NFL Scout and Former Bobcat Ray Biggs
4/23/2020 1:13:00 PM | Football
Ray Biggs lived life in the Tennessee Titans draft room for many years
BOZEMAN, Montana – For more than a decade-and-a-half, this was Ray Biggs' day. Draft Day, or more accurately the three days when NFL teams restock their rosters annually, is the period of each calendar year when the life's work of an NFL scout takes center stage.
"It was exciting," Biggs said of the days and hours leading to his team's first selection. The former Montana State lineman (1966-67) worked as a combine scout and covered much of the West Coast for the Houston Oilers and Tennessee Titans from 1994 to 2011, and he's continued to work the NFL Combine since his retirement.
Biggs parlayed his successful playing career and coaching experience at Colorado State, Mesa State (now Colorado Mesa), and in the Washington junior college ranks into a scouting position with Houston in 1994. He played a part in assembling the Tennessee Titans (where the Oilers relocated) team that advanced to Super Bowl XXXIV after the 1999 season. The Titans won three division titles and logged 11 records of .500 or better during his time.
For the all the thrills of an NFL season and the satisfaction of helping put together a team, Biggs said there was one moment each year that was particularly gratifying. "We'd be in the room the whole time (in the days before the draft), and (the night) before the draft (long-time Titans head coach) Jeff Fisher would take us out to dinner as a group of scouts," Biggs said. "And as we'd say, the hay was in the barn and the facts were on the wall (of the draft room) and in the books, and we just had to see how it was going to fall."
And from his seat, Biggs watched the inner working of the process all football fans vaguely understand. "Jeff was always getting phone calls" he said, "and Floyd (Reese, Titans General Manager), trying to find out if somebody wanted to trade this or trade that, move up or move down, so we'd sit there and just be aware of what was going on. They'd get a phone call, 'What about this guy, what about that guy?' and sometimes you'd have to go scrambling through your book for answers, but you were there to do that. It was fun."
Biggs rode the wave of technology that transformed scouring, along with every other aspect of 21st century life. He saw the scouting profession transition from "these (carbon) forms, and we had to fill them out on all the seniors who we felt were prospects that had a chance in the league" to "a computer system" and finally to the current mode when scouts "use tablets as they watch film" and file reports.
That Biggs would enjoy a successful scouting career should be no surprise. In addition to his excellent coaching career he was part of championship teams at Walla Walla (Washington) High School, Columbia Basin Community College, and Montana State. Biggs and his teammates on the 1966 and '67 Bobcats, along with the '68 team, will be inducted into the MSU Athletics Hall of Fame next winter. All three of those teams won the Big Sky.
Ray Biggs, 4-10-20
Ray Biggs transferred to Montana State before the 1966 campaign from Columbia Basin Community College in his native Washington, helping propel the Bobcats to Big Sky Championships that season and the next. After a year of professional football in the Continental League he embarked on a 25-year career as a college football coach and administrator, then worked as an NFL scout for 17 years. Since his retirement as a full-time scout in 2011 he has continued to work the NFL Combine in Indianapolis.
When you and many of your teammates were at Bozeman for the induction of Wayne Purdom into the Bobcat Athletics Hall of Fame you learned that the 1966, '67 and '68 teams would be inducted next year. Was that an exciting moment for you guys? "It was. Getting Wayne in (the Hall of Fame), that was awesome, and a few of us had talked, we didn't hear a lot about the Hall of Fame, but we had some pretty good years. I hadn't heard anything about it until that night (of this year's Hall of Fame inductions). I told Leon (Costello, MSU Director of Athletics) I was leaving the next morning early to go to the (NFL) Combine, and he said, 'Don't leave here early, there's something you want to hear."
How do you boil down the memories of your two years playing at Montana State? "Looking back, it's amazing that there were 11 of us from the state of Washington (Biggs is from Walla Walla and came to MSU from Columbia Basin Junior College) that all transferred up here at the same time, and how well we fit in with the Montana guys and the guys from Pennsylvania and around the country. Obviously when you bring 11 guys in some of them will take starting spots from guys that played the year before. We didn't think about it at that time, you're just there competing for playing time and everyone got along well. A lot of that has to do with the coaching, how they handled us. We bonded as a crew then, and we've maintained those relationships forever."
What do you remember about playing for Jim Sweeney? "He was a very demanding coach, and he stayed on top of you and got after you. At times you'd get a little angry at him and upset with him, but you still loved him. That was the outcome from our practices and some of the crazy things we did (laughs), but I always liked the guy and have a lot of respect for him. I remember after my senior year he called me into his office and said, 'What do you think about Washington State?' And I thought, 'You've got to be kidding me.' Obviously that was a school that had been struggling in the Pac (8) because of their location, but if anyone could do it he could get them rallied to the cause. My wife was going to school there at the time, and she said it was amazing the students and the pep rallies they had, just unbelievable."
