Interesting article about how the Scouting Combine actually became a combine and the scouting services employed by NFL clubs.
From Draft Daddy, the article is Who Are BLESTO And National?.
NFL teams don't do all their own scouting. They actually hire one of two outside firms to do all the preliminary footwork on underclassmen. BLESTO and National are two scouting firms formed by various NFL teams and are now subscription based services. Twenty five teams subscribe and the others don't.
It makes sense for teams to share information on underclassmen and collate it into a usable database. Basic economics dictates that teams subscribe or share preliminary information on the thousands of college players available.
The article explains in further details the basic inner workings of the services and how teams use them.
