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Mitch LaPoint
http://www.dallascowboys.com/news/news.cfm?id=63E0ABBC-C05B-78F5-899326F0AA74A711
A Scout's Life
Josh Ellis
DallasCowboys.com Staff Writer
This story originally appeared in Dallas Cowboys Star Magazine. For subscription information, please click here.
Meet Mitch LaPoint.
Unassuming guy, nice enough. A lot of people would kill to have his job, but it's guys like LaPoint who have to be the most hardcore of football fans. And maybe that's why they get into his line of work to begin with.
As the Cowboys' college scout for the entire U.S. Southeast, LaPoint was preparing for the upcoming NFL Draft for the last 11 months. Therein lies the difference between someone like LaPoint, a professional talent evaluator, and the average armchair general manager, whose opinions are bound to be based largely on which games CBS sees fit to broadcast on Saturday afternoons from September through November.
Over the last year, LaPoint has visited just about every school with a halfway decent football program east of the Sabine River - from Arkansas and Louisiana on towards the Atlantic - most of them two or three times, if not more. He watched the film, and talked to all of the coaches, trainers, academic advisors, everybody. He watched the film again. He saw them practice. He put what his eyes told him into writing. And then he watched the film again.
If they were draft eligible this year, LaPoint had a mental note or 10 on them. You have to. Why donate basically 75 percent of your waking hours to the job, and not be very, very good at it? LaPoint's dedication to the game and the players who make it worth watching has to be far greater than for the rest of us. There is no delivery pizza or six pack of Miller when LaPoint watches football. His is serious business. Not serious in that cute, "Leave me alone, honey, I'm watching the game!" kind of way. Serious like it's his livelihood, and millions of dollars might be hinging on his opinion of this player or that. So yeah, football's got to be pretty high on his list of priorities.
The work on this year's draft began last May, when the Cowboys and other teams were presented with the hundreds of names they should keep their eyes on in the fall. The cursory work is done on these guys, and much of the summer is spent planning and making a schedule for the season. Where is he going, when and why? What other school is close enough to swing by the next day before going somewhere else? How does the travel circuit wind its way back to Dallas?
"Sometimes it's just logistics," LaPoint says. "But if I'm already in Alabama, I'm going to try to go to a game in Tuscaloosa because they treat you good there."
If a seat in the press box can be considered pampering, then fine. A scout deserves it, because after the whistle blows, it's work, drive. Work, drive. Work, drive.
"About 11 days at a time," is how LaPoint describes his 9-to-5. "I'm home three days and on the road 11 days. Basically it's every other weekend. So every other weekend I'm at a game, and then during the week I'm at schools. I just drive school to school. I'll drive my car, let's say from Dallas to Auburn, and then work my car all over the place - Tuscaloosa, Knoxville, Georgia Tech, Georgia - and every day I'll just go to a different school in my car."
The Cowboys had 20 people in the player personnel department last year - national scouts, pro scouts, assistants, interns, and regional college scouts like LaPoint. There are guys for the West, the Midwest and the Northeast as well. Depending on how far their trip might be, some of the scouts could be veritable jetsetters.
But for LaPoint, it's the open road. Interstate 20 extends east and west across the region, intersected by I-49 in Louisiana, I-55 in Mississippi, I-65 in Alabama, and I-75 and I-85 in Georgia. The superhighway reaches its eastern limit near Florence, S.C., which isn't far from Coastal Carolina University, in case the Chanticleers have any linebackers worth checking out. LaPoint figures he put 30,000 miles on his 4-Runner this fall. Good thing for mileage pay.
This is the life to which LaPoint, 34, and his wife Jenny have grown accustomed over the last 12 years, from the beginning of his career as a scouting intern with the Kansas City Chiefs through the move to Dallas in 2005.