Why do you think so many Bobcats from that era made careers in football? "I think when you have success and you have someone who's a leader like Sweeney and the staff he put together, it seemed like everybody was enjoying it. So you like it, you have some success, and you start thinking about things like (a career in football). I always feel lucky, my junior and senior years in high school (Walla Walla HS) won only lost one game, we won the championship of the league (as a junior), in junior college we won two championships there, undefeated one year and lost only one game the other year, and then (back-to-back championships) at Montana State. So I played on four straight championship teams, and (at MSU) nationally ranked."
What did you do professionally after leaving MSU? "I didn't graduate in (the spring of) '68, I went out to Washington (state) and played in the Continental League (of professional football) for one year, but I wasn't big enough for that, those guys were 300 pounders even then. So I went back to school for a quarter, then I coached football at Walla Walla Community College for three years. I'd go coach (in the fall) then go back to school, and I ended up getting my degree in '71. After I finished that, the head coach at Walla Walla at the time, a real good friend of mine, he was the best man in my wedding, in fact, he ended up taking a job as an assistant coach at Colorado State. Sark Arslanian was the head coach down there, he'd just took the job from Weber (State), and we'd been working with Weber State at the time, getting players that were maybe on the fringe or needed time at a junior college. So I went down as the low man on the totem pole, a young guy as a coach, and spent three years there with them. After one year I started going to grad school, my third year I went full-time (in grad school) and ended up finishing (the master's program) in '75. From there I went to (Colorado Mesa), it was called Mesa State at the time, it had just changed from a junior college to a four-year college. I went over there as director of housing and assistant football coach. When I was at (CSU) I was in College Student Personnel Administration master's program in administration, and my wife and me ran a 270-student housing complex. It was a 72-unit apartment complex, and that was quite an experience. I left Mesa in the spring of '83 and went to Yakima Valley College, and Wayne Purdom was the head coach at the time. We were good friends, had always stayed in touch. At that point he called me and said he needed an assistant coach and there was an assistant dean of students job open that he was sure I'd have a pretty good shot at, so I went up and interviewed for that. We had no intention, my wife or me, of leaving Colorado at that time, we loved it there, but things worked out really well. We got the offer and moved there, it brought us both closer to our parents. We moved up there in '83, and I was the Assistant Dean of Students, I had (oversight of) housing, food service, student activities, and was assistant head football coach. So it worked out good with Wayne being there, but (the school) got a new president and he was not in favor of athletics at a junior college. So he ended up dropping football at Yakima while other schools were doing the same thing. We were the last to do it other than Walla Walla, which was the very last school (in the NWACC) to drop football. At that point in time, with the president and his philosophy and my views on the importance of athletics and football – I'd seen a lot of young men go through a junior college program just wanting to play football and finding out I have a four-year college wanting me to come and now I'm getting an education – and that saved a lot of them. So I had the opportunity at that time to get into the NFL Scouting Combine as a western regional scout, so I jumped at the opportunity. I worked at the combine for five years before I (became a scout) for the Houston Oilers in '94, and was with Houston and Tennessee for 17 years."
What was scouting like at the beginning of your career from a technology standpoint? "As a scout at the combine when I first got started you had these (carbon) forms, and we had to fill them out on all the seniors who we felt were prospects that had a chance in the league. From there it went to a computer system, and now (scouts) use tablets as they watch film. So much of it is analytical now."
What was your role those first five years with the NFL Combine? "I had half of the West Coast, from up in Canada down to Fresno, California, and then east into Montana and down through Utah. I didn't go to Colorado at that time. That was my primary area. In the early fall I'd go to all the schools in that area who had prospects, because I'd screened them out in the spring, (the schools) who would supposedly have somebody to look at. I'd look at them early in the season, and late in the season I'd go to the southern half, where a friend of mine was scouting that area, and I'd cross-check his top players. He'd identified them as being the top players so I'd go down and cross-check him and he'd cross-check me."
How much did your personal contacts help as a scout? "There are always a few schools where the coaches didn't want to mess with you, they didn't want you bothering the players, maybe they'd give you a week only to come in, give you some film to watch, and they wouldn't hardly talk to you. There were other people, like (Fresno State and former MSU coach Jim) Sweeney, he wouldn't leave you alone. He was there talking to you all the time. And it wasn't just me, being a Bobcat, but that was him. So you'd go from one end of the spectrum to the other. Sometimes as a scout coaches would give you words of wisdom about their players or who they thought was a (prospective NFL) player, or if they didn't know me from Adam and I didn't know him and I'd ask him point blank questions about a kid they wouldn't always tell you the truth until you built a relationship with them. So if you knew somebody, go sit in a guy's office for a while, go have a beer and get to know him, then you start finding out the underlying factors that you need to know."
