NFL.com How teams get real draft intel

[Reed83HOF]

http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap3000000802432/article/information-wars-how-teams-get-the-real-draft-intel

 

The secretary's name and place of employment remain a secret for Greg Gabriel even to this day, seven years after he departed his last NFL job as the director of college scouting for the Chicago Bears.

 

During the draft's most intense moments, his valuable source was nestled inside the office of a college head coach. This was someone Gabriel got to know over his early years in the 1980s as a Buffalo-based Midwest scout for the Bills, National Football Scouting and, later, the New York Giants, where Gabriel was responsible for everything from Syracuse, New York, all the way to Nebraska, from Kentucky to the U.S./Canada border...

 

"The draft is buyer beware," one AFC general manager told me. "We've had schools that we simply won't draft players from. At all. Just because we can't get good information. The most important thing is information, so if you can feel really good about getting accurate information from a school, you feel good about drafting that player."

 

...

 

The Bills did not respond to a request for comment from NFL.com for this story, though it might be safe to draw a connection between their head of personnel, Jim Monos, and his eight seasons as a Southeast area scout for the Saints, when he would have gotten to know the Seminoles' program quite well. The Steelers, citing a roller-coaster week for their entire staff, could not make general manager Kevin Colbert available, either, though it would not be a stretch to connect their staff's deep Pittsburgh-area roots with those of Meyer, who was born in Ohio and rolled in similar areas for years, eventually returning to become Ohio State's coach in 2012.

[boyst]

The connections these scouts have is amazing. The bills scout for Texas and that area coached my nephew in baseball.

 

And the extent that they go to is amazing. Kerry Campbell grew up in the same town and went to play for the jets. My middle school coach was his middle school coach. He told us about the things we do now in our life come in to factor later in life. He had been contacted numerous times from teams asking about Campbell who played for bowling Green. His stories about this remained in me from that moment on and seeing NFL scouts watch us in middle school practice to see the type of coach he was had a major impact on our season. We tied one game. Beat everyone else by an average of 37 pts.

[oldmanfan]

Very interesting article

[Shaw66]

Thanks. That's interesting. More evidence that the press and we don't have any idea about these guys.

 

I loved the part about how the scouts laughed when the subject media draft gurus came up.

[Reed83HOF]

The connections these scouts have is amazing. The bills scout for Texas and that area coached my nephew in baseball.

 

And the extent that they go to is amazing. Kerry Campbell grew up in the same town and went to play for the jets. My middle school coach was his middle school coach. He told us about the things we do now in our life come in to factor later in life. He had been contacted numerous times from teams asking about Campbell who played for bowling Green. His stories about this remained in me from that moment on and seeing NFL scouts watch us in middle school practice to see the type of coach he was had a major impact on our season. We tied one game. Beat everyone else by an average of 37 pts.

 

It really is; they should be getting paid a lot more $$$ than they do...

[Punching Bag]

Some of them should; others should be paid a lot less. Incentive pay is way to differentiate between those just going thru the motions to those digging and maintaining connections after many years. I agree completely with article that some football factories disguised as places of learning will give false references regarding players.