"I've got a lot of Marriott points," he says. "That's just kind of how it works. It was the same with the Chiefs. You're out two weeks, then you're home for a weekend. I'll come home on Thursday, pay the bills, do my laundry and stuff, hang out with my wife. I'm just married, no kids, but it's not easy for those four months. It's pretty intense. It's hard. It's stressful.
"More than anything, it's just the travel that weighs on you. The job is fun. You're watching football, you're talking to coaches, you're going to practices. But when you're done you know you've got a two- or three-hour drive to get to the next place, because that next morning you've got to go to another school. That's the toughest part."
The grind eases in December as colleges go on winter break, but then comes bowl season, the all-star games, the scouting combine, and the pro days. It's not the marathon the fall is, but it's hardly slow either. Again, LaPoint sets out for the little college towns, pleasant reminders of Lawrence, Kan., where he grew up. At the end of the day there's not really much time to stroll through Faulkner's Woods in Oxford, Miss. or hit up South Beach in Miami. Dinner usually resembles a to-go order from Olive Garden, something he can eat while working in his hotel room.
"You don't really have a lot of time to check out different places," LaPoint says. "You've got all these reports to do, and it takes a half-hour or 45 minutes to do a report. You don't want all those hanging over your head. When you don't get it in the computer right away it starts melting together. I like to get it off my chest."
LaPoint has filled out reports on about 270 prospects this year, and taken notes on over 500. Of all the guys he's seen, there might be 50 he thinks the Cowboys should think about drafting. A lot of them are the same players coveted by the scouts from other teams, guys he runs into all the time on the road. The competition.
"It's funny. We all know who we like, it's obvious sometimes," LaPoint says. "But you don't talk grades or anything like that; everybody is pretty hush-hush. And then you've got a couple of sleepers, or guys at small schools you really like. I would never, ever bring those guys up to anybody. I'm sure other teams have been in there, they do their job, but you always kind of hope you're the guy to find someone."
The Cowboys' entire staff will check out the top-rated prospects, but a good scout is judged by the late-round picks he has solely identified, and the undrafted free agents. A player doesn't have to make the Pro Bowl to be a success. LaPoint might give himself credit, say, for a player who isn't drafted, but makes the 53-man roster after a year on the practice squad. He counts recent Cowboys pickups like Orlando Scandrick, Nick Folk and Pat McQuistan as his own guys. Seventh-year Vikings cornerback Benny Sapp might be his greatest sleeper, a player who signed with the Chiefs after going undrafted in 2004.
"You're more proud of those guys, because they're on you," LaPoint says. "That's where you make a name for yourself. ... I'm going to ask the coaches about anyone that plays. A lot of times they're pretty honest. Then you'll go to a small school and they'll recommend 10 guys, and not one of them can play. You've got to really learn your sources and who you can trust. And do your job. Watch the film and make a decision."
Ah, the film. LaPoint's office at Valley Ranch is literally the size of a closet, but it does have a nice-sized flat screen TV. Film doesn't lie, especially in HD. Because colleges are late to send their game tapes to NFL teams, regional scouts often crowd together to watch an individual school's recent games as part of their fall research, a sometimes-tedious process.
"When you're watching six or seven guys on one side of the ball you're constantly rewinding," LaPoint says. "Let's say I go to Auburn to watch film on some kids. There might be 20 other teams there, and they'll only have a couple rooms for us. So I'm sitting in a room with these other scouts, all trying to watch the film, some people like to talk, some people are serious, some want to rewind it again and again, some are slow. It's hard."
A player's game film makes up about 90 percent of his grade, LaPoint says. Scouts can use workout numbers to crosscheck the things that stood out on tape, but other factors like character and intelligence often form the rest of an evaluation.
With so much money invested in each player, LaPoint's job also involves background checks, and investigating the academic habits of a player. Does the kid love football? Is he accountable? Coachable? Does he have a learning disability? For all the players who find themselves in the headlines for the wrong reasons, it's hard not to be endeared to the kids who do all the right things. Their character and work ethic are often apparent by their back-stories.
