MOBILE, Ala. (AP) – It’s a week for schmoozing, networking and catching up, guys in NFL jackets and caps of all colors putting little things such as the Super Bowl aside for some pleasant chitchat with intense rivals.

Oh, and football’s pretty important at the Senior Bowl, too, with most of the players on the brink of fat NFL paychecks and the teams trying to cover all the bases before investing millions of dollars in April’s draftees.

But for the several hundred NFL types who attend practices at the audition for top senior NFL prospects every day, it’s also a time to mix and mingle following the season-long grind.

“A lot of people can say they’re relentlessly watching practice, but I know a lot of people have a hard time getting from Point A to Point B,” said Tampa Bay coach Jon Gruden, who’s coaching the South team in Saturday’s game. “You see all your friends. You see all the guys in the league that you haven’t seen. There’s a lot of fellowship going on.”

After all, only two NFL teams are still playing, and even New England and Philadelphia have an extra week before the Super Bowl.

So the front-office types, coaches and scouts line the fields at Ladd-Peebles Stadium – Cowboys owner Jerry Jones among them – and hang out in the hotel lobby, along with agents, college coaches and others who are trying to land NFL jobs.

Apparently, the Senior Bowl is still a can’t-miss All Star game, if partly because the season is over for almost every team.

“They get the best players,” Gruden said. “They get them here somehow, some way. They get good kids, too. The guys that come to this game are serious about football. These are normally the guys that make it in the league, I think, because of their willingness and their excitement to play.”

It’s also a chance to watch, say, Auburn cornerback Carlos Rogers match up against Oklahoma’s Mark Clayton on Saturday. And small-college prospects like Northern Colorado receiver Vincent Jackson get to play against major college stars.

“You get to see good players going against good players, high draft picks going against high draft picks,” said the Raiders’ Norv Turner, the North head coach. “A lot of times in a college season you may evaluate a player and only two or three times does he actually play against a guy that’s going to be a high draft pick.”

Plus, the head coaches and general managers get to observe players over an extended period in essentially a prolonged job interview, a sort of “American Idol” meets “The Apprentice.”

“They’re in a weeklong interview with these players,” Turner said. “In a 15- or 20-minute interview, you can trick somebody. In an eight-day interview, I think things come out in a positive manner and unfortunately sometimes in a negative manner.”

It’s a high-pressure week for players, who get weighed and measured and spend their days in meetings and practices, filling out team questionnaires and their evenings often getting interviewed by team executives.

“Sometimes this week can be a little bit stressful because everybody wants to play well,” Georgia quarterback David Greene said. “I’ve been telling myself all week, the key is just to enjoy it. It’s an honor to be here and be able to play in this bowl, and the key is just to have fun.”

Southern California defensive lineman Shaun Cody said the week is a precursor of things to come in the NFL.

“All the coaches tell us it’s our first experience of what the NFL’s really like,” said Cody, a first-team All-American for the two-time national champions. “It’s a full-time job. You wake up in the morning and lift and watch film, then you go out and practice and come back in and watch more film. You’ve got to be willing to put in those hours.”

He put in about two hours filling out the New York Giants’ infamous questionnaire that asks a grab bag of strange-sounding questions.

Cody’s favorite: “Give two reasons why food is better cooked.”

His answer: “It tastes better and it’s healthier, I think, but I was like, “What’s this question about?”‘

Strange as it may seem, it’s about what everything else is about during Senior Bowl week: getting a job.