07-29-2020, 05:38 PM
(This post was last modified: 07-29-2020, 05:39 PM by RDBSouthPaw.)
Tier 1: 5) Ultimus Week, a wonderful time of year that means a new champion will be crowned in both the DSFL and the ISFL and a time of hope for the teams that did not acheive their goals. Weeks of hard work have finally paid off for two lucky teams as the season will draw to a close. For many it might be the last season that their player will take part in and for others it will be a stepping stone to the next level or to another new challenge. Either way scouting is going to be a key issue to fill the holes that teams have for the coming season. This means there will be endless messages to top prospects trying to figure out the key questions that all managers want to know. "Are you willing to position swap or play out of position?" "How has the league been treating you so far?" and of course "Which teams are your favorites coming into the draft?" All of these questions are important and they provide invaluable information to the War Room and the General Managers of every team. However, when you have 12 teams ask the same questions over and over again, it gets a little, exhausting. I had the priviledge of being scouted for the upcoming ISFL draft and I believe I ended up speaking to every single team in the draft besides San Jose. Sometimes I would even speak to a team multiple times and let me tell you something. One thing always remained the same, they would all message me the same 5-6 questions in numbered format to respond too. So I would take my time and answer the questions and then after that it would seem like the conversation would be done. There was nothing left to talk about. I could not tell if teams had a genuine interest in scouting me and signing me or if they were just checking off some boxes that they wanted to know. After a couple of days of responding to the same questions I got tired of it and did not even feel like responding to the teams that were repeating questions. I think that it is time to update the way we scout. To make it easier on not only the individuals being scouted but also to make it easier on everyone that is doing the scouting. To me this would look like one of two ways. The first way would be to create a designated scouting forum page in which each incoming class of rookies for both the DSFL and the ISFL. This would allow a central location in which the General Managers and Scouting teams around the league would get together and decide on a set number of questions and what those questions would be on to the forum page. That would then allow every incoming player to post their answers to just one designated located and not have to type them out or copy and paste them to every team that wants to know the same answers. That way if teams wanted to know something outside of the questions decided on then they would need to still contact the individual but, it would be something new and interesting the player probably has not talked about with anyone else. To me that would lead to more conversations happening between scouts and prospects which would lead to more individuals feeling connected and valued rather than being a check mark off of some teams draft board. The other way we could approach it is to have the scouting teams understand that a conversation means more to a player than just a set of generic questions. Teams could take some time and educate their scouting department on a way to more effectively reach individuals instead of turning some people off to the league by causing them to do the same thing over and over again. Now I know to a lot of people this issue does not seem like a big deal and that is fine. To me it is a big deal and it is something that I feel like we as a league need to change. With the upcoming reddit class being as large as it is, it is now more exhausting than ever to reach out to every individual and compile answers to share with the rest of the war room. We need to a central location that can help to speed up scouting and allow us to explore more personal conversations with the prospects we are interested in. To all the scouts out their that have made an effort to continuously connect and reach out to prospects I applaud you. You help to make this league feel welcoming and help to fill upcoming players with excitement and hope. You make it to where being scouted means something and that is huge for a new player. Lets move beyond the generic questions and start putting some effort in to our scouting so that we can continue to grow in numbers and finally do it in a more efficient and enjoyable way!