The Detroit Lions announced in a press release this afternoon that they have hired Joe Kelleher to be the team's BLESTO scout. Upon reading this, my first question was, "What on earth is BLESTO?" Here's a quick rundown from Wikipedia:
The NFL's first scouting organization, LESTO (Lions, Eagles and Steelers Talent Organization), was started in 1963 by the teams mentioned in its name. It became BLESTO when the Bears joined the following year and BLESTO-V when the Vikings came on board later in the decade. It is now known simply as BLESTO despite the fact that the Bears and Eagles having gone their separate ways.
BLESTO is currently affiliated with the Bills, Lions, Jaguars, Dolphins, Vikings, Giants and Steelers. 18 teams are affiliated with The National, which is a separate scouting organization. The other seven NFL teams are not affiliated with any scouting program. Each of those teams "relies on its in-house scouting staffs."
You learn something new every day. (After the jump is a bio of Kelleher from the press release.)
Kelleher joins the Lions Player Personnel Department having worked most recently as a scouting assistant for National Football Scouting and the National Invitational Camp (NFL Combine). After his hiring by National Football Scouting in November 2009, Kelleher assisted in several aspects of the organization's operations, including the review of scouting reports, overseeing daily management of the NFL Medical Database website and assisting in the preparation and operations of the NFL Combine held annually in Indianapolis.
Earlier that year, Kelleher served a six-month internship as a scouting intern for BLESTO Scouting.
In 2008, Kelleher interned for the Lions Football Operations Department, as he assisted with the team's training camp logistics, team travel and other aspects of the team's day-to-day football operations.
While a graduate student at Ohio University, Kelleher was an operations graduate assistant for GamePlan, a sports video technology firm, and he interned with the New York Giants Pro Personnel Department during training camp in 2007.
Kelleher attended Butler University and played offensive tackle and tight end for the Bulldogs football team. He was on Butler University's athletics academic honor role every semester while in college and was the 2004 recipient of the Hilton U. Brown Mental Attitude Award. Kelleher graduated from Butler with a bachelor's degree in business-marketing. He went on to earn a master's of business administration and a master's of sports administration from Ohio University.