FOOTBALL SCOUTING SOFTWARE QUESTIONS

Question: What exactly is meant by the term "football scouting"?

Answer: Scouting is a term that is used mostly by football coaches or to refer to what football coaches do to prepare to play an opponent. A "scout" is usually an assistant coach who, instead of attending his own team's game, travels to the site of the next week's opponent's game and "files a report" or hands in a videotape.

Question:  What is the main benefit of using football scouting software?

Answer:  This is a difficult question, because there are many benefits and every staff is different in their approach to scouting and game planning.

But, if pressed to pick one main benefit, it would have to be that a quality computer scouting program reveals information that would otherwise go un-noticed, and in turn, not considered when building a game plan and weekly practice plan for each opponent.

Question: What is the difference between Easy-Scout XP and Easy-Scout XP Plus?

Answer: Easy-Scout XP Plus is the latest version of our scouting and football game analysis software.  Easy-Scout XP Plus includes the features in Easy-Scout XP, its predecessor, and the Easy-Scout XP Analyzer in a single program that was designed to run on both Windows XP and Windows Vista.

Also, Easy-Scout XP Plus runs in Limited User accounts and no longer requires Administrator permission in order to run properly, which is increasingly difficult and often impossible in school environments.

Question: Can I enter the Ballcarrier and Receivers into Easy-Scout to determine who is carrying or receiving the ball, when, where, what formation, etc?

Answer:  Yes. This is possible in Easy-Scout XP, XP Plus and XP Professional. You can enter either or both the player numbers and player positions and the number is displayed in the play locator "grid" for an individual game.

Question: How can I remove or change some of the formations and plays (or Defensive Fronts, Coverages, Blitzes, etc) from the Intelligent Pick Lists that I no longer need or have entered incorrectly?

Answer: All Intelligent Pick Lists in our scouting software products are built dynamically - "on the fly" from the plays entered into the active data files. When a game is deleted, the formations, plays, fronts unique to that game are also deleted. This makes it possible to keep lists short and speeds up data entry.

In all versions of Easy-Scout XP, XP Plus and XP Professional, when all instances of a formation, play, etc are changed, the list for that item is automatically updated. The current versions of Easy-Scout XP Plus and Professional now include a Search and Replace function that dramatically reduces the time required to change and update items in Intelligent Lists.  

Question: Can I skip reports I don't want to print?

Answer: YES. In Easy-Scout XP Plus and Easy-Scout XP Professional, this is easy since you can select one or more individual reports, and you can create one or more "custom" Report Groups that contain ONLY those reports you want to print.

You can also use the "preconfigured" report groupings to shorten the list of reports and make it easier to select the ones you want.

One you select reports, they are run continuously. If you direct them to the screen first, you can choose to print or skip individual pages or reports.

Question: Can I move my scouting data between 2 or more computers so I can work on one at school and one at home?

Answer: Yes . Easy-Scout XP Plus and Professional have a built-in Export Game and Import Game utility to create (export) one or more files with one game per file, and then move the game(s) to the other computer where they can be imported.

Alternatively, the Backup and Restore function creates a copy of Game Data, Lists and Report Groups in the event that identical sets of data need to be maintained on two or more computers.

Question: Can I print reports to a file with your scouting software?

Answer: Yes.  You can either print reports to a PDF file with one of the ree "PDF printer" utilities (our favorite, CUTE PDF,  is discussed in The Coaches Advisor Journal). If you have Windows Vista or Windows 7, you also can use a format called XPS - which is built into the operating system and includes as the XPS Document Writer. Windows XP users can download a Free XPS Printer Utility.

PDF and XPS documents are far superior to printing to HTML,  as they create perfect renditions of the printed page and are easy to send to other coaches in an email attachment.

Question: How do I merge 3 games of the same opponent to get a composite printout.

Answer: You simply select the game(s) you want to merge into one report, select the reports you want to print and print them to the screen or printer.

Question: How does Easy-Scout Professional differ from Easy-Scout XP Plus?

Answer: Easy-Scout Professional is a video-enabled version of Easy-Scout XP Plus.  By video-enabled, we mean that in addition to being a powerful scouting application, it can "play" video and record information about it at the same time.  Easy-Scout Professional can also perform "random-access" playback of one or more plays from one or more games, either one at a time or in a group and produce cutups and highlights. For more details, view this comparison chart .

Question:  What reports include Ballcarrier and Receiver information?

Easy-Scout's reports display the Ballcarrier and Receiver "position". You can use the Ballcarrier and Receiver number to "pre-filter" the data by the player's number to determine, for example, if a team attempts to move a player around to run the ball on a specific play, catch the ball on a specific play, or create a matchup for some other reason.

For example, you can use the Player number to "filter" data then print reports that show the Plays used, Formations, Hash location, Field Position, etc. when a certain player was the Receiver or Ballcarrier.

Question:  How does Easy-Scout handle motion? Can I change the list?

Answer:  Motion can be handled a number of ways. Some coaches  prefer to include motion in the Formation name (such Pro I Zac - where Pro I is the formation and Zac stands for Z Across) and others enter the Motion Type, Player in Motion and Motion Direction separately from the Formation. The benefit of recording the motion is that it becomes possible to analyze motion with or without the formation.  (some coaches do both)

Question: I see Easy-Scout contains a list of different types of motion. Is there a definition of each type and is it possible to add my own?

Answer:  All versions of Easy-Scout have a default Motion list that includes a few motion types. Because every coach seems to have his own terminology for motion, it is both possible and very easy to modify this list of motion types, adding, removing and renaming them according to your own terminology.

The generalized list includes Long Motion - Wide Receiver goes from one side to the other; Short Motion - Wide Receiver motions to a slot or wing from a wide alignment ; Motion to the Backfield (also Zip motion) is Wing T type motion from Wing or Slot to the backfield ;
Reverse or Return motion - back starts one way and returns; Away from the center (also Peel Motion) - a back motions to a wing/slot or wide receiver.

ADDITIONAL QUESTIONS

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