Tag: NFL Prospect
Financial Advisor: Role on a Pro Athletes Team
By Justin VanFulpen
The new show “Ballers” on HBO depicts Dwayne Johnson as Spencer Strasmore, a retired athlete turned financial advisor. If you have been watching the show, you have seen that financial advisors have a large role in a professional football player career just like their agent does. College Football players are recruited just as much by financial advisors as they are by agents.
Financial Advisors are a very valuable asset to a professional athlete’s career and can help an athlete take his earning during his playing career and set him up for the rest of his life and his career after football. Since professional athlete earnings situation as well as their taxes is different than normal situations they need someone on their team who can advise them in the right direction in all aspects of their financial wellbeing. Players need to pay attention just as much as who they select to be their financial advisor as they do who their agent is, if not more since they will be dealing with their money and assets.
Forbes recently wrote an article “How To Select A Financial Advisor”
One thing to find out about a potential financial advisor is he/she a broker/ registered rep; or an investment advisor? When looking at compensation for the financial advisor services a broker may charge commissions or fees. An investment advisor will be fee-only or fee for advice. You can check out the article to see what the differences are.
Some other great questions to ask the potential financial advisors are:
Does the advisor work for a large firm or is he independent?
Does the advisor receive sales commissions, fees, or both?
Does the advisor have experience with the specific issues concerning the client?
Does the advisor have any past or current legal infractions?
With a financial advisor being part of a professional athlete team, time and care is need to make the right choice.
NFL Draft: NFL Combine just part of the process
By Justin VanFulpen
The NFL Combine has become a made for TV event for the NFL and it sponsors like Under Armor and the rest. Everyone loves to watch the 40 yard dash to see how fast all the players but the biggest reason all 32 NFL teams come to Indianapolis for the NFL combine is the medical test as well as the interviews that they can get done with over 300 players all at one location.
Former Dallas Cowboys general manager Tex Schramm, proposed to the NFL competition committee a centralization of the evaluation process for NFL teams. Prior to 1982, teams had to schedule individual visits with players to run them through drills and tests.
How do players get invited to the NFL Combine? Well for years the rumor was a player needed 6 votes to get invited but that is not the case. Here is what is directly from the NFL Combine website www.nflcombine.net about that subject.
“How are players selected for the NFL Combine?
Participants are determined annually by a Selection Committee. The Directors of both National and BLESTO scouting services, which combined represent twenty-five NFL teams, are joined by members of various NFL player personnel departments to form the committee. The participating NFL executives can rotate on a yearly basis, and remain anonymous. ALL eligible players are reviewed and voted on by the committee members. Each athlete receiving the necessary number of votes, by position, is then extended an invitation. While it is not a perfect science, the goal of the committee is to invite every player that will be drafted in the ensuing NFL Draft.”
There is no set number of invites but usually it is around 330 players, this year there were 322 players invited to the NFL Combine. Just because a player is invited to the NFL Combine does not guarantee that he will get drafted since there are only 256 players drafted each year in the NFL Draft. Now if a player goes to the NFL Combine there is a better chance that he will get drafted then players that doesn’t. But there are always players who didn’t get invited to the NFL Combine that get drafted, and this past year it was a very high number of players who didn’t get invited to the NFL Combine that got drafted, a total of 41.
Below is the breakdown by rounds of players who didn’t get invited to the combine but where drafted in the 2015 NFL Draft.
4th round – 3 players
5th round – 7 players
6th round – 16 players
7th round – 15 players
So just doing the math 107 players that went to the NFL Combine didn’t get drafted. So only 66.7% of the players that went to the NFL Combine got drafted this year.
Remember the NFL Combine is just part of the elevation process, with centralizing it and having all 32 teams involved it has cut down on part of the expense and one of the biggest part of the combine that isn’t shown on NFL Network is the medical aspect of it.
Medical and Character part of NFL Prospect grade
By Justin VanFulpen
Player’s NFL Draft grade is much more then what a player does on the field or how fast he runs at the NFL Combine. Two of things most over looked when fans are watching the NFL draft and wondering why a certain player hasn’t been picked is medical and character. We saw this play out in this past NFL Draft.
RB Jay Ajayi of Boise State had a 2nd round grade on him by most people as a football player but had to wait to be drafted until the 5th round by the Miami Dolphins because of a concern about his knee which he tore his ACL back in 2011 but hadn’t missed a game since coming back from the injury. There were reports that he flunked some physicals and that there is bone-on-bone according to some of the doctors, and people question how long he will last in the NFL. GM’s and personal people with the NFL club look to their team doctors to make final say on if a prospect can be keep on the draft board or taken off based on the medical information.
On the flip side there were some character concerns involving drugs that cost a few NFL prospects including Randy Gregory, Nebraska who most thought was a top 10 NFL Draft prospect who had a failed drug test at the NFL combine and also reports that teams were concerned that he wasn’t as mature as they would like. Gregory was drafted in the 2nd round 60th overall by the Dallas Cowboys. Some NFL clubs will take a player off their team draft board completely because of character concerns.
With medical issues there is not much a player can do to alleviate the concerns of a NFL team. But the character grade the NFL teams give a NFL prospect that is something that a prospect can have an influence on, true everyone makes mistakes but some mistakes cost players more than others.
What goes into a prospects NFL grade? Well here is a quick list of what makes up a NFL grade on a prospect.
1. Film – Mostly from prospect final year in college
2. Athleticism – Each team has certain things they are looking at from the testing numbers (Height, Weight, 40, Vertical, etc.)
3. Medical
4. Character
5. Football IQ – This would include personality testing as well as ability to process information (Wonderlic)
6. Scheme Fit – Each team is looking at a prospect based on how they fit what their offense or defense likes to do. (Example 3-4 vs. 4-3 defense, how does the Defensive linemen fit their scheme)