There were players in this year's draft class, LaPoint says, who have had brothers locked up for murder, or mothers and grandmothers in prison for selling drugs. One player had to be sent away after two of his brothers were the victims of gang-related murders. Others were homeless, but made good on their opportunities.
"The tight end at Miami, Jimmy Graham, his story is unbelievable," LaPoint says. "He played basketball four years at Miami and then decided he would try football out. This kid was brought up in a poor area, his mom left him to go to Iraq, then he was adopted by his family. They didn't even have power for like two years. He overcame so much, and just talking to him he's so sharp and so well put-together. Very impressive. And this kid is going to be a good player.
"There're also guys who have had everything handed to them and let it fall. It makes a big difference in how you grade a guy."
To be a pro scout, you've simply got to love football, and success stories like the ones LaPoint sees up close do go a long way toward rekindling the fire each fall, when those 11-day workweeks return. It's a demanding job; the silver linings of which a football lifer can best appreciate after years of experience. LaPoint says he simply lucked out. A 1998 graduate of the sports management program at the University of Kansas, he spent a year interning with the Chiefs scouting department. Just when his internship was set to expire, a position opened up for a scouting assistant, the title he held for the next three seasons. From 2002-04, he served as the club's Midwest area scout and football operations coordinator, helping to plan training camp. In 2005, he was brought to Dallas by Jeff Ireland, after the former Kansas City operative became the Cowboys' scouting director.
Still early in his career, LaPoint has already seen a good deal of change in the business since his first days in Kansas City.
"Just the way we do our job is so much easier now with the technology," LaPoint says. "From the internet, with all the stats, to the way you get the film. Everything's so much more user-friendly, I would say, even compared to back in '98. Everything was VHS tapes, the quality of the film was horrible."
Yes, the film. All the right moves in this month's draft, the ones to make or break NFL teams in the coming years, have availed themselves on the film.
Somebody's got to watch it.
http://www.dallascowboys.com/news/news.cfm?id=63E0ABBC-C05B-78F5-899326F0AA74A711
A Scout's Life
Josh Ellis
DallasCowboys.com Staff Writer
This story originally appeared in Dallas Cowboys Star Magazine. For subscription information, please click here.
Meet Mitch LaPoint.
Unassuming guy, nice enough. A lot of people would kill to have his job, but it's guys like LaPoint who have to be the most hardcore of football fans. And maybe that's why they get into his line of work to begin with.
As the Cowboys' college scout for the entire U.S. Southeast, LaPoint was preparing for the upcoming NFL Draft for the last 11 months. Therein lies the difference between someone like LaPoint, a professional talent evaluator, and the average armchair general manager, whose opinions are bound to be based largely on which games CBS sees fit to broadcast on Saturday afternoons from September through November.
Over the last year, LaPoint has visited just about every school with a halfway decent football program east of the Sabine River - from Arkansas and Louisiana on towards the Atlantic - most of them two or three times, if not more. He watched the film, and talked to all of the coaches, trainers, academic advisors, everybody. He watched the film again. He saw them practice. He put what his eyes told him into writing. And then he watched the film again.
If they were draft eligible this year, LaPoint had a mental note or 10 on them. You have to. Why donate basically 75 percent of your waking hours to the job, and not be very, very good at it? LaPoint's dedication to the game and the players who make it worth watching has to be far greater than for the rest of us. There is no delivery pizza or six pack of Miller when LaPoint watches football. His is serious business. Not serious in that cute, "Leave me alone, honey, I'm watching the game!" kind of way. Serious like it's his livelihood, and millions of dollars might be hinging on his opinion of this player or that. So yeah, football's got to be pretty high on his list of priorities.
