Inside The League: 14th Annual NFL Combine Seminar
The 14th Annual USI Insurance Holdings Inside The League Combine Seminar Presented By American Tens returns to the Indiana Convention Center (ICC) on Wednesday, March 1, at 6:30 p.m. in Room 125.
For those of you attending the NFL Scouting Combine, we welcome you to join us for our largest gathering of the year. Be prepared to enter a smorgasbord of football industry professionals upon your arrival, including front office executives, agents, trainers and various media. Registration is not required and the open bar will begin at 6:00pm, we hope to see you there. Here’s a preview of the ITL Combine Seminar agenda for the evening:
The 6th Annual ITL Best NFL Draft Award
The Best Draft Award is presented to the NFL organization determined to have selected the most impactful rookie draft class, as chosen by their front office peers. Previous winners include 2021 - Denver Broncos (Accepted By George Paton Staff), 2020 - Tampa Bay Buccaneers (Accepted By Jason Licht), 2019 - San Francisco 49ers (Accepted By John Lynch), 2018 - Indianapolis Colts (Accepted By Chris Ballard & Staff), 2017 - New Orleans Saints (Accepted By Jeff Ireland). Candidates for the 2022 award include the Detroit Lions, Kansas City Chiefs, New York Jets and Seattle Seahawks. Who will emerge as the sixth award winner? We’ll find out in just a few days.
The 5th Annual ITL Eugene E. Parker Memorial Award
The Eugene E. Parker Memorial Award honors the distinguished pro football agent who has dedicated a lifetime of service to the agent community. Previous award winners include 2022 - Angelo Wright, 2021 - Mike Sullivan, 2020 - Ray Anderson, 2019 - Ralph Cindrich.
The 4th Annual ITL C.O. Brocato Memorial Award
The C.O. Brocato Memorial Award honors the distinguished pro football evaluator who has dedicated a lifetime of service to the scouting community. Previous award winners include 2022 - Mark Gorscak, 2021 - Alonzo Highsmith, 2020 - Jeff Shiver.
The 2nd Annual ITL Bart List Awards [Pro Tier | College Tier]
Last year, ITL created ‘The BART Awards,’ to recognize the top scouts within the NFL community. The award is in honor of former Rams scout Danton Barto, who passed away at the age of 50 due to complications from COVID-19. All NFL scouts who have been active in the league for at least five of the last six seasons are eligible to vote for their scout brethren. This year, ITL is proud to announce that ‘The BART Awards’ will be expanding, in order to recognize the top scouts from the collegiate ranks—an addition which we felt was only appropriate. You can find the winners of the inaugural 2021 Bart List Award winners, here.
The Inaugural ITL Pro Liason of the Year Award
There is an extraordinary amount of additional work that a college coach takes on when accepting the role of pro liason. The pro liason serves as a conduit for college prospects with pro football ambitions and are the lifeline for NFL scouts to obtain pertinent information when compiling a player evaluation. These individuals rarely get highlighted or talked about, until now. Starting in 2023, ITL will honor the top Pro Liason of the Year Award, given to the liason who exudes professionalism by consistently providing great access and resources to pro football scouts during campus visits; once again, as voted on by NFL scouts.
But Wait, There’s More! The newest awards slate added to the ITL Combine Seminar, now brings a grand total of 26 individual/team awards to be presented on this memorable evening! In addition, ITL will provide results of our most comprehensive annual scouting salary survey to date, which will detail some eye-opening anonymous data that has been gathered.
In The Crowd: It has been amazing to see the continued growth of the ITL Combine Seminar each year. These special events could not be executed in such a manner without the help of great friends and associates. A special thank you to USI Insurance Holdings, American 10s and Curley Wealth as presenting sponsors. In addition, Agent Live 360 will be on hand to discuss their unique, custom agent software.
Can’t make the big event? ITL founder Neil Stratton will be making the rounds in Indianapolis. If you would like to connect, please contact us. For those of you who can’t make it and wish to tune-in, ITL will post livestream information on our Twitter and Facebook pages.
With the 2023 NFL Draft just two months away, ITL has already begun to put wheels in motion for the 2024 cycle! If you work in pro football (or aspire to) and are looking for an edge, be sure to check out our membership benefits, here.
In other developments from across the football landscape…
XFL Kickoff Ratings: The 2023 XFL season kicked off to much less TV fanfare than we saw during their previous reboot attempt, while focusing on creating a large social media imprint. On television, the ABC broadcast season debut game between Vegas and Arlington generated 1.54M viewers, down from 3.3M during their initial ABC debut broadcast in February of 2020. The night game on FX drew just 918,000 viewers. In comparison, the first watched XFL game that fell below 1M viewers in 2020 did not occur until week five of the regular season. On a positive development, the XFL league and team social media channels had very strong fan engagement, generating 45M impressions and over 5M video views, per the league site.
USFL Draft: In their latest attempt to fortify a professional football career alternative, the USFL held a draft on Tuesday for the second consecutive year. However, this one was a bit different than the 50-plus round extravaganza of a year ago. Instead, the 2023 USFL Draft featured an eight-round format, with players who were only draft-eligible in this year’s draft class. At the very least, it provided 80 players in the 2023 NFL Draft Class a fallback alternative, should they fail to make an NFL roster. Unlike the CFL negotiation lists, the USFL has opted to be completely transparent in terms of informing fans which teams own future player rights.
CFL Air Raid: In another interesting USFL development, QB McCLeod Bethel-Thompson of the world champion Toronto Argonauts has decided to leave Canada and join his former quarterbacks coach from the Philadelphia Eagles John DeFilippo, who is now the head coach of the New Orleans Breakers in the USFL. Much has been made about the XFL vs USFL player recruitment rivalry. We are now seeing that effect trickle up north of the border as well.