Has it surprised you how big the NFL Combine has become? "I've been to 29 combines, and National Scouting's always been the (organization) to organize the combine, so we would always be primary (scouts) in leading players to the different stations and where they got interviewed, to get their heights and weights and the different tests that were being given. That was in the RCA Dome in Indianapolis, and at that time you didn't see any media, hardly any at all. There would be some people to talk to the big names (players) about their experience, but then it started transforming away from being a very serious interview for the players into how much money can the television networks make and how much can the NFL make by showing everything. It's gotten bigger and bigger. When they tore down the RCA Dome and built Lucas Oil Field that made it a lot nicer, more space and everything. The combine originally started in Phoenix or Dallas, they had it one year in one place and one year in the other, and there were some other combines working, but once it got to Indianapolis it's such a unique city and with their hotels, their stadium, their convention center, they're situated in such a manner that once you check into your hotel you can walk to the stadium and for the most part you don't even have to go outside. And what people don't realize is that the medical (exams) are the primary reason for getting all these guys there, and there are five hospitals there in Indianapolis that they use, and the medical students from Indiana come in and help (with exams), so they just have a great system. I don't know a lot about the medical side, but I know that if (a player has) something wrong, they'll find it."
Do you feel television transformed the combine? "I think that was part of it. At one time we had cameras there just to videotape everything a kid does at the combine, and when he was through there was a copy for the teams to look at. So, there were just a few cameras down there. Then the media started coming in and you'd have your NFL.com, NFL Network, NFL Films, you have ESPN, you have podcasts, all in their positions on the field. You have a zillion cameras running around. So you're trying to run these guys (through drills), and you're trying to protect them, you have to move camera people at times because they don't understand sometimes, they're there to get their pictures. And now, after all the years I've done the field work, I don't have to say anything to them. They know they can't get in front of this, they have to stay behind that line. The player's important so (the priority is that) he doesn't get hurt. We never had any fans in the stand until probably four years ago. Starting out they put them up in the 300 level, and I think there were only three or four hundred, they couldn't have a cell phone, they couldn't have a radio, they couldn't talk, there wasn't any concessions. They gave them a little lunch beforehand, it was a sponsorship thing, a reward for being sponsors. I'd look at that and thing, 'That looks boring.' There's an announcer making an announcement who the runner is, but that's it. You couldn't see any of the times, any of the results, anything like that. But every year (the crowd) kept getting bigger. It went from 300 to 500 to 1,000, 3,000, 6,000. We've always brought the players in for four days, and they got four solid, hard days of testing, from physical testing one day, psychological testing, personality, one day, and one day of interviews. This year they changed everything to six days, took the workouts and moved them from during the day to 4 til midnight so it would be prime time TV. So every day the players would start coming over, I'd be there at six in the morning getting heights and weights, and wouldn't get done until midnight. So for the players' sake the extra days may have made it easier on them, but the workouts being from four in the afternoon til 11 at night, I'm not sure they were a fan of that."
Have the mechanics of running the combine changed much? "Not as far as the physical drills we have them do. I can think of one, the three-cone drill, that wasn't there when I started. There was (another) that basically evaluated a person's ability to have body control and change direction, and how quickly they can do it, so we got rid of one and put in the three-cone drill that one of our scouts (helped in) developing. They've changed some of the skill drills that each position does from year to year. That's done by the coaches, and each team gets to put three coaches in for whatever position they want. Every year they get together and decide these are the basic drills we run every year, it takes about 45 minutes, now do we want to change anything (that) everyone agrees on. So those change, but you still have the physical testing, the broad jump, vertical jump, the 20-yard shuttle, the three-cone, and the 40-yard dash. You don't have to do it this way, but the time (teams) use is still the hand-held stopwatch. We have tables with scouts timing by hand and also have electronic times. The electronic time gets published by the NFL in the media, and (hand times are) usually close."
From inside the scouting community, what do you think of all the pundits that flood the airwaves with who's going where, who's rising and who's falling? "You listen to it once in a while because you can't help but hear it, but some of those guys you think, 'Where are they getting their information?' You don't see them at practices, you might see some at the bowl games, but I know that now days they can get (game) film and study it themselves but they don't get out and talk to people to find out about they players. They get some inroads to some scouts in the NFL that will talk to them, but most scouts don't want anything to do with them. But it doesn't surprise me (how prevalent that has become) because these guys love the game, they get involved in it and they think, I can BS, I can talk, and they decide they can make money doing it. And there's some good ones, some guys that really work at it."
When you were with the Oilers and Titans what did you enjoy about scouting? "Getting out and meeting some of the great coaches. I had a lot of really good friends in scouting and coaching, and as you go around you get to see them. I enjoyed visiting with the players. Hardly ever would you come across a guy that wasn't willing to talk to you. Sometimes there was a little BS with them, that was natural, but it was all very enjoyable. Doing something you loved, something you've been involved with all your life. But after a while it can get old, because you're on the road all the time."
How did playing at a small junior college then at a smaller college shape your coaching and scouting career? "Coming from high school to junior college gave me an opportunity to play in a real good junior college program. At that point in time that developed my body physically because at that time I was tall and lean in high school, but not real big, so I put on some weight. The coaching (at Columbia Basin), and being successful, then having Sweeney come out and recruit me and having a good coach at Montana State, I think having success (as a player) had a real positive role in everything you do. You figure out ways to overcome roadblocks and how to get things done, because that's what you're doing when you're playing football."
