Behind the Scenes at the exclusive Collective Invitational with NFL, college coaches

WESTLAKE VILLAGE, Calif. – The invitation comes without stipulation and only by recommendation not representation.

NFL and college front office luminaries – Seattle Seahawks President/General Manager John Schneider, assistant G.M. Nolan Teasley and USC G.M. Chad Bowden – join coaches from all levels. Some 30 to 40 NFL coaches, another two dozen college staffers and select high school leaders, such as Providence Catholic (Chicago) skipper Tyler Planz.

There’s an agenda of events, chalk talks and panel sessions and NFL coaches teaching star prep prospects, for the weekend in this northwest Los Angeles enclave, but really there’s only one purpose: grow careers.

“After speaking with [an attendee], I was moved by what he shared,” Richmond Flowers, founder of Collective Sports Advisors and QB Collective, tells FootballScoop. “He’s been to nearly every major football convention over the past six to seven years — from the SEC (Meetings) to AFCA — and yet he said this was the most impactful and most unique coaching event he’s ever attended.

“That means something; not just as a compliment, but because it reflects our true intent. At Collective, we don’t run events to promote our brand. We create environments to honor the commitment we make to our clients — to help them grow, to connect them with the right people, and to build a career rooted in development, access, and authenticity.”

Hours after attendees are shuttled to and from the famed Hollywood Bowl for a chill evening of twangy Americana music, Billy Strings and Bob Dylan and, finally, 92-year-old Willie Nelson strumming for the sold-out crowd, the cacophony of forks on plates, murmured conversations and coffee being poured serve as de facto play-calls this Saturday morning.

With coaches trickling in from the breakfast buffet line to Vista Room A in this Mediterranean-styled hotel, Schneider is preparing for the type of transparent question-and-answer session with NFL Network’s Tom Pelissero that could sell out a theater.

Among the NFL’s longest-tenured GMs with 15 seasons and counting, Schneider dishes on interview myths and realities in seeking an NFL leader – he’s just 15 months beyond his hiring of head coach Mike Macdonald – as well as some of the sport’s seminal changes since his arrival in the League as a Green Bay Packers scout in 1993.

A coach in the room wants to know how much emphasis Schneider & Co. place the fabled “coach’s book”: the bible … er binder that is a coach’s blueprint for his program. 

“We had extremes two years ago,” shares Schneider, who also notes that Seattle’s forward-thinking approach allows it to have nearly 20 employees involved in the interview process due to their completion of NFL-mandated training. "We had guys, shit, we had one guy detailed all the way to the time we are getting our rings and the Super Bowl parade, where we’d line up.

“It’s important to be able to show you have plan, ‘I have it, I want to be able to show you what it looks like philosophically and structurally.’ It is important, but having it with you … being able to verbalize it is just as important.”

He adds, “If you don’t have it with you, it looks poor.”

Schneider goes on to share with the room what his/Seattle’s non-negotiables are in the hiring process; how they conduct their evening dinner with candidates; lessons he still carries with him from Andy Reid, an early mentor in Green Bay; evaluating offensive linemen in a new era of play and rules at that position; which way personnel tends to lean when it’s an evaluation between an SEC prospect and another conference.

With Pelissero moderating, Schneider commands the room for an hour-plus – questions at time coming in rapid succession – before ceding the floor to Bowden, the college general manager wunderkind at USC who’s FootballScoop’s reigning personnel ace of the year and orchestrator of the Trojans’s consensus No. 1 recruiting class.

Similarly, Bowden is dropping the veil and dispensing with such candor that soon there’s toilet paper discussion.

Yes, T.P. has a spot in this everything-on-the-table – or, in the bowl – coaches’ conversation.

“Really, while I was at Notre Dame, I started to dip more of what I was doing in other roles,” says Bowden, son of former MLB G.M. Chad Bowden and trying to become the first college football personnel expert to build three College Football Playoff rosters after helping do so at Cincinnati and Notre Dame. “Obviously, the dynamic at Notre Dame was a lot different. Marcus has his hands on everything, and so I learned that more as me helping Marcus was helping the program. 

“This role, there’s a lot more that I have my hands on. When I think about where the GM is going at the college level, you’re involved in strength, nutrition; I got new toilet paper in our locker room. I got Charmin soft in there so we don’t have itchy asses.”

All, Bowden says, because “every aspect of the program, I’m working hand in hand with our head coach Lincoln Riley and to make sure the program is moving in the right avenue.”

