07-11-2021, 10:19 AM
(This post was last modified: 07-13-2021, 03:18 PM by allbetsonjames.)
The International Sim Football League recently held their season 30 draft. Now that we are days past the season 30 draft, I have finally had time to sit and reflect on the entire experience. Overall my draft experience was a great one. The weeks leading up to the draft were a blast. There is something about being scouted that makes you feel special haha. This was definitely the highlight of my experience on here so far. Below I am going to be walking you through my experience with being scouted and the events on draft day.
Scouting:
As referenced above scouting was awesome. General Managers and scouts all did a great job through this process. I had every team reach out except for 3. Although my pride kind of hurt that not everyone reached out, part of me was happy because it helped me narrow down a little on who may actually end up selecting me. I has a lot of great conversations. In my mind I narrowed teams down to about 5 that showed the most interest. My problem was I just was not sure if they were interested in taking me in the first, second, third etc rounds. I did not find out until a few days prior to the draft that everyone would be drafted. So that at least eased my worries about being undrafted.
Since I missed out on scouting for the Developmental Football League so had pretty much no knowledge about what to expect from my scouting. Most of the conversations started in a similar way and of course there were a lot of the same things that needed answered. Things like: Are you willing to change positions? Do I think I will stay as an active high earner? Do you plan on getting a league job? How can you reassure us you will not be a bust like your buddy Ice bear?
My goal in these conversations was to not just let it be something where I responded to questions. I wanted the scout person to actually have a conversation with me and get a feel for me as a person and personality fit for their locker room. I also wanted to use this as a feeling out process on my end as well. I wanted to try to project if I would be a good fit personality wise for their team. On top of that, my goal is to eventually/hopefully begin scouting and war room stuff in the ISFL and one day being a General Manager too. So if the person was a General Manager, I kind of wanted to see who I would mesh with and maybe be able to learn from.
As mentioned above, I really enjoyed all of my conversations with everyone. I would like to take the time now to thank all of the folks who took the time out of their day(s) to talk to me about their teams as they tried figuring out what they thought would be best for the future of their franchise. Each of you is awesome!
As scouting began to wind down as the draft approached, I wanted to give one final push to try to up my draft stock. I used a photoshop account from my job in real life that I have never used before to make an ESPN Draft Day Magazine cover. It took me like 4 hours to edit and did not look great but I was happy enough with the results for never using photoshop before. I sent it out to all the scouts and general managers who I had talked with along the way hoping that it could be the final confirmation needed that I was the right choice with an early pick. Everyone was really supportive and complimentary on the graphic even though I know it was not good. I appreciated their kind words but still wonder if it made a difference or was at least something funny they added to their war room talks.
As talks slowed down mock drafts began coming out. Where my confidence was high from so many positive and long conversations with scouts and general managers, the mock drafts had me crashing back down to earth. In big boards I was usually somewhere in the middle to late twenties. I think I saw a few different articles that had me ranked as the 4th or so tight end overall. My Norfolk Teammate Nick L Back was the top prospect overall in my opinion, but I thought tight end wise at least I was the number 2. I was just curious if teams who scouted thought that as well. I had no idea what round I would be picked in but from conversations I thought I would be going earlier than the mock drafts. I told a few General Managers who reached out that I thought at earliest I might go in the back half of the first round. I hope at latest it would be by mid second. Most of the teams that had shown the strongest interest were in the back half of the round. My doomsday scenario in my mind was a freefall to the 3rd or further.
Thoughts after scouting:
Scouting taught me a lot about the league. I realized more about what teams viewed as important and what I had over rated. I ended up only getting 4 picks correct on my mock draft though. I was shooting for better than that. My biggest takeaway was the importance in earning money by means other than your contract. I think it seems to give teams a lot more comfort that you are going to stay active while also being a top earner of TPE.
Draft Day:
It all started with an 8am text.