What did the last weeks or days leading up to the draft look like for you? "A lot of teams do things differently, but for us in Tennessee, way before he draft, we'd meet for a week to get all the final information the scouts had picked up in the fall (organized), make sure we had that correct, then identify information that we needed to go out and research or (resolve) conflicts between two scouts, he heard this and he heard that, so you had to run out and do some things, but the last two weeks prior to the draft we'd be in the draft room and we would go through each position, evaluating how we had them stacked on the board, from the best at each position all the way down to the free agents that we had basically rejected (as draft possibilities). We'd so that whole thing, then end up deciding who the first round players were that we would be interested in, and then we looked at the second round as we had them on the board. It never comes off exactly as you have them, most of the time it's close but somebody always jumps up and takes somebody you didn't expect. The scouts were very much involved at Tennessee. I know at some places the scouts go in and once they give their reports they're not involved, it's just the personnel director and the coach and the GM and the owner or whoever, they're the ones doing the rest of the work. So I know there is a difference of philosophy in a lot of places."
What were conversations like when a scout felt strongly about a certain player? "If you had a guy that you really liked as your top guy, maybe I had a guy from my area and our scout in the southwest or southeast had a guy at the same position and they were the two top-rated guys that we want and we had to position who was the better one, you would battle for your guy. You'd give the positives, but also look at the negatives if he had any, if he had any injuries, what type of guy he is. You'd really lay everything on the table because as a scout we weren't going to be making the final decision, we wanted to get all the information out there so the head coach, the GM, the personnel director, they'd have everything and they could make the decision. The (front office staff) had seen more of both players. I've seen my guy, but I haven't seen the other player back in Florida or wherever he was."
What is a scout feeling in the days or hours leading to the draft? "I think it was exciting, right? We'd be in the room the whole time (in the days before the draft), and (the night) before the draft (long-time Titans head coach) Jeff Fisher would take us out to dinner as a group of scouts, and as we'd say, the hay was in the barn and the facts were on the wall (of the draft room) and in the books, and we just had to see how it was going to fall. Jeff was always getting phone calls, and Floyd (Reese, Titans General Manager), trying to find out if somebody wanted to trade this or trade that, move up or move down, so we'd sit there and just be aware of what was going on. They'd get a phone call, 'What about this guy, what about that guy?' and sometimes you'd have to go scrambling through your book for answers, but you were there to do that. It was fun."
Is the football scouting community a tight group? "I think there's a bond between the scouts. They tried a couple of times to combine the coaches' organization and the scouts, but that's never come to be. Obviously, the coaches' pay is much greater than the scouts' pay (laughs). There are a couple of organization, there are awards given out by the scouts."
Are there players you consider big scouting wins for you? "A guy, you used the phrase stand on the table, that I really liked out of the University of Washington named Benji Olson. Benji was an offensive guard (from 1994-97), he played at (South Kitsap High in) Port Orchard, went to the University of Washington, and had a little bit of a rap of being lazy. He was more of a follower, wasn't really a leader, and his roommate was Olin Kreutz, and Olin, I don't know if he had much intention of going to college other than playing football, and Benji was kind of the same way. But at the same time, the people I talked to over there said, the strength coach and some others, told me, 'He'll do anything you want, you just have to tell him, get on him, and he'll do it.' He was a good player. We got him in the fifth round, and he started for us for 10 years. To me that's a guy who came out and didn't go real high but was a pretty good pick."
How early in a player's career do you start taking note of him? "From year to year when you go in to look at the senior guys, you'll be watching tape and you'll see a guy make a good move or a block or something and you'll go, 'Who's that?' So you look at the roster and see that he's only a freshman, or he's a sophomore, so you sort of put it in the back of your mind and you write it down in your book that at this school this is a guy to watch for down the road. Then when it gets to his junior year, with juniors coming out so frequently, any information you've gathered along the way helps."
Did you have the same territory throughout your career? "Primarily. At one time my boss, who was our director of college scouting, passed away, so I ended up going to the northeast, from Nashville north, for about three years. I believe I was the youngest guy on our staff at that time, so they flew me back, they even flew my wife into Boston a few times for long weekends. It was a new experience, going from the West Coast to the East Coast, I'll tell you. Back there if you drive 40 miles you might go by 10 colleges. In Pennsylvania and Virginia, places like that, it's just unbelievable with the traffic and the number of people. I've never had a college out west where I had to have security watch my car or lead me to the football office, and I had that happen back east. I went to (a university in a large city), and a scout friend of mine from Jacksonville said, 'You don't need there, they don't have anybody,' and I said, 'Well, the boss says go take a look at them.' So I get there and I'm supposed to park in a cage, and when I got there the cage was closed, and I see this gentleman walk out of the college. He looked like an administrative person so I told him who I was, and he said, 'Well you're fine parked there but when you go in you tell (the secretary) who you are and she'll take care of you.' So I go in, everything's fine, I watch tape until about one o'clock and they were about to have a team meeting, so I went out to my car to get an apple. I walk out there and there's a policeman sitting on my car. He said, 'Are you leaving?' I said, 'No, is something wrong?' He said, 'I've been here since you got here 'cause you want your car to be here when you leave, don't you?' So that was different."
