Easy-Scout, like all computer software, began as an idea - this one for an inexpensive and easy-to-use personal computer application that could reveal a Football team's "offensive tendencies". At the time, mainframe-based "scouting" programs were typically only available to College and Professional football teams. Scouting data input required using "punch-cards", paying service bureaus and often waiting 24 hours or more for the results. This was the era of 16mm "game film", in-person "scouting" and "breaking down" game film by hand. It was also the very early days of the personal computer revolution, when the Apple II and IBM PC were considered to be the "State of the Art".
As one of the first football scouting software applications for personal computers, Easy-Scout traces its origins to the computer lab at Susquehanna University in Selinsgrove, PA during the school's history-making 1983 Football season. Early the following year (1984), the first commercially available version of Easy-Scout (for Apple II computers) was completed in nearby Lewisburg, PA and soon was published by CompuSports, which had relocated to Frederick, MD. A version of Easy-Scout for analyzing Defenses (Easy-D-Scout) and an IBM-compatible version of each program were released the following year (1985).
Easy-Scout contributed a number of innovations to football scouting software in early 1984. From the very first version, Easy-Scout enabled a football coach to use his own words and "terminology" to categorize an Offense's formations and plays. Prior to Easy-Scout, football scouting "programs" required either structured naming procedures or cryptic "coding" procedures and usually both ! Easy-Scout also included what we later came to refer to as "intelligent default values" - the pre-filling of the Down, Distance and Field Position based on the result of the previous play.
Many early adopters of "football scouting" software, particularly at the High School level, enjoyed a "competitive edge" from this new "tool" for collecting, managing, and revealing "tendencies". Like the computers they ran on (and in some ways were limited by), early versions of Easy-Scout and Easy-D-Scout were "text-based" programs and relied on printed reports for their output.
As computers evolved, so too did Easy-Scout. Major new versions of Easy-Scout were released in 1996 (Easy-Scout / Easy-D-Scout for Windows), 1998 (Self-Scout for Windows), 2002 (Easy-Scout XP) and 2007 (Easy-Scout XP Plus and Professional). In addition to being easier to use, the Windows-based versions that debuted in 1996 added on-screen analysis capabilities and additional reports, while streamlining tendency reporting at the same time. Self-Scout was the first version to combine Offensive and Defensive tendency reporting in a single application, and Easy-Scout XP (and later) Easy-Scout XP Plus and Professional significantly improved the application's data analysis capabilities. Easy-Scout XP was the third "rewrite" of Easy-Scout in 10 years, and remains the most successful version in Easy-Scout's history.
It was not until computerized Digital video became practical (and somewhat stable) - nearly 20 years after the first version of Easy-Scout was released, that video editing and video analysis tools were added to Easy-Scout's data collection, reporting and analysis capabilities. Easy-Scout XP Professional made it possible to watch video on the computer while recording tendency information. Then, with a game's plays categorized and "indexed", it became possible to retrieve and "watch" specific plays or groups of plays and even create digital video "cutups" in the form of smaller, "standalone" video files.
Entering the world of Digital Video was not without its challenges, however, and soon proved to be a "double edged sword" when DVD's replaced VHS tape as the dominant video recording and playback medium of the day. DVDs were convenient, but less than ideal for video editing. In fact, most DVD video had to be "captured" or the DVD had to be "ripped", in order for the game video to be used for editing. Soon DVD's and their MPEG-2 encoding would give way to internet-based, streaming video formats based on MPEG-4, which quickly became more feasible as Internet bandwidth increased.
With a long history as a traditional software application, Easy-Scout remains a traditional softwware application without annual subscription fees or a requirement for an internet connection . The last versions of Easy-Scout, released in 2015 remain available for computers running Microsoft Windows.