“Draft day: you have finally made it. Today is the first day of the rest of your life. Today is the day boys become men. Today you find out your new home. The place you will try and change history. I wish you the best of luck in this draft. To the team that drafted you... I hope they can change your history of losing culture. A develop you into a football player without any of the required skills to be one.
Lastly – it will ll be announced in the near future. But I will personally be switching positions to be a DE. This move is being made solely for the opportunity to someday face you across the line and assert my dominance man vs "man".
Double lastly... lol at your stats. Good luck getting drafted with that.”
My good friend in real life Ice Bear is who got me to join back in May. He was a huge supporter and helped me learn through the process of the forums and discord etc. As time has progressed we have become fun rivals. I remember the Developmental Simulation Football Draft where he text me encouragement so I would not be bummed as the pick by pick went by until I was drafted at pick number 33. When I woke up to that text on draft day, I knew I was in for a fun and different day.
We started a group text with Fronk as the draft got close.
The people who spent time doing the draft presentation, from graphics, to all the people who revealed the picks did a great job. It is awesome seeing people go the extra mile to make it a great experience for all. As the draft got started, It was awesome seeing one of my Norfolk Seawolf Teammates get drafted at number two overall. The commentary and feedback on each pick was super enjoyable and it was easy to tell everyone involved in the process did a great job at scouting all of these different players. The first two round went as follows:
Round 1
Pick #1 – The Baltimore Hawks: Sherriff Woody
Pick #2 - The Honolulu Hahalua: Miles Weperom
Pick #3 - The Chicago Butchers: Jason Garciaparra
Pick #4 - The Chicago Butchers: Vincent Sharpei Jr
Pick #5 - The Austin Copperheads: Ie Torrent
Pick #6 – The San Jose Sabercats: Konstantin Selich
Pick #7 - The Orange County Otters: Konstantin Selich
Pick #8 – The Yellowknife Wraiths: Dominos Pizzaman
Pick #9 – The New Orleans Second Line: Dustin Parmelee
Pick #10 – The Colorado Yeti: Jason Waterfalls
Pick #11 – The Chicago Butchers: Nick L. Back
Pick #12 – The Sarasota Sailfish: Calvin Hobbes
Pick #13 – The Berlin Fire Salamanders: Mason Malone
Pick #14 – The Baltimore Hawks (trade): Pepelegs Johnson
Round 2:
Pick #15: The Baltimore Hawks: Fuzzy George
I would definitely love to be the person here that gives a detailed analysis of each of the picks listed above. Unfortunately, I do not know anything about most the players lol. Maybe that is an idea someone else could do? Getting back on track here: As pick number 16 with the Honolulu Hahalua came up. I automatically assumed that I would not be taken there. I thought our scouting conversation went great but just figured It had been a little while and it would not be happening. Ice bear never would leak me any draft anything as hard as I tried in the week leading up to the draft. Whether it is about our Developmental Simulation Football League teams (his player David Frank played for the champion* Minnesota Grey Ducks) or literally anything we usually are trash talking in good fun. So when my pick came through and we were able to celebrate via text I was ecstatic. I have enjoyed this league a ton and now being on the same team will take things up a notch.
I am also lucky that we are teammates because my wife who reluctantly watched the draft on our tv with me did not share the same excitement. So when trying to explain who I got drafted by I had to have him send me the pronunciation of our team name because I had no idea how to say it. There were a lot of super nice words said by people after I was drafted and I really appreciated that. I would say that was the cherry on top to such a fun day.
Looking Forward
Post draft I was put into our new locker room and have enjoyed meeting all the new people. Similar to the Norfolk Seawolves’ locker room, this one is filled with a lot of funny and goo/active people. Also similar, it seems like we have a pretty young team overall so I am excited to see where things go as we all continue to improve. We even have someone in the locker room who made me a new player render that has Tim Tebow in Honolulu Hahalua colors. I tweet way too much from my player twitter account as is. Later draft night, it was put out in our locker room that we needed someone to do our team Twitter account as well. So I gladly took that over and am excited to contribute to the team in that way. Time will tell for sure, but the early returns make it feel like we have something special brewing in Honolulu! The new season can not start soon enough! Thanks for reading my draft reflection!
