How to Become a Football Scout

Video Transcript

"Hi! I'm Dr. Lynn Lashbrook. President and founder of Sports Management Worldwide in Portland, Oregon, and today we're going to talk about how to become a football scout. Historically, football scouts have been former players and coaches that are looking for a way to stay in the game. But over the last ten years, it's become more technical and sophisticated, the digital video side breaking down film and lookin' at the more analytical of a player, sabermetrics, the statistical analysis of the player's performance, trying to always predict which player will be the best fit, comin' up in a draft, the NFL draft. It's a very serious, million, multi-million dollar business, and scouts really have to be held accountable to how we select and put a team together. So, the old days that was who you knew. But now, more and more, we have students we develop on on line course, where we study the techniques of scouts that are out there. Some have never played the game but their passion about it, they watch film after film, they go on site to games, they go to Pro Day in order to assess and look at the player. They also look at character which doesn't show up on the film, they'll interview academic advisers and coaches about this player. Is this player a good fit for the chemistry? In the locker room, we were talkin' about scoutin'. So, when you really talk about gettin' into scoutin' in college, the coaches, the recruiter, therefore the scout. In high school, you're trying to get kids to come out. But in professional football, scouting is a full time year round job. You take off in the fall and you're there all winter, you come back for the drought and you go back out in the spring. Takin' players that are juniors and lookin' at them, and then watchin' their games, goin' to games during the year, goin' to practices during the year, and always going back and reviewin' the film. And so we think, as the digital video editing and the kind of film that's available in the different angles, a person that is passionate about technology and passionate about the game can break into the business. So, we're very proud of the fact that football is become more diversified and that just 'cos you weren't an ex-player at the elite level doesn't necessarily mean that you can't learn the scouting. Now, some of the best scouts never played at the elite level and so it's a very changing business, and because the magnitude, the multi-million dollars that they put, and with the salary cap and everything, the scout has become more and more important. It's an exciting career, many scouts end up bein' executives like general managers, or assistant general managers or directors of player scouting. Few times scouts go back into coaching and so because they're what used to be, only a coach could be a scout. Now, we're seeing a lot more people from a lot different parts of their life coming together to be a scout, and it's a very exciting career and it's one that Sports Management Worldwide, we take a lot of pride in having the only on line scouting course to give people an opportunity to break into the business, and I think scouting is as exciting as being the head coach, and you feel a sense of satisfaction when that team wins on Saturday or Sunday."