Are you getting near the end of your time working the combine? "Possibly. Working from six in the morning until 11 at night is a long day, but we'll see. The head of National Scouting is a good friend so I help out, they pay us a little bit, and it's good to see old friends."
#GoCatsGo
"It was exciting," Biggs said of the days and hours leading to his team's first selection. The former Montana State lineman (1966-67) worked as a combine scout and covered much of the West Coast for the Houston Oilers and Tennessee Titans from 1994 to 2011, and he's continued to work the NFL Combine since his retirement.
Biggs parlayed his successful playing career and coaching experience at Colorado State, Mesa State (now Colorado Mesa), and in the Washington junior college ranks into a scouting position with Houston in 1994. He played a part in assembling the Tennessee Titans (where the Oilers relocated) team that advanced to Super Bowl XXXIV after the 1999 season. The Titans won three division titles and logged 11 records of .500 or better during his time.
For the all the thrills of an NFL season and the satisfaction of helping put together a team, Biggs said there was one moment each year that was particularly gratifying. "We'd be in the room the whole time (in the days before the draft), and (the night) before the draft (long-time Titans head coach) Jeff Fisher would take us out to dinner as a group of scouts," Biggs said. "And as we'd say, the hay was in the barn and the facts were on the wall (of the draft room) and in the books, and we just had to see how it was going to fall."
And from his seat, Biggs watched the inner working of the process all football fans vaguely understand. "Jeff was always getting phone calls" he said, "and Floyd (Reese, Titans General Manager), trying to find out if somebody wanted to trade this or trade that, move up or move down, so we'd sit there and just be aware of what was going on. They'd get a phone call, 'What about this guy, what about that guy?' and sometimes you'd have to go scrambling through your book for answers, but you were there to do that. It was fun."
Biggs rode the wave of technology that transformed scouring, along with every other aspect of 21st century life. He saw the scouting profession transition from "these (carbon) forms, and we had to fill them out on all the seniors who we felt were prospects that had a chance in the league" to "a computer system" and finally to the current mode when scouts "use tablets as they watch film" and file reports.
That Biggs would enjoy a successful scouting career should be no surprise. In addition to his excellent coaching career he was part of championship teams at Walla Walla (Washington) High School, Columbia Basin Community College, and Montana State. Biggs and his teammates on the 1966 and '67 Bobcats, along with the '68 team, will be inducted into the MSU Athletics Hall of Fame next winter. All three of those teams won the Big Sky.
Ray Biggs, 4-10-20
Ray Biggs transferred to Montana State before the 1966 campaign from Columbia Basin Community College in his native Washington, helping propel the Bobcats to Big Sky Championships that season and the next. After a year of professional football in the Continental League he embarked on a 25-year career as a college football coach and administrator, then worked as an NFL scout for 17 years. Since his retirement as a full-time scout in 2011 he has continued to work the NFL Combine in Indianapolis.
When you and many of your teammates were at Bozeman for the induction of Wayne Purdom into the Bobcat Athletics Hall of Fame you learned that the 1966, '67 and '68 teams would be inducted next year. Was that an exciting moment for you guys? "It was. Getting Wayne in (the Hall of Fame), that was awesome, and a few of us had talked, we didn't hear a lot about the Hall of Fame, but we had some pretty good years. I hadn't heard anything about it until that night (of this year's Hall of Fame inductions). I told Leon (Costello, MSU Director of Athletics) I was leaving the next morning early to go to the (NFL) Combine, and he said, 'Don't leave here early, there's something you want to hear."
How do you boil down the memories of your two years playing at Montana State? "Looking back, it's amazing that there were 11 of us from the state of Washington (Biggs is from Walla Walla and came to MSU from Columbia Basin Junior College) that all transferred up here at the same time, and how well we fit in with the Montana guys and the guys from Pennsylvania and around the country. Obviously when you bring 11 guys in some of them will take starting spots from guys that played the year before. We didn't think about it at that time, you're just there competing for playing time and everyone got along well. A lot of that has to do with the coaching, how they handled us. We bonded as a crew then, and we've maintained those relationships forever."
What do you remember about playing for Jim Sweeney? "He was a very demanding coach, and he stayed on top of you and got after you. At times you'd get a little angry at him and upset with him, but you still loved him. That was the outcome from our practices and some of the crazy things we did (laughs), but I always liked the guy and have a lot of respect for him. I remember after my senior year he called me into his office and said, 'What do you think about Washington State?' And I thought, 'You've got to be kidding me.' Obviously that was a school that had been struggling in the Pac (8) because of their location, but if anyone could do it he could get them rallied to the cause. My wife was going to school there at the time, and she said it was amazing the students and the pep rallies they had, just unbelievable."
Why do you think so many Bobcats from that era made careers in football? "I think when you have success and you have someone who's a leader like Sweeney and the staff he put together, it seemed like everybody was enjoying it. So you like it, you have some success, and you start thinking about things like (a career in football). I always feel lucky, my junior and senior years in high school (Walla Walla HS) won only lost one game, we won the championship of the league (as a junior), in junior college we won two championships there, undefeated one year and lost only one game the other year, and then (back-to-back championships) at Montana State. So I played on four straight championship teams, and (at MSU) nationally ranked."
