They sat in a row of folding chairs, clipboards in hand, pens and pencils at the ready. There must have been 50 of them. College football coaches. College scouts. Assistant coaches. Somebody from Boston College. An assistant from the the University of Rhode Island. A coach from Notre Dame. In front of them was a bench with a barbell.
"And next we have number 79," a man said to the gathering. "He's James Federico. Westerly, Rhode Island."And here came No. 79. T-shirt. Shorts. Sneakers. Full, round face. He measured 5-11, 221. Age 17.
He slipped under the bar and leaned back on the flat bench as someone handed him the barbell. It totaled 150 pounds and now James Federico was going to start bench-pressing the weight - lifting it off his chest, bringing it back down, lifting it again.
"One . . . two . . . three . . .," the man began counting.
This was at a place called the Blue Hills Athletic Center, in suburban Braintree and this was last week, the first annual Evaluation Day for college football prospects.
"Four . . . five . . . six . . ."
A chance for schoolboys who will be entering their senior year next September to show college scouts what they can do. How strong they are. How agile. How quick. If a kid can catch a scout's eye, maybe the guy will check him out in the fall.
Evaluation Day. It's either college football's latest recruiting outrage or a terrific idea.
Critics will say it's little more than a horse sale - beef on the hoof. Not unlike the NFL combine camp that combs over 200 college prospects each spring. Checking them for injuries. Checking them for drugs. Measuring them down to an eighth of an inch; weighing them down to the ounce. Timing them down to the hundredth of a second.
A meat market. Football slavery, using schoolboys as the ones being weighed and measured and judged. A return to the dark ages.
"It's none of that," said Gus Bell, the state coordinator of the Evaluation Camp. "What we're doing is giving kids some exposure. We're giving them a chance to be seen by colleges that maybe didn't know they existed. And I'm talking colleges on every level. Division I . . . II . . . III. It's going to help some kids get into college and even get scholarships."
"But we have to do it right," said Mark Duffner, head coach at Holy Cross. "It's great for the coaches in evaluating a young man for a scholarship. But I wouldn't want it to become a pro thing."
"Ten . . . Eleven . . . Twelve."
Gus Bell got the idea, he said, while helping recruit clients for his brother, Dick Bell, an agent. College coaches would tell Gus Bell of a need for an evaluation camp. Under the rules, coaches can't attend high school practices, can't watch any games in person until after Nov. 1 and can't visit a prospect during the season. Evaluation is done by film and reports from the players' high school coach.
"But sometimes a coach can be a little too enthusiastic about his kid," URI assistant Larry Caswell was saying. "He'll tell you he's 6-3 and when you finally meet him he's 6-1. And every kid you talk to has run a 4.6 for the 40. Do you know how fast 4.6 is? They don't seem to realize that. But with an evaluation day, we see first hand."
The coaches couldn't talk to the prospects; couldn't touch them or time them. But they could jot down everything they saw.
"We'll find a prospect out of this," said Tony Yelovich, offensive line coach at Notre Dame. "This is a great idea."
About 150 schoolboys prospects took part in the day's workouts and most of them were from Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
The players were sent through six stations. They were weighed and measured at one; the bench-press was another. They ran a 20-yard shuttle drill and two 40-yard sprints. There was a vertical leap and a long jump.
Just a piece of meat?
"I don't feel like that at all," said Mark Swistak, a quarterback-running back from North Kingstown, R.I. "I think I'm getting more out of it than the coaches are. They're giving me the exposure; the publicity. If I do well, there's a chance for college someplace."
At stake for many of the schoolboys is a scholarship. For some it's an economic necessity.
"There's a certain prestige to winning scholarship; it's a goal in itself," said Swistak. "I sure could use one. I wouldn't have to work my way through school."