Pete Williams, "The Draft" author: Mr. Media Interview Pete Williams is a journalist and author whom I have known and been friendly with for several years. But I didn’t ask him to do a Mr. Media interview simply because we are buddies so much as I think that his recent book, The Draft, a Year Inside the NFL’s Search for Talent, was an overlooked sports journalism classic from 2006 that more people should be exposed to.

Pete, who is a long-time fitness enthusiast and journalist, is a regular contributor to Men’s Health magazine and has written a number of sports-related books, some as sole author, others, such as the Core Performance series, with Mark Verstegen. Their third book, Core Performance - Endurance, written for runners, cyclists, swimmers, and triathletes, was released in January 2007, and Core Performance – Golf is slated for 2008.

Pete also has an interesting private life that in the last year has become an open secret. He is a practicing nudist. I say it’s an open secret because Pete is the co-host, along with Sabrina Vizzari, of “The Fitness Buff,” a weekly radio show that combines two of his interests – physical fitness and nudity.

I don’t think this will be a dull interview.


BOB ANDELMAN: Pete, I have to ask: are you clothed or unclothed for the interview?

WILLIAMS: I am dressed, but as we are conducting this interview, I do have "The Fitness Buff" show later in the day from Paradise Lakes, so I guess I have to get in that mindset sooner or later.

ANDELMAN: All right, and we will come back and talk about that, but I just thought it would be kind of weird, and I was hoping whether you were clothed or not clothed you would just say clothed. So, that aside, let’s talk about your book, The Draft. What prompted you to write it?

WILLIAMS: Bob, I have always been fascinated by the NFL draft process and why there is so much interest in it, because if you think about it, it’s a pretty boring television show, and that is certainly what Pete Rozelle, an NFL commissioner, thought way back when when ESPN came to him and said, hey, we would like to televise what is essentially a two-day business meeting of a bunch of guys sitting around calling out names. I think your fantasy football draft was televised. That’s essentially what it is, but a cottage industry has emerged, and thirty-five million people tune in to some portion of the draft, which is phenomenal. It’s one of the highest-rated programs, cable or otherwise, in the month of April every year, and so I was fascinated not just by that phenomenon but how teams actually evaluated talent. You would watch, and you would see some guy you never heard of from Southeast North Dakota State go in the second round and then some guy who finished third or fourth in the Heisman Trophy balloting not get drafted at all. I was just real curious how teams evaluated talent, and I learned it’s a year long process that has a lot of machinations to it. There is a calendar, there is almost a draft season, really, that starts right after the final bowl game with players preparing and then, of course, all the evaluations, which have been going on for six months prior to that, and then I was also curious as to how agents recruit these players. It all seemed a little shady, to say the least, and I wanted to learn more about that process. Finally, I wanted to find out how the players and the colleges dealt with all this, because they have this onslaught of interest both from NFL scouts and the agents on campus and how they made sense of it all, so I had those four parties, and I wanted to spend a calendar year, well, not a calendar year but indeed a year, from May 1st to April 30th, showing how all of this takes place.

ANDELMAN: So it was almost a real-time project.

WILLIAMS: Yeah, it really was. I didn’t start on May 1st, although I guess I started doing the legwork, but certainly in the summer of 2004 was when I really started talking to agents and later the Atlanta Falcons and rounding up some players, and so in that sense, yeah, no doubt.

ANDELMAN: I think what you say is true. You think about a two-day show that just shows people being drafted, and that sounds about as exciting as burnt toast. We have known each other a while, and I knew why you were working on the book, and I like to watch a football game. That’s the extent of my interest. I don’t get involved in fantasy football, and so I thought, well, you know, as a friend and as someone who wants to support you, I am going to read the book, but I wasn’t really expecting a lot, but the thing I loved about the book was, it really got into, I mean, you really took us behind the scenes. You painted a picture, you lifted the curtain, it is just a fascinating… It’s a lot of great anecdotes, it’s a lot of great insight and color. One of the things I was wondering about is how did you arrange all the access that you had? And at times, it seemed like you were in twelve places at once, and I know that is just the quality of the writing, but you know, you make the reader feel that, but how did you get the access that you had?





WILLIAMS: Well, it was kind of insane with the travel. I remember there was a stretch in March of 2005 where I think I was in six hotel rooms in six nights. It was really a testament not so much to my own diligence but the access and the willingness that a lot of these parties had to let me into their lives, and I think for the most part, I have always found as a journalist, if you explain to people that what you are doing is trying to explain the process, I think they get that, for the most part. In other words, you are not doing some exposé, although to some degree, there is a bit of that in The Draft, but I think people just like anyone in life, if people ask you about what you do, people are happy to explain that, and they are interested in doing so, and so I am not saying… Heck, as a journalist, I have been blown off hundreds if not thousands of times, I am under no delusions there, but for the most part, the people I approached, whether they were agents, players, ultimately the people at the Atlanta Falcons, and the colleges that I focused on for the most part were very receptive, surprisingly receptive, and the other thing I found is that a lot of this process is remarkably open. Now, you watch the NFL Combine, which is now on the NFL Network quite extensively, that process is virtually media lockdown to the media. I think you probably could get better access to the Bush White House, but the Senior Bowl and some of the Pro Days and a number of the other elements to this are remarkably wide open. In fact, the Senior Bowl, which is the premier post-season college bowl game, I found had the greatest media access of any event I have ever covered. The reporters, and there aren’t that many that actually go, they wear the same credentials that Jerry Jones wears around, so that access and so, but that aside, it really took a leap of faith from a number of people, including agents, players, and most notably, the Atlanta Falcons.