What did you do professionally after leaving MSU? "I didn't graduate in (the spring of) '68, I went out to Washington (state) and played in the Continental League (of professional football) for one year, but I wasn't big enough for that, those guys were 300 pounders even then. So I went back to school for a quarter, then I coached football at Walla Walla Community College for three years. I'd go coach (in the fall) then go back to school, and I ended up getting my degree in '71. After I finished that, the head coach at Walla Walla at the time, a real good friend of mine, he was the best man in my wedding, in fact, he ended up taking a job as an assistant coach at Colorado State. Sark Arslanian was the head coach down there, he'd just took the job from Weber (State), and we'd been working with Weber State at the time, getting players that were maybe on the fringe or needed time at a junior college. So I went down as the low man on the totem pole, a young guy as a coach, and spent three years there with them. After one year I started going to grad school, my third year I went full-time (in grad school) and ended up finishing (the master's program) in '75. From there I went to (Colorado Mesa), it was called Mesa State at the time, it had just changed from a junior college to a four-year college. I went over there as director of housing and assistant football coach. When I was at (CSU) I was in College Student Personnel Administration master's program in administration, and my wife and me ran a 270-student housing complex. It was a 72-unit apartment complex, and that was quite an experience. I left Mesa in the spring of '83 and went to Yakima Valley College, and Wayne Purdom was the head coach at the time. We were good friends, had always stayed in touch. At that point he called me and said he needed an assistant coach and there was an assistant dean of students job open that he was sure I'd have a pretty good shot at, so I went up and interviewed for that. We had no intention, my wife or me, of leaving Colorado at that time, we loved it there, but things worked out really well. We got the offer and moved there, it brought us both closer to our parents. We moved up there in '83, and I was the Assistant Dean of Students, I had (oversight of) housing, food service, student activities, and was assistant head football coach. So it worked out good with Wayne being there, but (the school) got a new president and he was not in favor of athletics at a junior college. So he ended up dropping football at Yakima while other schools were doing the same thing. We were the last to do it other than Walla Walla, which was the very last school (in the NWACC) to drop football. At that point in time, with the president and his philosophy and my views on the importance of athletics and football – I'd seen a lot of young men go through a junior college program just wanting to play football and finding out I have a four-year college wanting me to come and now I'm getting an education – and that saved a lot of them. So I had the opportunity at that time to get into the NFL Scouting Combine as a western regional scout, so I jumped at the opportunity. I worked at the combine for five years before I (became a scout) for the Houston Oilers in '94, and was with Houston and Tennessee for 17 years."
What was scouting like at the beginning of your career from a technology standpoint? "As a scout at the combine when I first got started you had these (carbon) forms, and we had to fill them out on all the seniors who we felt were prospects that had a chance in the league. From there it went to a computer system, and now (scouts) use tablets as they watch film. So much of it is analytical now."
What was your role those first five years with the NFL Combine? "I had half of the West Coast, from up in Canada down to Fresno, California, and then east into Montana and down through Utah. I didn't go to Colorado at that time. That was my primary area. In the early fall I'd go to all the schools in that area who had prospects, because I'd screened them out in the spring, (the schools) who would supposedly have somebody to look at. I'd look at them early in the season, and late in the season I'd go to the southern half, where a friend of mine was scouting that area, and I'd cross-check his top players. He'd identified them as being the top players so I'd go down and cross-check him and he'd cross-check me."
How much did your personal contacts help as a scout? "There are always a few schools where the coaches didn't want to mess with you, they didn't want you bothering the players, maybe they'd give you a week only to come in, give you some film to watch, and they wouldn't hardly talk to you. There were other people, like (Fresno State and former MSU coach Jim) Sweeney, he wouldn't leave you alone. He was there talking to you all the time. And it wasn't just me, being a Bobcat, but that was him. So you'd go from one end of the spectrum to the other. Sometimes as a scout coaches would give you words of wisdom about their players or who they thought was a (prospective NFL) player, or if they didn't know me from Adam and I didn't know him and I'd ask him point blank questions about a kid they wouldn't always tell you the truth until you built a relationship with them. So if you knew somebody, go sit in a guy's office for a while, go have a beer and get to know him, then you start finding out the underlying factors that you need to know."
Has it surprised you how big the NFL Combine has become? "I've been to 29 combines, and National Scouting's always been the (organization) to organize the combine, so we would always be primary (scouts) in leading players to the different stations and where they got interviewed, to get their heights and weights and the different tests that were being given. That was in the RCA Dome in Indianapolis, and at that time you didn't see any media, hardly any at all. There would be some people to talk to the big names (players) about their experience, but then it started transforming away from being a very serious interview for the players into how much money can the television networks make and how much can the NFL make by showing everything. It's gotten bigger and bigger. When they tore down the RCA Dome and built Lucas Oil Field that made it a lot nicer, more space and everything. The combine originally started in Phoenix or Dallas, they had it one year in one place and one year in the other, and there were some other combines working, but once it got to Indianapolis it's such a unique city and with their hotels, their stadium, their convention center, they're situated in such a manner that once you check into your hotel you can walk to the stadium and for the most part you don't even have to go outside. And what people don't realize is that the medical (exams) are the primary reason for getting all these guys there, and there are five hospitals there in Indianapolis that they use, and the medical students from Indiana come in and help (with exams), so they just have a great system. I don't know a lot about the medical side, but I know that if (a player has) something wrong, they'll find it."
