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Florida A&M football team had its pro day, and zero NFL scouts showed up

Imagine you’re a senior college football player who has a dream of making the NFL, and it’s your pro day — your last chance to change teams’ impressions of you. It’s a big day in a prospect’s career, a key element of your job interview with 32 companies who are hiring.

Now imagine if you’re a Florida A&M football player trying to make the league, you show up to your pro day and zero NFL scouts bothered to show up.

Not one.

Because that’s what happened on Thursday. They were supposed to start in the morning, and no NFL people were there ... so school waited. All the way until 4 p.m. Who knows what happened behind the scenes during those eight hours?

We can imagine why the players might be mad. This is their future we’re talking about. One good testing number can change a prospect’s fortunes in a minute.

But the players channeled their anger in the most positive way possible: They worked out and taped it. If the scouts won’t come to them, then they could send their stuff to the scouts.

Here’s former Rattlers RB Akil Blount (who had a tryout in the NFL with the Miami Dolphins) venting about the situation:

So who is to blame?

Clearly the coaches and administration can share some blame here.

We spoke to two NFL scouts who said that FAMU never had a pro day registered through the league. It’s the school’s responsibility to do so, and it apparently never got processed. Typically there will be a pro liaison on the coaching staff or in the athletics department who is in charge of setting up the event and filing it with the NFL. Both people we spoke to said that never happened.

The school is located in Tallahassee, Florida — same town as Florida State, of course — and it’s a 1.6-mile drive over to FAMU. In years past, they almost always had it on the same day at FSU’s pro day, knowing that FAMU likely wasn’t going to be able to draw much in the way of attention by itself and their chances of getting a few more sets of eyes on their players would be higher with so many scouts typically going to the Seminoles’ event.

Florida A&M football seniors showed up for their NFL pro day, but no scouts did. (Getty Images)
Florida A&M football seniors showed up for their NFL pro day, but no scouts did. (Getty Images)

And here’s the deal: Every pro day that’s properly registered will have at least one scout from an NFL present to officially record all the numbers: the heights, weights, times and testing. It might be a lower-rung scouting assistant who draws the assignment for a school with little likely NFL talent, but there will always be at least one present. Then the workouts get taped, shipped out to an organization called APT (Association of Professional Teams) and then distributed to all 32 NFL clubs.

Yes, it’s true that zero Rattlers players were invited to this year’s scouting combine, and it’s been at least five years since any FAMU alum played in the NFL. But had someone at FAMU done their job properly, the players would have had at least one scout present to watch them perform.

It could have been planned better in the first place to avoid such an embarrassment. This will be a bitter taste in a lot of players’ mouths on their final real day as a member of the program.

This is an athletic department that has faced budget problems and a football program that has had to take “money” games in the past to take care of them. They were pretty good on the field this past season despite the challenges there, going 6-5 in the Mid-Eastern Athletic conference and even winning five straight. Kudos to the kids for overcoming some odds.

FAMU lists 15 seniors on its roster. Let’s hope a few of them find a way to get teams to take a look at them down the road. Somehow.

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