The work on this year's draft began last May, when the Cowboys and other teams were presented with the hundreds of names they should keep their eyes on in the fall. The cursory work is done on these guys, and much of the summer is spent planning and making a schedule for the season. Where is he going, when and why? What other school is close enough to swing by the next day before going somewhere else? How does the travel circuit wind its way back to Dallas?
"Sometimes it's just logistics," LaPoint says. "But if I'm already in Alabama, I'm going to try to go to a game in Tuscaloosa because they treat you good there."
If a seat in the press box can be considered pampering, then fine. A scout deserves it, because after the whistle blows, it's work, drive. Work, drive. Work, drive.
"About 11 days at a time," is how LaPoint describes his 9-to-5. "I'm home three days and on the road 11 days. Basically it's every other weekend. So every other weekend I'm at a game, and then during the week I'm at schools. I just drive school to school. I'll drive my car, let's say from Dallas to Auburn, and then work my car all over the place - Tuscaloosa, Knoxville, Georgia Tech, Georgia - and every day I'll just go to a different school in my car."
The Cowboys had 20 people in the player personnel department last year - national scouts, pro scouts, assistants, interns, and regional college scouts like LaPoint. There are guys for the West, the Midwest and the Northeast as well. Depending on how far their trip might be, some of the scouts could be veritable jetsetters.
But for LaPoint, it's the open road. Interstate 20 extends east and west across the region, intersected by I-49 in Louisiana, I-55 in Mississippi, I-65 in Alabama, and I-75 and I-85 in Georgia. The superhighway reaches its eastern limit near Florence, S.C., which isn't far from Coastal Carolina University, in case the Chanticleers have any linebackers worth checking out. LaPoint figures he put 30,000 miles on his 4-Runner this fall. Good thing for mileage pay.
This is the life to which LaPoint, 34, and his wife Jenny have grown accustomed over the last 12 years, from the beginning of his career as a scouting intern with the Kansas City Chiefs through the move to Dallas in 2005.
"I've got a lot of Marriott points," he says. "That's just kind of how it works. It was the same with the Chiefs. You're out two weeks, then you're home for a weekend. I'll come home on Thursday, pay the bills, do my laundry and stuff, hang out with my wife. I'm just married, no kids, but it's not easy for those four months. It's pretty intense. It's hard. It's stressful.
"More than anything, it's just the travel that weighs on you. The job is fun. You're watching football, you're talking to coaches, you're going to practices. But when you're done you know you've got a two- or three-hour drive to get to the next place, because that next morning you've got to go to another school. That's the toughest part."
The grind eases in December as colleges go on winter break, but then comes bowl season, the all-star games, the scouting combine, and the pro days. It's not the marathon the fall is, but it's hardly slow either. Again, LaPoint sets out for the little college towns, pleasant reminders of Lawrence, Kan., where he grew up. At the end of the day there's not really much time to stroll through Faulkner's Woods in Oxford, Miss. or hit up South Beach in Miami. Dinner usually resembles a to-go order from Olive Garden, something he can eat while working in his hotel room.
"You don't really have a lot of time to check out different places," LaPoint says. "You've got all these reports to do, and it takes a half-hour or 45 minutes to do a report. You don't want all those hanging over your head. When you don't get it in the computer right away it starts melting together. I like to get it off my chest."
LaPoint has filled out reports on about 270 prospects this year, and taken notes on over 500. Of all the guys he's seen, there might be 50 he thinks the Cowboys should think about drafting. A lot of them are the same players coveted by the scouts from other teams, guys he runs into all the time on the road. The competition.
"It's funny. We all know who we like, it's obvious sometimes," LaPoint says. "But you don't talk grades or anything like that; everybody is pretty hush-hush. And then you've got a couple of sleepers, or guys at small schools you really like. I would never, ever bring those guys up to anybody. I'm sure other teams have been in there, they do their job, but you always kind of hope you're the guy to find someone."