Do you feel television transformed the combine? "I think that was part of it. At one time we had cameras there just to videotape everything a kid does at the combine, and when he was through there was a copy for the teams to look at. So, there were just a few cameras down there. Then the media started coming in and you'd have your NFL.com, NFL Network, NFL Films, you have ESPN, you have podcasts, all in their positions on the field. You have a zillion cameras running around. So you're trying to run these guys (through drills), and you're trying to protect them, you have to move camera people at times because they don't understand sometimes, they're there to get their pictures. And now, after all the years I've done the field work, I don't have to say anything to them. They know they can't get in front of this, they have to stay behind that line. The player's important so (the priority is that) he doesn't get hurt. We never had any fans in the stand until probably four years ago. Starting out they put them up in the 300 level, and I think there were only three or four hundred, they couldn't have a cell phone, they couldn't have a radio, they couldn't talk, there wasn't any concessions. They gave them a little lunch beforehand, it was a sponsorship thing, a reward for being sponsors. I'd look at that and thing, 'That looks boring.' There's an announcer making an announcement who the runner is, but that's it. You couldn't see any of the times, any of the results, anything like that. But every year (the crowd) kept getting bigger. It went from 300 to 500 to 1,000, 3,000, 6,000. We've always brought the players in for four days, and they got four solid, hard days of testing, from physical testing one day, psychological testing, personality, one day, and one day of interviews. This year they changed everything to six days, took the workouts and moved them from during the day to 4 til midnight so it would be prime time TV. So every day the players would start coming over, I'd be there at six in the morning getting heights and weights, and wouldn't get done until midnight. So for the players' sake the extra days may have made it easier on them, but the workouts being from four in the afternoon til 11 at night, I'm not sure they were a fan of that."
Have the mechanics of running the combine changed much? "Not as far as the physical drills we have them do. I can think of one, the three-cone drill, that wasn't there when I started. There was (another) that basically evaluated a person's ability to have body control and change direction, and how quickly they can do it, so we got rid of one and put in the three-cone drill that one of our scouts (helped in) developing. They've changed some of the skill drills that each position does from year to year. That's done by the coaches, and each team gets to put three coaches in for whatever position they want. Every year they get together and decide these are the basic drills we run every year, it takes about 45 minutes, now do we want to change anything (that) everyone agrees on. So those change, but you still have the physical testing, the broad jump, vertical jump, the 20-yard shuttle, the three-cone, and the 40-yard dash. You don't have to do it this way, but the time (teams) use is still the hand-held stopwatch. We have tables with scouts timing by hand and also have electronic times. The electronic time gets published by the NFL in the media, and (hand times are) usually close."
From inside the scouting community, what do you think of all the pundits that flood the airwaves with who's going where, who's rising and who's falling? "You listen to it once in a while because you can't help but hear it, but some of those guys you think, 'Where are they getting their information?' You don't see them at practices, you might see some at the bowl games, but I know that now days they can get (game) film and study it themselves but they don't get out and talk to people to find out about they players. They get some inroads to some scouts in the NFL that will talk to them, but most scouts don't want anything to do with them. But it doesn't surprise me (how prevalent that has become) because these guys love the game, they get involved in it and they think, I can BS, I can talk, and they decide they can make money doing it. And there's some good ones, some guys that really work at it."
When you were with the Oilers and Titans what did you enjoy about scouting? "Getting out and meeting some of the great coaches. I had a lot of really good friends in scouting and coaching, and as you go around you get to see them. I enjoyed visiting with the players. Hardly ever would you come across a guy that wasn't willing to talk to you. Sometimes there was a little BS with them, that was natural, but it was all very enjoyable. Doing something you loved, something you've been involved with all your life. But after a while it can get old, because you're on the road all the time."
How did playing at a small junior college then at a smaller college shape your coaching and scouting career? "Coming from high school to junior college gave me an opportunity to play in a real good junior college program. At that point in time that developed my body physically because at that time I was tall and lean in high school, but not real big, so I put on some weight. The coaching (at Columbia Basin), and being successful, then having Sweeney come out and recruit me and having a good coach at Montana State, I think having success (as a player) had a real positive role in everything you do. You figure out ways to overcome roadblocks and how to get things done, because that's what you're doing when you're playing football."