ANDELMAN: Are there any stories or anecdotes you can share about the story behind the story, about how you got a certain story or the lengths that you had to go to to get an interview or find something out?

WILLIAMS: Yeah. There is no doubt I had to spend a lot of time just camping out in places. The Falcons, for instance, Rich McKay in Atlanta and previously in Tampa, is known for being about as media-receptive as they come. However, I think he did have some reservations about this, unlike, say, Michael Lewis writing the book Moneyball, who had extremely unlimited access with the Oakland A’s, Rich kind of picked and chose at times, and that was fine. On balance, I got what I needed, but boy, there were a couple of times I went to Flowery Branch, which is their headquarters north of Atlanta, and I couldn’t get through to anyone there, so that was a little frustrating at times, but given some of the lengths I have had to go through in my career for interviews, certainly in covering major league baseball, this wasn’t that bad.

ANDELMAN: Well, I know you have been sort of my go-to person when I have needed to interview someone on the football side, and you have been very blunt about it’s very hard to get these guys. They are generally not readily available outside of on game day when they have to be.

WILLIAMS: The NFL likes to paint a picture of itself as remarkably media-friendly, and the way they do that is by sending out literally about fifty press releases a day, and they do a phenomenal job of creating the myth of the NFL. You look at it compared to baseball, and we have the Mark McGwire situation; he will never get into the Hall of Fame, whereas in football, you have Shawne Merriman suspended for four games for using steroids, for definitely using steroids. I mean, we assume Mark McGuire did, but we don’t know for certain, and that’s not even a blip on the radar screen in terms of national media coverage, that Shawne Merriman was suspended for twenty-five percent of this year’s NFL season, so the NFL does a phenomenal job of, I dare say, controlling the media, but the way it worked for me is that the two players I ultimately focused on in the book, Fred Gibson, coming out of the University of Georgia, and Chris Canty, coming out of Virginia, they were not NFL players. In fact, they weren’t really college players, they were done with that, so they were just two guys, two individuals, that I could negotiate for access, if you will, and they were remarkably receptive.




ANDELMAN: Have you heard from any of the people that you focused on in the book since publication about how it may have affected them or their response to having that aspect of their lives written about?

WILLIAMS: You know, Bob, I have gotten remarkably little feedback first-hand from any of the central characters in the book. Now, as a journalist, I know that if people are really ticked off, they will call you about it. If they liked it or they are neutral, you are never going to hear from them, and that’s fine. I have heard through third parties that Jack Scharf, one of the three agents I focused on, wasn’t too pleased with it, and actually, he told a couple people that he blamed me and the book for not landing many, in fact, no clients for the 2006 draft, which I found interesting, because the book itself didn’t come out until late February, and by then, everyone had signed their players six weeks earlier.

ANDELMAN: So you think you gave him a convenient scapegoat?

WILLIAMS: Perhaps. Jack was remarkably forthcoming to me, and Jack is a bit of, has a bit of swagger to him, has a bit of arrogance to him, and I think he… He never told me this was off the record or anything like that, but I think in hindsight, he probably said, you know, I probably came across as a little too brash for my own good.

ANDELMAN: Well, you know, some guys have to see that happen before they realize how they actually sound.

WILLIAMS: Yeah. There is no question. That happens in journalism all the time, and I certainly wasn’t the first guy to interview Jack Scharf and not the last.

ANDELMAN: Now, did anyone significant, of great significance decline to participate that left you a little frustrated?

WILLIAMS: You know, in the acknowledgements, the only person who categorically turned me down was Drew Rosenhaus, and in hindsight, I think Drew’s story has been told enough, and I don’t think… He was never going to be a central figure in the book, but I did want to talk to him about various things, as I did, boy, more than a dozen agents at length, and even though I only focused on three, and I was never envisioning Drew as one of those three, he was the only guy.

ANDELMAN: Do you think Drew, who has historically had a problem of opening his mouth too much, may have decided this was the point at which to contain his thoughts?

WILLIAMS: I think, if anything, Drew said he was writing his own book on the NFL draft. Drew never turns down a media opportunity when it can help him, and remarkably, he is very media accessible. Drew does not have an assistant. Everybody has Drew’s cell number. It’s very easy to get Drew on the phone, but to sit down with Drew for any length of time is difficult because he doesn’t have an assistant. He does everything himself with two cell phones, so it is difficult for anybody, I think, to talk to Drew for more than five or ten minutes.

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© 2007 by Bob Andelman. All rights reserved.

Labels: college football, Core Performance, Mark Verstegen, NFL Draft, nudist, Paradise Lakes, Pete Williams, Sabrina Vizzari, The Draft

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