1882 words
Scouting:
As referenced above scouting was awesome. General Managers and scouts all did a great job through this process. I had every team reach out except for 3. Although my pride kind of hurt that not everyone reached out, part of me was happy because it helped me narrow down a little on who may actually end up selecting me. I has a lot of great conversations. In my mind I narrowed teams down to about 5 that showed the most interest. My problem was I just was not sure if they were interested in taking me in the first, second, third etc rounds. I did not find out until a few days prior to the draft that everyone would be drafted. So that at least eased my worries about being undrafted.
Since I missed out on scouting for the Developmental Football League so had pretty much no knowledge about what to expect from my scouting. Most of the conversations started in a similar way and of course there were a lot of the same things that needed answered. Things like: Are you willing to change positions? Do I think I will stay as an active high earner? Do you plan on getting a league job? How can you reassure us you will not be a bust like your buddy Ice bear?
My goal in these conversations was to not just let it be something where I responded to questions. I wanted the scout person to actually have a conversation with me and get a feel for me as a person and personality fit for their locker room. I also wanted to use this as a feeling out process on my end as well. I wanted to try to project if I would be a good fit personality wise for their team. On top of that, my goal is to eventually/hopefully begin scouting and war room stuff in the ISFL and one day being a General Manager too. So if the person was a General Manager, I kind of wanted to see who I would mesh with and maybe be able to learn from.
As mentioned above, I really enjoyed all of my conversations with everyone. I would like to take the time now to thank all of the folks who took the time out of their day(s) to talk to me about their teams as they tried figuring out what they thought would be best for the future of their franchise. Each of you is awesome!
As scouting began to wind down as the draft approached, I wanted to give one final push to try to up my draft stock. I used a photoshop account from my job in real life that I have never used before to make an ESPN Draft Day Magazine cover. It took me like 4 hours to edit and did not look great but I was happy enough with the results for never using photoshop before. I sent it out to all the scouts and general managers who I had talked with along the way hoping that it could be the final confirmation needed that I was the right choice with an early pick. Everyone was really supportive and complimentary on the graphic even though I know it was not good. I appreciated their kind words but still wonder if it made a difference or was at least something funny they added to their war room talks.
As talks slowed down mock drafts began coming out. Where my confidence was high from so many positive and long conversations with scouts and general managers, the mock drafts had me crashing back down to earth. In big boards I was usually somewhere in the middle to late twenties. I think I saw a few different articles that had me ranked as the 4th or so tight end overall. My Norfolk Teammate Nick L Back was the top prospect overall in my opinion, but I thought tight end wise at least I was the number 2. I was just curious if teams who scouted thought that as well. I had no idea what round I would be picked in but from conversations I thought I would be going earlier than the mock drafts. I told a few General Managers who reached out that I thought at earliest I might go in the back half of the first round. I hope at latest it would be by mid second. Most of the teams that had shown the strongest interest were in the back half of the round. My doomsday scenario in my mind was a freefall to the 3rd or further.
Thoughts after scouting:
Scouting taught me a lot about the league. I realized more about what teams viewed as important and what I had over rated. I ended up only getting 4 picks correct on my mock draft though. I was shooting for better than that. My biggest takeaway was the importance in earning money by means other than your contract. I think it seems to give teams a lot more comfort that you are going to stay active while also being a top earner of TPE.
Draft Day:
It all started with an 8am text.
“Draft day: you have finally made it. Today is the first day of the rest of your life. Today is the day boys become men. Today you find out your new home. The place you will try and change history. I wish you the best of luck in this draft. To the team that drafted you... I hope they can change your history of losing culture. A develop you into a football player without any of the required skills to be one.
