days.

At Blesto's spring meetings it gives its nine member teams a dossier of senior prospects for the upcoming season. They are the names to be scouted, and within those 1,200 names Blesto's member teams will find the half dozen or so players that will eventually be married with the survivors of previous draft classes to represent the futures of those franchises.

With the start of the college football season, the scouts hit the road. They will be gone for 10 days, then return home for four days of rest. It is their fall regimen; 10 and four.

They are not, however, normal days. A scout's 10 work days may begin as early as six a.m. and, depending on his writing skills, they may not end until midnight or after.

Rest of article is in the link

[LT Smash]

yikes. sounds like a hectic job. although itd be cool to get paid to watch football and figure out how good people are.