The Cowboys' entire staff will check out the top-rated prospects, but a good scout is judged by the late-round picks he has solely identified, and the undrafted free agents. A player doesn't have to make the Pro Bowl to be a success. LaPoint might give himself credit, say, for a player who isn't drafted, but makes the 53-man roster after a year on the practice squad. He counts recent Cowboys pickups like Orlando Scandrick, Nick Folk and Pat McQuistan as his own guys. Seventh-year Vikings cornerback Benny Sapp might be his greatest sleeper, a player who signed with the Chiefs after going undrafted in 2004.
"You're more proud of those guys, because they're on you," LaPoint says. "That's where you make a name for yourself. ... I'm going to ask the coaches about anyone that plays. A lot of times they're pretty honest. Then you'll go to a small school and they'll recommend 10 guys, and not one of them can play. You've got to really learn your sources and who you can trust. And do your job. Watch the film and make a decision."
Ah, the film. LaPoint's office at Valley Ranch is literally the size of a closet, but it does have a nice-sized flat screen TV. Film doesn't lie, especially in HD. Because colleges are late to send their game tapes to NFL teams, regional scouts often crowd together to watch an individual school's recent games as part of their fall research, a sometimes-tedious process.
"When you're watching six or seven guys on one side of the ball you're constantly rewinding," LaPoint says. "Let's say I go to Auburn to watch film on some kids. There might be 20 other teams there, and they'll only have a couple rooms for us. So I'm sitting in a room with these other scouts, all trying to watch the film, some people like to talk, some people are serious, some want to rewind it again and again, some are slow. It's hard."
A player's game film makes up about 90 percent of his grade, LaPoint says. Scouts can use workout numbers to crosscheck the things that stood out on tape, but other factors like character and intelligence often form the rest of an evaluation.
With so much money invested in each player, LaPoint's job also involves background checks, and investigating the academic habits of a player. Does the kid love football? Is he accountable? Coachable? Does he have a learning disability? For all the players who find themselves in the headlines for the wrong reasons, it's hard not to be endeared to the kids who do all the right things. Their character and work ethic are often apparent by their back-stories.
There were players in this year's draft class, LaPoint says, who have had brothers locked up for murder, or mothers and grandmothers in prison for selling drugs. One player had to be sent away after two of his brothers were the victims of gang-related murders. Others were homeless, but made good on their opportunities.
"The tight end at Miami, Jimmy Graham, his story is unbelievable," LaPoint says. "He played basketball four years at Miami and then decided he would try football out. This kid was brought up in a poor area, his mom left him to go to Iraq, then he was adopted by his family. They didn't even have power for like two years. He overcame so much, and just talking to him he's so sharp and so well put-together. Very impressive. And this kid is going to be a good player.
"There're also guys who have had everything handed to them and let it fall. It makes a big difference in how you grade a guy."
To be a pro scout, you've simply got to love football, and success stories like the ones LaPoint sees up close do go a long way toward rekindling the fire each fall, when those 11-day workweeks return. It's a demanding job; the silver linings of which a football lifer can best appreciate after years of experience. LaPoint says he simply lucked out. A 1998 graduate of the sports management program at the University of Kansas, he spent a year interning with the Chiefs scouting department. Just when his internship was set to expire, a position opened up for a scouting assistant, the title he held for the next three seasons. From 2002-04, he served as the club's Midwest area scout and football operations coordinator, helping to plan training camp. In 2005, he was brought to Dallas by Jeff Ireland, after the former Kansas City operative became the Cowboys' scouting director.
Still early in his career, LaPoint has already seen a good deal of change in the business since his first days in Kansas City.
"Just the way we do our job is so much easier now with the technology," LaPoint says. "From the internet, with all the stats, to the way you get the film. Everything's so much more user-friendly, I would say, even compared to back in '98. Everything was VHS tapes, the quality of the film was horrible."
Yes, the film. All the right moves in this month's draft, the ones to make or break NFL teams in the coming years, have availed themselves on the film.
Somebody's got to watch it.
