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The 2005 NFL Draft - by Zennie Abraham
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Thanks to Frank Supovitz, SVP of Special Events for the NFL, Greg Aiello, Vice President of Public Relations of the National Football League, and Leslie Hammond, VP of Media Relations for the NFL, I was able to cover the 2005 NFL Draft. Here's my account - Zennie Abraham, Chairman and CEO, Sports Business Simulations.
The 2005 NFL Draft - Interview
Bill Chachkes: 29-Year NFL Draft Veteran
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Bill Chachkes
Draftnik
If the term "Draftnik" were in the dictionary, next to it would be a photograph of this man. Of course, Chachkes would quickly correct you and say it should be the late Joel Buschbaum, but such honesty speaks to his character. However, the truth is that few at the NFL Draft can claim for have seen this meeting for almost 3 decades. Chachkes can.
How he came to be so closely associated with the NFL's annual player selection event can be traced to his grandfather and his father, Al Chachkes. "My grandfather been a season ticket holder of (New York) Giants games since 1937 at the Polo Grounds, Chackles said. "He was at the '58 Colts game. You know, the most famous game in NFL history. My father followed the Draft and became kind of a neighborhood football expert. He also knen someone who worked for the Giants, so he got preseason tickets and took us (Bill and the family)."
Bill's dad was such a fan of the New York Giants that he "used to write a lot of letters to (Giants President) George Young. Finally George Young would reply to my dad's letters. He also collected football magazines on the Giants. When he passed away in 1987, I wen to clean out his locker where he worked and found a huge stack of magazines. About 4 1/2 feet of them. You know it's funny. One year after his funeral, on Sunday Night Football, exactly to the day, LT (Giants Hall of Fame Linebacker Lawrence Taylor) had three sacks."
The Growth of Bill As A College Scout
Bill's first NFL draft was in 1974. "I was 14," he reported, "I was there as a fan. Bill became a member of the sports press the year his dad passed away, "I got my first press pass in 1987. They (the NFL) were very strict about what you did then; not so much now. I started going to drafts as a press person in my late 20s. We'd make this book on players we scouted and every year it just grew and grew. Finally and we started selling it; it got up to 168 pages We called it 'The Stadium Guide to Football.'"
Chachkes inherited a love of football statistics from his father and "my best friend, my younger brother. We started from nothing taping our own college game and evaluating players. I even had a computer system I created where people would respond to our message board."
Over time, Chachkes magazine At The Stadium Guide grew such that Chachkes and his business partners developed good relationships with several college coaches primarily in the Northeast. "We brought in John Murphy to help us with it, (he left ScoutingBureau.Com) and now he's my boss at NL Scouting. He doesn't act like a boss at all, but he's the boss. I scout games for him. I'll go to games I can drive to in the North East."
The Changing NFL Draft
When Bill started scouting players there were only a small population of people who focused on it. A small fraternity of which he was part. Now it's different.
"Aside from the fact that there's more advanced scouting," Chachkes observed, "the number of people who do what I do has grown. There are hundreds of publications and websites now. We don't look at just 40-times anymore -- we dig deeper now. It's much different. It's overblown. Russ Lande -- good guy -- and Gary Horton with the Sportiing News, tend to overanalyze."
He continued: "When you have a staff of guys like us, there's more passion -- you talk and argue because you have a passion for the game.
The Great Joel Buschbaum - His Mentor
The late Joel Buschbaum was widely considered the best evaluator of pro football tallent not to work for an NFL organization. From within the pages of Pro Football Weekly Bucschbaum crafted a reputation for complete analysis of every player, and more often than not his evaluations were accurate. This New Yorker had an influence on a generation of Draftniks, but none more so than Chachkes, due for the most part to the fact that they both live in New York, shared the same passion for evaluation, and saw the advantage of using personal computers in their work.
"Joel Buschbaum," Bill recalled, "He was the master, rest in peace. I met him in Brooklyn, and asked him for advice. He shared a lot. He had a great computer set up and said 'Bill, this is the future of our work, right here.' But he said, most of all, you really have to work hard. Because of his advice, we formed relationships with coaches and we learned how to talk with them. You don't just come out and ask them about a player. You get to know them as people and then you may inquire and you get the information. This is how I approached Bill Kenney, the offensive line coach at Penn State. He would tell me "You have a nonjudgmental style."
The NFL Draft's New Home
I asked Bill how he liked the NFL Draft's new home at Javitz Convention Center, and if the new site was better than the event's former home at Madison Square Garden (MSG). (For those of you who don't know, the Draft was moved from MSG to Javitz this year as the casualty of an ongoing and nasty political battle over the planned new stadium for the New York Jets and the New York 2012 Olympics Bid. (For more background on it, click here.) But is Javitz a better venue for the Draft? "When it was at the Garden, it was better than being held at the hotels (the Draft was staged at the Marriot Marquis Hotel before it moved to MSG in 1980). I thought it was a smart move to let the fans in for free, and I see they're not charging, still. There's more seating at Javitz -- not as much as I would have thought. I hope it stays here, but we'll see.
I'm Happy
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Bill's Always Full of Life
A Great Gig
Chachkes clearly loves being at the Draft. He's one of the more colorful personalities one can meet here. From telling jokes, good and bad, to striking up a conversation with security guards, ushers, press people, and anyone else with an ear, he obviously enjoys the scene. "It's very intense to be involved in Draft Day activities, he shared, "We don't just do this for the money. I have a full-time job as a teacher. I'm a coach. I fix peoples crashed Macintosh computers. I never expected to get rich (from Draft related work) so I'm happy."
back to Part One..
NFL Draft Part One
| NFL Draft Part Two
| NFL Draft Part Three
| NFL Draft Part Four
| NFL Draft Part Five
| NFL Draft Part Six
| NFL Draft Part Seven
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