With some NFL experience from a stint with the Miami Dolphins and actual coaching chops from work as a defensive quality control assistant at Cincinnati as well as a Cincinnati-area prep program, Bowden candidly discusses the evolution of the college general manager’s role – and why he still carries with him lessons from his old boss and reigning Paul “Bear” Bryant Coach of the Year, Marcus Freeman. 

Context on the comments underscore the Bowden persona; he’s ineffably deliberate in all he does – from massively stoking the already incendiary USC-Notre Dame rivalry since his departure from the Irish less than a week after the CFP title-game loss to his willingness to give a public nod to Freeman, a groomsman in his wedding last summer. 

“Really, while at Notre Dame, I started to dip more of what I was doing into other roles,” says Bowden, a driving force in Notre Dame’s present defensive nucleus of edge Bryce Young, linebacker Kyngstonn Viliamu-Asa and defensive back Leonard Moore, all three already conjuring NFL projections. “Obviously, the dynamic at Notre Dame was a lot different. Marcus has his hands on everything and so I learned that more as me helping Marcus was helping our organization. 

“So much in college is going on for these head coaches, go meet with a donor, script practice, then coaching, then academics. There’s so much going on that It’s hard for just one guy to do it. It’s why I think this GM job is going to turn into a guy that has to oversee every aspect of the program.”

Bowden, previously an L.A. resident and playing the villainous role of arsonist while declaring Riley “the best recruiting coach I’ve been around,” also directly pays homage among this elite coterie of football’s elite to Freeman. 

“Team success leads to individual success,” Bowden says in a nod to Freeman’s “Team Glory” mantra. “We need guys and we need coaches willing to put the team first.”

Which is why Bowden pumps the brakes on too much disclosure in this room. 

Xs and Os might be open for frank discussion; Bowden, whose staff sand volleyball games or pickleball matches extending into darkness in South Bend are still the stuff of lore, doesn’t dare risk yielding a trade secret in a room that includes those college coaches that Bowden knows he might someday be recruiting – or, more critically – negotiating against.

“My true belief is that I don’t care what comes out [House Settlement-wise], I’m going to get the money to the players,” says Bowden, speaking at the event after spending some half-dozen hours in an L.A. hospital with his wife, Ava, the day to be with the family of a USC player during his surgery. “That’s why I’m at USC.

“We have various models similar to the NFL, positions and players [on a pay-scale]. We do have a system in place, one that will alleviate issues in the locker room. I think that’s most important, because these kids talk [about how much money they’re making].”

Mike Willis, the former wunderkind offensive coordinator at Princeton with Ivy League titles under his belt directing the offense at his alma mater, is entering his second season as head coach at FCS program Marist. Name, Image and Likeness pervades all areas of collegiate athletics, but less so for Willis.

Still, he’s a first-time Collective Invitational attendee who doesn’t know what to expect entering the weekend, only that he’s going to enhance his football chops.

“I knew very little about the Collective other than I had seen some of the work they had done in the QB coaching space, I’m friendly with some of their QB trainers and coaches like Will Hewlett, someone I admire in that realm,” Willis, whose representation is with another agency but that doesn’t preclude his inclusion in the exclusive event, tells FootballScoop. “I was interested in going to learn and share in football, networking with others and expanding a network of great coaches whose paths could cross. 

“Once at the event, I was very impressed by the caliber of people, from NFL all the way down to FCS like myself and high school. I took a lot away from those speaker presentations, like Chad Bowden at USC. He did a really great job of talking about his perspective and where he sees college football going.”

Bowden does bare his soul on a logistical change he’s implementing at USC that he believes inevitably translates to the field in the fall.

“I made an adjustment to where Friday, Saturday and Sunday our coaches are home,” Bowden says of the collegiate recruiting trail. “We will win more games if Coach Riley is happier at home. I believe that. I call it D.F.D. Dance factor dads. It was big for our coordinators, I want them home. 

“This past year, I really credit Coach Freeman for getting the coaches out of the office [and home]. He was adamant about it. Seeing that, seeing how important it is to go home, I think Coach Riley is doing a phenomenal job of that right now.”

Following Ken Niumatalolo’s brilliant keynote on leadership, the NFL coaches and personnel shuttle to nearby Agoura High School for a film session and eventual instruction with the elite prep quarterbacks, including five-star Ohio State commitment Brady Edmunds, and offensive linemen, including Notre Dame pledge Gregory Patrick.

