close

The evolution of recruiting process

6 min read
1 / 2

Washington High School graduate Shai McKenzie is shown after announcing he was going to Virginia Tech.

2 / 2

Ken Wilkins, a 2010 graduate of Trinity High School, is shown on signing day after his selection of the University of Michigan.

The spectacle of National Signing Day has grown exponentially over the past 30 years. The best high school football players in the country once signed their letter of intent in a gymnasium in front of family, friends and fellow students.

Today, ESPN will dedicate 11 hours of programming today to televise the signing ceremonies of high profile prospects and analyze which college football programs found the next Heisman Trophy winner or a missing piece to a National Championship contender.

The process reaches its culmination today, but the tireless work by college coaches, high school coaches and the athletes began years ago. Though signing a piece of paper is still the final step, the recruiting process has dramatically changed.

McGuffey head coach Ed Dalton remembers the days of sending VHS tapes to various colleges. During his teaching days, a television with four to five VCRs would sit close to his desk where he would record highlight films for his players.

Next came DVDs, which required buying countless blank discs to send to prospective colleges, but it took until the mid-2000s for the internet to play a pivotal role. Coaches began uploading their players’ highlights to YouTube, which avoided the cost of postage, and gave colleges easy access to film.

When Dalton was head coach at Trinity in 2007, senior linebacker Brandon Weaver had recently accepted a scholarship from Ohio University, but another interested college coach contacted Dalton wanting a copy of game film immediately. Dalton directed him to YouTube. Three days later, the coach was at Trinity to offer Weaver a scholarship.

That also was before NCAA restrictions prevented head coaches from taking countless recruiting trips. It was not uncommon for Ohio State’s Jim Tressel, Wisconsin’s Brett Bielema, Nebaraska’s Bo Pelini and Notre Dame’s Charlie Weiss to be waiting at Trinity to meet with Andrew Sweat and Mike Yancich, two of the most highly coveted linebackers in 2007.

“It is actually a little tamer now. It was the wild west where the head coach was allowed off campus an unlimited amount of times,” Dalton said. “They’d be lining up at schools to meet with players.”

In 2006, a company based in Lincoln, Neb., called Agile Sports Technologies, Inc. started the service known as Hudl, which is a hub for coaches to upload game film and offer an easy way to make highlight tapes. Instead of waiting until the end of the season to send out tapes, coaches and athletes can send out film as often as they like.

A video coordinator is now an official title with most high school football programs. That individual at McGuffey and Peters Township identify potential highlights during the game, notifies the head coach every week about those highlights and players take notice. When an athlete feels it is time to put together a video, they contact their coach, who contacts Hudl. The company then sends the athlete an email with step-by-step instructions on how to make their own highlight tape.

“It’s easier to flood the market. You send it out there and get kid’s names out there,” Peters Township head coach Rich Piccinini said. “You can go week to week or whatever amount of time you want. Colleges are big on the first four games of the senior season to see if a kid is progressing. It was so much more difficult before, but now it is so convenient.”

Recruiting has begun at a much earlier stage. Coaches are offering scholarships to kids as young as eighth grade. In the past, players often did not receive offers until their senior season. Now, it is common for colleges to pursue a player after his sophomore year. Attending camps and filling out questionnaires are still necessary, but coaches are saturated with prospective players, which makes Hudl important.

“Players remember their plays, especially offensive linemen, better than you do,” Dalton said. “There may be a seven-yard run, but your star tackle may have had a horrible block. It just happened that your back had a great play. There may be another where your tackle, on a two-yard gain, just leveled somebody. They are much better at going back and finding theirs than I am.”

Technology’s role has not eliminated a major college football program’s need to recruit with a hands-on approach. Bowl Championship Series schools are spending millions to transport coaches across the country to find players.

During the 2012-13 academic year, Auburn spent $1.384 million, the most in Division I, on its recruiting budget. Penn State had the eighth-highest budget under former head coach Bill O’Brien, when the Nittany Lions recruited quarterback Christian Hackenberg and 16 other players.

Coaches also rely on email and text messaging to keep in touch with high school coaches and athletes to gauge interest and keep tabs on recruitment.

College football has become a multi-billion dollar business where schools attempt to outdo one another by using creative ways to find a missing piece. Social media has become a major part of recruiting over the past five years.

When Pitt’s new head coach Pat Narduzzi, the former Michigan State defensive coordinator, took to Twitter, the other coaches on the staff followed suit. Narduzzi often tweets about recruiting trips and commitments picked up along the way. Coaches can contact prospective players through Facebook or FieldLevel, a free coach-to-coach recruiting network, where an athlete can create a profile.

Coaches also look to weed out recruits through social media. Many players have lost scholarships based on inappropriate tweets. In 2013, Yuri Wright, a highly regarded defensive back in the class of 2013, had a scholarship pulled from Michigan after coaches saw a series of expletive posts.

“A kid could say he was at a party, hate someone or talk in an unprofessional way,” Dalton said. “It can be anything. They can really expose themselves or the perception can be created that they are a bad kid. We talk to our kids about that stuff and we go through an outline of the whole recruiting process.”

Washington head coach Mike Bosnic has witnessed recruiting from both sides. As a lineman at Albert Gallatin, he was not offered a scholarship until after his senior season.

After playing only two years of football and starring on the basketball court, he remembers sitting in Barry Alvarez’s office as a wide-eyed recruit soaking in the process. Now, colleges start recruiting players at an earlier age, leaving little room for late bloomers such as Bosnic, who went on to play at Pitt.

He also helped Wash High grad Shai McKenzie, one of the top running backs in the country in 2013, go to camps, send out highlight films, sift through the countless contacts from coaches and avoid the pressures created by social media.

“I think right now it’s such a crazy process for the kids,” Bosnic said. “It’s really a lot of pressure on them. Everything in today’s society and recruiting seems so accelerated. The internet has changed it drastically. Kids see things on the internet and social media. It’s a completely different world.”

CUSTOMER LOGIN

If you have an account and are registered for online access, sign in with your email address and password below.

NEW CUSTOMERS/UNREGISTERED ACCOUNTS

Never been a subscriber and want to subscribe, click the Subscribe button below.

Starting at $3.75/week.

Subscribe Today