Go to any business convention and you’ll hear people gossiping about their companies, their colleagues and their bosses. Bill Parcells says the NFL Scouting Combine and Pro Day workouts are no different.
In an interview this morning on ESPN Radio, Parcells said that when he was running draft rooms, he always relied on gossip among scouts to help him get a sense of which players would already be gone and which players would be available when his teams were drafting.
“I think you have an idea, generally, what players may be available to you, based on your work and your research and, actually, your conversations with people,” Parcells said. “People can’t help but talk a little bit. You kind of have an idea what may transpire.”
Asked who he was referring to when he said “people can’t help but talk,” Parcells said he’d hear things from employees he knew on other teams, and from his own employees who had friends on other teams.
“People within the clubs, people within the scouting systems, they converse with one another and all of a sudden information is transmitted from one place to another,” Parcells said. “Scouts are just normal like anyone else -- they’re out and there’s 50 or 60 of them standing around watching guys work, they can’t help but sometimes share opinions.”
Parcells makes an interesting point: The guys who work in NFL front offices are regular people, and it’s normal for regular people to dish about what’s going on at the office. Even though we’re sure Parcells wouldn’t have taken kindly to his own employees spilling the beans about his teams’ draft boards.