Here, however, everyone in attendance is witness to a resonant life lesson from San Francisco 49ers offensive line coach Chris Foerster. 

“I’m the idiot who posted myself online doing stupid shit and got myself fired,” says Foerster, addressing head-on the way his blockers confront defenders the infamous video of his illegal drug use during his stint coaching the Miami Dolphins’ offensive line. “Ended up in rehab for treatment; no money, no contract, no job. Nobody wants to return a phone call, and they shouldn’t! 

“The fact I have a job today is by the grace of God and the goodness of somebody’s heart because there’s no reason, with what I did, that I should be coaching football right now and having this opportunity to talk to you! Like I have something to say. I can sure tell you how NOT to do things. … 

“I can also tell you how to do the things that I do believe in, that I trust and believe in the stuff.”

In an exclusive conversation with FootballScoop, Foerster – entering his seventh season with the 49ers following his yearlong absence from the sport – continues the transparency.

“Talking to people on a real level, it is uncomfortable for me,” says Foerster, volunteering a third time at The Collective. “That’s kind of how I look at life, now. What Richmond did for me was step in for me. Not to just say that he’s my friend, but live it out.

“There’s a whole bunch of ‘I’m sorrys,’ and you have to live those out. This whole thing of dealing and working with others is a huge part of life for me.”

Or, as Foerster tells the crowd, “When Richmond and I started talking, when I blew my life up, the agency he was with wanted him to cut me. We started talking about the Collective at that time.” 

Flowers standing in the trench with Foerster is a foundational pillar in Flowers’ now-powerhouse agency that reps some 60 NFL coaches, several of them head men. It’s a group that is aggressively ramping up into the college landscape, notably signing Bowden earlier this year despite Bowden’s pursuit from myriad other shops. 

“It means a ton, obviously, to have this opportunity; Rich stood by me through thick and thin,” says Foerster. “Just obviously that loyalty piece is something important. 

“I just want to help other people become better, because I’ve been given a second chance and partially because the San Francisco 49ers, from ownership to management to the head coach (Kyle Shanahan) to want to do this thing. You’ve gotta make the most of second chances.”

Therein strikes to the essence of why Flowers does this event. It’s why a guy like Peter Hansen is back for the second time in three years, joining the event in Las Vegas in 2023; he flies cross-country both times to lend a hand.

“I love it, and you never know where these coaches are going to end up the next couple of years or where anybody is,” Hansen, a former two-sport star at Arizona who owns stints in college as well as on staff with the 49ers, Broncos and now the Panthers. “Now that their network is my network or potentially is, you know, things can change. You can bounce back and forth [between college and pro] or they could end up up here. It’s just more people you know.

“I really see young guys, having coached at all three levels, I see the coaching part being very similar and it’s just maybe what their background is. If I’m going to give a coaching point, I’ll deliver it the same way and so, I get similar gratification with the older guys that maybe adopt an idea that I gave them just as much as giving it to a high school kid. I kind of don’t want to say this renews anything, because I get it everyday, anyway.”

So Flowers, black jeans, black shirt, a trucker hat, handlebar mustache and cowboy boots, doesn’t change. The event is the event is the event. Because of the people. 

“Here’s the truth: we don’t represent every great coach,” Flowers emphasizes to FootballScoop. “We try. But we’d be lying if we said we represent all the great minds in the game.

“So, no — we’re not worried about other agencies being mad that we invited their clients. This isn’t a poaching event. If we only invited our own clients, it would contradict everything we stand for. This is about building the future of football by bringing together the best minds in the sport. Period.”

His own path into the NFL ecosystem hardly linear following playing days first at Duke and then with an 86-catch final collegiate season at Chattanooga, Flowers leans into what lies ahead. 

“Gatekeeping doesn’t help us shape the future. It slows it down,” he says. “We believe a rising tide lifts all ships, and that when great coaches meet other great coaches — when ideas cross-pollinate — everyone gets better. And ultimately, the game gets better.

“That’s why you saw coaches from every level, every background, and yes — even from other agencies. That’s unheard of in our business, but that’s how we’ll stay true to our mission. Other agencies push engineered hires within their own rosters. They put their business first. We put our coaches first. Always.”

Thus, despite sharing the ecosystem he continues to curate, Flowers delivers a parting missive. 

“We’re building a network, not a roster,” Flowers adds. “A culture, not a clique. 

“That’s what Collective is about. And we won’t change."