Lastly – it will ll be announced in the near future. But I will personally be switching positions to be a DE. This move is being made solely for the opportunity to someday face you across the line and assert my dominance man vs "man".
Double lastly... lol at your stats. Good luck getting drafted with that.”
My good friend in real life Ice Bear is who got me to join back in May. He was a huge supporter and helped me learn through the process of the forums and discord etc. As time has progressed we have become fun rivals. I remember the Developmental Simulation Football Draft where he text me encouragement so I would not be bummed as the pick by pick went by until I was drafted at pick number 33. When I woke up to that text on draft day, I knew I was in for a fun and different day.
We started a group text with Fronk as the draft got close.
The people who spent time doing the draft presentation, from graphics, to all the people who revealed the picks did a great job. It is awesome seeing people go the extra mile to make it a great experience for all. As the draft got started, It was awesome seeing one of my Norfolk Seawolf Teammates get drafted at number two overall. The commentary and feedback on each pick was super enjoyable and it was easy to tell everyone involved in the process did a great job at scouting all of these different players. The first two round went as follows:
Round 1
Pick #1 – The Baltimore Hawks: Sherriff Woody
Pick #2 - The Honolulu Hahalua: Miles Weperom
Pick #3 - The Chicago Butchers: Jason Garciaparra
Pick #4 - The Chicago Butchers: Vincent Sharpei Jr
Pick #5 - The Austin Copperheads: Ie Torrent
Pick #6 – The San Jose Sabercats: Konstantin Selich
Pick #7 - The Orange County Otters: Konstantin Selich
Pick #8 – The Yellowknife Wraiths: Dominos Pizzaman
Pick #9 – The New Orleans Second Line: Dustin Parmelee
Pick #10 – The Colorado Yeti: Jason Waterfalls
Pick #11 – The Chicago Butchers: Nick L. Back
Pick #12 – The Sarasota Sailfish: Calvin Hobbes
Pick #13 – The Berlin Fire Salamanders: Mason Malone
Pick #14 – The Baltimore Hawks (trade): Pepelegs Johnson
Round 2:
Pick #15: The Baltimore Hawks: Fuzzy George
I would definitely love to be the person here that gives a detailed analysis of each of the picks listed above. Unfortunately, I do not know anything about most the players lol. Maybe that is an idea someone else could do? Getting back on track here: As pick number 16 with the Honolulu Hahalua came up. I automatically assumed that I would not be taken there. I thought our scouting conversation went great but just figured It had been a little while and it would not be happening. Ice bear never would leak me any draft anything as hard as I tried in the week leading up to the draft. Whether it is about our Developmental Simulation Football League teams (his player David Frank played for the champion* Minnesota Grey Ducks) or literally anything we usually are trash talking in good fun. So when my pick came through and we were able to celebrate via text I was ecstatic. I have enjoyed this league a ton and now being on the same team will take things up a notch.
I am also lucky that we are teammates because my wife who reluctantly watched the draft on our tv with me did not share the same excitement. So when trying to explain who I got drafted by I had to have him send me the pronunciation of our team name because I had no idea how to say it. There were a lot of super nice words said by people after I was drafted and I really appreciated that. I would say that was the cherry on top to such a fun day.
Looking Forward
Post draft I was put into our new locker room and have enjoyed meeting all the new people. Similar to the Norfolk Seawolves’ locker room, this one is filled with a lot of funny and goo/active people. Also similar, it seems like we have a pretty young team overall so I am excited to see where things go as we all continue to improve. We even have someone in the locker room who made me a new player render that has Tim Tebow in Honolulu Hahalua colors. I tweet way too much from my player twitter account as is. Later draft night, it was put out in our locker room that we needed someone to do our team Twitter account as well. So I gladly took that over and am excited to contribute to the team in that way. Time will tell for sure, but the early returns make it feel like we have something special brewing in Honolulu! The new season can not start soon enough! Thanks for reading my draft reflection!
1882 words
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