What did the last weeks or days leading up to the draft look like for you? "A lot of teams do things differently, but for us in Tennessee, way before he draft, we'd meet for a week to get all the final information the scouts had picked up in the fall (organized), make sure we had that correct, then identify information that we needed to go out and research or (resolve) conflicts between two scouts, he heard this and he heard that, so you had to run out and do some things, but the last two weeks prior to the draft we'd be in the draft room and we would go through each position, evaluating how we had them stacked on the board, from the best at each position all the way down to the free agents that we had basically rejected (as draft possibilities). We'd so that whole thing, then end up deciding who the first round players were that we would be interested in, and then we looked at the second round as we had them on the board. It never comes off exactly as you have them, most of the time it's close but somebody always jumps up and takes somebody you didn't expect. The scouts were very much involved at Tennessee. I know at some places the scouts go in and once they give their reports they're not involved, it's just the personnel director and the coach and the GM and the owner or whoever, they're the ones doing the rest of the work. So I know there is a difference of philosophy in a lot of places."
What were conversations like when a scout felt strongly about a certain player? "If you had a guy that you really liked as your top guy, maybe I had a guy from my area and our scout in the southwest or southeast had a guy at the same position and they were the two top-rated guys that we want and we had to position who was the better one, you would battle for your guy. You'd give the positives, but also look at the negatives if he had any, if he had any injuries, what type of guy he is. You'd really lay everything on the table because as a scout we weren't going to be making the final decision, we wanted to get all the information out there so the head coach, the GM, the personnel director, they'd have everything and they could make the decision. The (front office staff) had seen more of both players. I've seen my guy, but I haven't seen the other player back in Florida or wherever he was."
What is a scout feeling in the days or hours leading to the draft? "I think it was exciting, right? We'd be in the room the whole time (in the days before the draft), and (the night) before the draft (long-time Titans head coach) Jeff Fisher would take us out to dinner as a group of scouts, and as we'd say, the hay was in the barn and the facts were on the wall (of the draft room) and in the books, and we just had to see how it was going to fall. Jeff was always getting phone calls, and Floyd (Reese, Titans General Manager), trying to find out if somebody wanted to trade this or trade that, move up or move down, so we'd sit there and just be aware of what was going on. They'd get a phone call, 'What about this guy, what about that guy?' and sometimes you'd have to go scrambling through your book for answers, but you were there to do that. It was fun."
Is the football scouting community a tight group? "I think there's a bond between the scouts. They tried a couple of times to combine the coaches' organization and the scouts, but that's never come to be. Obviously, the coaches' pay is much greater than the scouts' pay (laughs). There are a couple of organization, there are awards given out by the scouts."
Are there players you consider big scouting wins for you? "A guy, you used the phrase stand on the table, that I really liked out of the University of Washington named Benji Olson. Benji was an offensive guard (from 1994-97), he played at (South Kitsap High in) Port Orchard, went to the University of Washington, and had a little bit of a rap of being lazy. He was more of a follower, wasn't really a leader, and his roommate was Olin Kreutz, and Olin, I don't know if he had much intention of going to college other than playing football, and Benji was kind of the same way. But at the same time, the people I talked to over there said, the strength coach and some others, told me, 'He'll do anything you want, you just have to tell him, get on him, and he'll do it.' He was a good player. We got him in the fifth round, and he started for us for 10 years. To me that's a guy who came out and didn't go real high but was a pretty good pick."
How early in a player's career do you start taking note of him? "From year to year when you go in to look at the senior guys, you'll be watching tape and you'll see a guy make a good move or a block or something and you'll go, 'Who's that?' So you look at the roster and see that he's only a freshman, or he's a sophomore, so you sort of put it in the back of your mind and you write it down in your book that at this school this is a guy to watch for down the road. Then when it gets to his junior year, with juniors coming out so frequently, any information you've gathered along the way helps."
Did you have the same territory throughout your career? "Primarily. At one time my boss, who was our director of college scouting, passed away, so I ended up going to the northeast, from Nashville north, for about three years. I believe I was the youngest guy on our staff at that time, so they flew me back, they even flew my wife into Boston a few times for long weekends. It was a new experience, going from the West Coast to the East Coast, I'll tell you. Back there if you drive 40 miles you might go by 10 colleges. In Pennsylvania and Virginia, places like that, it's just unbelievable with the traffic and the number of people. I've never had a college out west where I had to have security watch my car or lead me to the football office, and I had that happen back east. I went to (a university in a large city), and a scout friend of mine from Jacksonville said, 'You don't need there, they don't have anybody,' and I said, 'Well, the boss says go take a look at them.' So I get there and I'm supposed to park in a cage, and when I got there the cage was closed, and I see this gentleman walk out of the college. He looked like an administrative person so I told him who I was, and he said, 'Well you're fine parked there but when you go in you tell (the secretary) who you are and she'll take care of you.' So I go in, everything's fine, I watch tape until about one o'clock and they were about to have a team meeting, so I went out to my car to get an apple. I walk out there and there's a policeman sitting on my car. He said, 'Are you leaving?' I said, 'No, is something wrong?' He said, 'I've been here since you got here 'cause you want your car to be here when you leave, don't you?' So that was different."
Are you getting near the end of your time working the combine? "Possibly. Working from six in the morning until 11 at night is a long day, but we'll see. The head of National Scouting is a good friend so I help out, they pay us a little bit, and it's good to see old friends."
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Big Cats, Little Trucks - Willie Patterson
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Matt Houk Introductory Press Conference
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