Bills scout is living the dream
Persistence pays off for draft guru
Buffalo Bills college scout Brian Fisher can relate to the long-shot NFL prospects who dream of getting a call during this weekend’s NFL draft.
Fisher was about as long a shot as you could get in the world of football scouting.
The 33-year-old Michigan native, in his second year with the Bills, is a worthy inspiration to all of the amateur Mel Kipers out there who eat, drink and sleep the draft.
“He does have an eye for the business, a knack,” said Tom Modrak, the Bills’ vice president of college scouting, who hired Fisher. “And he does pay attention to detail and has a great work ethic.”
Fisher never played college football. He graduated from a college, Oakland University in Michigan, that doesn’t even have a team. No one in his family worked in the football business. He never interned with any NFL team. He did not know a single person in major college football or the NFL when he graduated from college in 2002 and set to work in earnest on his goal of becoming an NFL scout.
For five years, from 2002 through ’07, Fisher worked his day job as a financial analyst for a bank. At night he would study tapes of college football games and write up his own reports on the top 100 or so prospects in the country.
No professional scout ever sat down with him and told him how to write scouting reports. No one from the NFL ever gave him a clinic on what to watch for when evaluating players at each position.
Yet his reports, sent unsolicited to teams, began to put him on the radar screen of NFL teams.
“I had seen his reports for a couple years,” Modrak said. “I liked his work. The firmness and the willingness to put yourself out there on guys was something that stood out. There are players who have great reputations, and it’s easy to go with the buzz on them. He didn’t do that. My sense was, he’s going to do it the way he sees it, and that’s all you can ask of a scout.”
Fisher played running back for his high school football team in Clawson, Mich. He tried to walk on to the Division I team at Eastern Michigan, but realized quickly that his 5-foot-7 stature would prevent him from pursuing a playing career. It didn’t matter. He had his heart set on being a scout long before.
“This was my goal, this was something I’ve wanted since I was 15 years old,” Fisher said. “I’ve always just loved the game of football, whether it was playing it, watching it, talking to coaches.
“I wanted to soak up as much as I could from anyone and everyone. . . . If I came across anyone, it was exciting and fascinating to me to just sit and talk football, whether it was coaches collegiately or in high school.”
Fisher started writing letters to NFL teams about his interest in being a scout as soon as he left high school.
Once he earned a college degree in finance from Oakland and got a fulltime job, he began his at-home scouting in earnest.
With two VCRs running, he would tape every game possible on television. He would attend as many college games on Saturdays in and around Michigan as he could. And he would spend pretty much every evening studying tape. How often would he stay up past midnight watching tapes?
“It was common,” Fisher laughs. Fisher is grateful to his wife, Nicole, for being so supportive. His fulltime “hobby,” after all, wasn’t bringing in any money.
“My wife is an incredible woman,” he said. “This is something her and I did as a team. She couldn’t have been more supportive.”
While Fisher would write up reports on 100-plus prospects every year, he would tailor his reports to specific teams.
“In the end, it’s do you think this guy can play?” he said. “What are his traits, positive and negative. What is it that he can do that can help? That’s going to vary from scheme to scheme. That involves an understanding of team’s schemes. That only comes from being around the game, watching as much as you can. I would write individual things for different teams. I might write 30 players for one team and 25 for another.”
Fisher had gotten enough positive feedback from teams by 2005 and ’06 that he sensed his goal was not a pipe dream. In January 2007, he got in his Chrysler minivan and made a 1,000- mile, 16-hour drive to the Senior Bowl in Mobile, Ala., where numerous NFL personnel executives had agreed to meet him.
Fisher is reluctant to name names. He talked with personnel men for about six teams. Modrak was one of them.
“Going down to the Senior Bowl, I knew I was very close, just from the way people talked; the feedback I received,” Fisher said.
When an opening occurred in July 2007, the Bills hired him.
“He was persistent,” Modrak said. “He showed enthusiasm and want-to, and his reports were good — before-the- fact reports, not after-the-fact reports. He was in the right place at the right time, and we’re glad he was available.”
Fisher scouts about 40 colleges, in the Midwest, on the West Coast and in the Dallas area. He’s one of nine fulltime members of the Bills’ college scouting operation.
He is living the dream.
“To do this job you have to have a very strong passion for the game of football,” Fisher said. “A tremendous amount of time is involved. We travel constantly. But you do it because you love it.”
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