Wednesday, July 24, 2013

NFL scouting, post Aaron Hernandez

Saw this tweet from Bruce Feldman sometime yesterday and then saw some backlash over it:
"Spoke w longtime NFL personnel man who said in wake of AaronHernandez teams may use police experts to check prospects tattoos"
Without fully opening up the can of worms, let's just twist the lid slightly. Is this a surprise? If you have a vested interest in an NFL team, does this bother you in any way?

With the money that these players make, I'm more surprised that this hasn't already been happening on a large scale. From the combine to the draft there are a lot of players to evaluate. And whether or not a tattoo on a bicep could mean suspected gang affiliation is not nearly as time sensitive as a 40 time. And while we may not mind gambling on NFL Sundays, executives and owners would rather not gamble on a draft pick that may or may not pan out off the field.

In short, I completely understand this from a business perspective as wanting to worry more about what happens on the field and leave the personal side of things to someone that may understand what they're seeing.

As for the civil liberties...is this really that much different than a CEO handing an interviewee a laptop and asking them to pull up their Facebook page?