During the college bowl season, NFL teams spend their time getting extra looks at specific players they are interested in. A team will identify a particular area of need and may send its personnel director, general manager and college scouting director to a game to look at a prospect.

Those are the staff members who would not have gotten out to see a lot of players during the season, and a bowl game allows them to focus on that one player.

This time of year also affords an opportunity to look at some of the juniors who have declared for the draft, guys teams didn't really get chance to look at during the regular season and who will not be in the East-West game or Senior Bowl.

Teams take a lot of different approaches during bowl season, but many teams will send scouts who live in the area down to bowl practices to see if anything has changed and touch base with coaches, to see if they are looking at the same they have seen all year long.

Most personnel people are going to games, but the college scouts are going to practice because the coaches are a little more relaxed there and the environment is more suited to getting information from people who know the players best.

When it comes to individual positions, though, there is no difference at all in the way a team would approach one position or another. The purpose of these games is not to scout 10 players but rather one or two, isolating them and breaking them down accordingly. The breakdown is different but the process is the same whether the player is a defensive lineman or a quarterback.

And the one thing most teams do to get the maximum out of bowl season is divide the scouting by position and give one to each scout, because it is impossible to send a single person to a game to look at all 75-100 guys on a roster.

Breaking things down into pieces and gathering information on an individual basis results in more accuracy and attention to detail than if one guy is trying to assess everyone on the practice field.

But one thing that does not happen much during the regular bowl season is a player coming out of nowhere to make an impression like he might during the Senior Bowl. Teams are looking specifically at players they have followed throughout the season, and don't really have the time or resources to watch entire teams looking for hidden gems.

What NFL teams and scouts are looking for in a Senior Bowl atmosphere is how the top seniors in the country react to a higher level of competition. Take Washington Redskins quarterback Patrick Ramsey, for instance. He came into last year's Senior Bowl game as a third or fourth- round pick, but elevated himself into the first round because of what he showed against his peers.

In a normal bowl situation players are still with their college teams and the talent level is not as high, while guys at the Senior Bowl are getting pro coaching. Plus all the NFL decision-makers are at the Senior Bowl so players have a chance to make some real strides with a number of teams.

Vinny Cerrato is the director of player personnel for the Washington Redskins.