Les Schwab Bowl 2023: Oregon high school football all-star player draft to be streamed live
By Andy Buhler | Photo by Ken Waz
Two of Oregon's best active high school football coaches will go head-to-head in a highly anticipated competition over many of the state's best players.
Over Zoom.
The Les Schwab Bowl returns in July and will include the second annual player draft to determine the teams. This year, the draft will be streamed live exclusively by SBLive on Saturday at 3:30 p.m. at the SBLive Oregon website and YouTube channel.
Central Catholic head coach Steve Pyne (Team Columbia) and Sheldon's Josh Line (Team Willamette) and their respective staffs will select among the roughly 250 high school football players nominated by coaches from schools across the state, big and small.
SBLive Director of Recruiting Andrew Nemec and Prep RedZone Scout Jordan Johnson will provide live analysis.
Many were in attendance Saturday as organizers of the annual bowl game hosted a first-ever evaluation day that featured 100 nominated players. College coaches attended.
Les Schwab Bowl coaches used the opportunity to evaluate players ahead of Saturday's draft.
Once a long-running all-star game for outgoing seniors, the Les Schwab Bowl has been around since 1948, when it was called The Shrine Game. The 2023 rendition will take place July 1 at Linfield University and mark the 75th time it's been played.
The format changed in 2021 to include underclassmen. In 2022, it went from a North vs. South game to Team Columbia vs. Team Willamette (named after two of the state's prominent rivers) with rosters determined by coaches in a draft. The draft was held behind closed doors last year.
Each coach chose two assistant coaches from their respective staffs and drafted the rest.
Pyne's Team Columbia staff includes Tualatin's Dominic Ferraro, Estacada's Andy Mott, Mark Gribble of Sherwood, Wilsonville's Adam Guenther and Central Catholic's Charlie Landgraf and Matt Jones.
Line's staff: South Salem's Scott DuFault, Grant's Alex Melson, Jon Gettman at Cascade Christian, West Linn's Damon Griffin as well as Mark Schmidt and Tyler Martell of Sheldon.
Draft rules
Saturday, April 22, at 3:30 p.m. at www.scorebooklive.com/oregon
- Teams will flip a coin for the first pick.
- Players from any position can be selected in the first two rounds. The next eight rounds are position group-specific: offensive skill players (third round), defensive linemen (fourth round), linebackers and defensive backs (fifth round), offensive linemen (sixth round), kicker and any remaining offensive positions (seventh round) and remaining defensive positions (eighth round), followed by the first 10 alternates.
- In total, 90 players will be chosen of the 250 nominees — 40 per team and 10 total alternates.
- Once a team is on the clock, coaches have three minutes to make a decision. There are seven minutes between rounds.
- Head coaches lock in a pick by announcing it out loud when they are on the board. There will be seven minutes between rounds and a 20-minute break after the fourth round.
More Les Schwab Bowl coverage
- Les Schwab Bowl’s inaugural ‘evaluation day’ shows continued growth of Oregon’s signature all-star football event
- Kendrick Bourne of New England Patriots addresses players at Oregon’s Les Schwab Bowl evaluation day
