Up Close In Personnel with Alex Brown

Up Close in Personnel is back after five years — and this time it’s the definitive playbook for front offices across college football.

Host Alex Brown opens Season 5 with the full story: 17 years in football, from volunteering at the bottom at Houston to Director of Recruiting at Rice, GM at SMU, Director of Player Personnel at Ole Miss, and Mid-South area scout for the Atlanta Falcons. Then, the day after the draft, he ...

Heading into Week 3 of College Football, we are joined by a repeat visitor in Carina Hargreaves - Director of On-Campus Recruiting for Georgia Tech!

In her last appearance on Up Close In Personnel for Episode 12 - "Inside The Process Of Coordinating Campus Visits", Carina talked through her personal journey in the world of college football, her football background and how she approaches setting up recruiting visits! This week, we ...

Week 1 across the country is HERE for college football! This week we're joined by my good friend, Bryan Carrington - Offensive Quality Control Analyst with the USC Fighting Trojans!

Since his last appearance on the show for Episode 1 - "Building Relationships with College Recruiters", Bryan made the move from recruiting at UT to coaching running backs at USC in Los Angeles! We discuss how he made the move, how he's advanced his fo...

It's fall camp for football teams across the country (and games have started for some high school teams as well)! With that being the case, I decided to bring in my first scouting mentor - Russ Lande to talk about his scouting process!

Notes for the next couple of episodes will be sparse due to the business of this time, but this is one episode you'll need a pen and paper nearby! We talk through Russ' approach to teaching the art ...

Joining the show this week, Zach Brandon with the Diamondbacks breaks down his job as the Mental Skills Coordinator and unpacks what his role is in the team building process.

From the selection process in the MLB Draft to on-boarding and player development, Zach explains why mental skills are more important than ever to identify, train and develop. Physical ability sets the bar of what we can achieve, but mental skills are what al...

We've all known that NIL rules would be coming into effect for quite some time and now that the time has arrived here in July of 2021, I figured it was time to bring in an expert to weigh in!

For those unfamiliar, NIL (which stands for "name, image and likeness") now allows athletes to capitalize on their name, image and likeness in ways previously not allowed. Players are able to seek marketing representation or advisory, partici...

Stepping to the stage this week is one of the most inspiring people you will meet. Jake Langi may appear on the peripheral to just be another recruiting analyst at a blue-blood, power-five program.

That blanket statement could not be further from the truth. Overcoming setbacks after high school, serious health concerns following the birth of his son, to being overlooked while at Texas State, Jake kept his head down and did the lon...

Joined by nobody but yours truly, I decided to take a solo venture for my return episode in recapping a busy, wild and fun month of June recruiting!

Now on episode 50 of the show, eclipsing 10,000 downloads and heading into a brief summer break, this was my way of letting you all inside my mind for once. From talking through the context of how unique and rare this time period has been, to the inner workings of unofficial visits, o...

Joined this week by one of my former players - Brandon Wilson, a kick returner extraordinaire and defensive back for the Cincinnati Bengals - we talk through his football career to date and walks through pivotal moments along his journey.

Becoming a father during the pandemic and fighting to prove his worth to the Bengals in the final year of his rookie contract, we started out by discussing the challenges and stresses that the 20...

As we head into a new year on the show, I've decided to circle back with previous guests of the show that have risen to new roles since their last appearance.

Last week we checked up on Eric Galko and his new gig with the Shrine Bowl (click here to listen to that episode), and now we shift gears back to college recruiting and Gaizka Crowley!

Gaizka, who last appeared on the episode 8 to talk about the differences between FCS and ...

In an encore performance, Eric Galko (previously featured on Ep. 26 of the show) breaks down his new exciting position as Director of Football Operations and Player Personnel with the East-West Shrine Game!

Getting the shrine game was always a target of Eric's for more than just the football aspect, as a premiere all-star event for NFL scouts but primarily for its impact on the community and the Shriner's Hospital.

As Eric details ...

With the 2021 NFL Draft in the books, I decided to get my good friend - Matt Waldman on the show to discuss his process as an evaluator and how he's developed his craft in scouting.

Whether you're working at the high school, college or pro levels of football, we all must be able to identify, evaluate and project talent to an extent.

Matt, a former aspiring musician, writer and call center director, put the lessons he learned in t...

Draft weekend is finally here and this was a phenomenal episode with insights from longtime NFL coach, Wade Phillips on the draft process! From career advice, to team building, evaluating and war room stories, there's so much to take away from this episode.

From a topic standpoint, we talked about how Coach sustained success for such a long period of time, how he approaches players and scheme, his University of Houston playing day...

For Episode 44, the second in our NFL Draft series for season #3, it was an honor and privilege to have a former NFL General Manager on the other end of the call! Mike Tannenbaum, former NFL executive, current NFL Front Office insider for ESPN and founder of The 33rd Team joined the show to share his insights on team building and the NFL Draft!

Boiling down his former role behind the wheel of a couple NFL franchises, Mike dropped ...

In a repeat appearance, we are fortunate to have the likes of Dane Brugler jump on air with us to talk through a STACKED 2021 NFL Draft class of quarterbacks!

This episode will kick off season 3 for "Up Close In Personnel with Alex Brown," and the goal is to spotlight evaluating and scouting around the NFL Draft from a variety of bright minds and perspectives across the league! Stay tuned for more draft-centric content as we near ...

In this episode with returning guest - Ed Jones, we take a deep dive into what player development looks like from the structure and programming, all the way down to specific examples and success stories of former student athletes he's worked with!

Generational impact is the foundation of the "Beyond The Field" Program, and we start things off with what inspired Ed to launch the program publicly and help so many player development ...

As I thought about this week's podcast, I realized we hadn't yet covered the wide world of special teams and recruiting specialists!

Quoting the great Rich Eisen, "Punters are people too!" and we intend to cover all things related to recruiting on this show.

Breaking down the recruiting process and more specifically what college recruiters look for in kickers, we are joined by Rice's Special Teams Graduate Assistant - Brett Arkel...

The first person to give me a shot in college football recruiting, Adrian Mayes to this day is one of closest friends and mentors in the industry!

In this week's show, we take a deep dive into the mindset Adrian had when he took over the recruiting department at the University of Houston and peel back the layers of his approach to recruiting!

Starting off the show, we discussed what Adrian looked for when hiring interns. As he pr...

Joined by my good friend and former colleague, Vincent Marshall, this episode is as good as it gets in terms of recruiting knowledge!

A big takeaway from the show is Vincent's genuine approach to life and football.

Starting off the day with a positive tweet, getting into the office at 4:30am and being authentic in building relationships with players and coaches, his approach is one we all can learn from.

To kick the show off, he...