Scouting Academy: What Exactly Is That?

For the past two weeks, I've been taking online classes at "The Scouting Academy". "The Scouting Academy" is a school put together by former NFL executives (ESPN's Louis Riddick), NFL general manager's (former Bears GM Jerry Colangelo), former NFL coaches (Wade Phillips), and others with the intent of helping people who love evaluating football players and turning them into a better talent evaluator. Before I started the school, I thought I was a pretty good judge of football talent. Well, let's just say I was WAY WRONG! There is so many factors that go into judging football talent that I actually didn't think mattered at all before I started this school. I figured that just watching tons of football on TV made me a pretty good judge of football talent. I had no idea just how wrong I was.

"The Scouting Academy" has taught me that tape watching is easily the single most important part of scouting football talent. I'm not talking about watching a game live on television and being able to walk away with a good formulated opinion of the player. I'm talking about locking yourself in a dark room and watching countless hours of tape on just ONE GUY. That's ultimately how you are going to be able to formulate an expert opinion on a football player. Watching a game live on television will give you a good starting point on a player, but you really need to watch tons of tape on a player to be able to see just how good this guy is as a complete football package. If you just watch the player play on live television, you are going to miss something important. Football is a fast game with a lot of action going on during every play. It's impossible to see every little detail of every play on live television. Game tape MATTERS people!

So far, the school has been extremely helpful. It's taught me tons of things to look for on game tape that I honestly never thought to look for before. It's taught me how to pull up game tape on a player and take successful notes that will help me ultimately decide how successful I think the player will be at the next level. I'm eventually hoping to turn this knowledge into a form of profit of sorts by writing scouting reports for NFL teams, scouting kids for college football team's, etc. In today's world, knowledge is powerful and you're only as good as the people who taught you. Something tells me that with the teacher's I have at my disposal, I will be an extremely talented football evaluator by the time the school ends in 14 weeks.

One can only hope, right?