If you are one of the more than 1,100,000 high school football players in the United States, you probably dream of playing college football. Just like football, the college recruiting process is a game and you have got to know the rules. Imagine how your coach would look if he did not know that you could punt on 4th down or that you could kick a field goal to get three points. This recruiting game is probably the toughest competition that you have faced at this point of your life.
My friend, Coach Bob Swank, has set out to help parents and kids take control of the recruiting process without spending thousands of dollars on recruiting services that are largely ignored by college coaches. His inspiration came after sitting through a seminar in which parents where encouraged to spend up to $4,000 to have a service help promote their kids to colleges. Coach Swank has prepared an easy to read report to help simplify the process and show parents and kids how to effectively target their athletic and academic skills with the right colleges for $24.95. If you have a kid wishing to play at the next level, please check this out before spending several thousand dollars.
Currently only 5.8% of high school football players go on to play college football. But the truth is this, if you understand the rules of the recruiting process, you have a solid game plan and you love the game, there is a place for you to play. There are 721 four year schools that play college football. On average there are a minimum of 100 players on each team. That means there are at least 72,100 roster spots available in college football each year.
If you want to obtain one of the available roster spots there are several things that you must understand and tasks that you must accomplish along the way. First of all you must understand how to become eligible academically and athletically. This is a process that you must begin early. If you fall behind in your required core classes, it will be very difficult to become eligible before you graduate.
Second, you must realize that you need to be active not passive in the recruiting process. You must identify schools that you are interested in and aggressively market your skills to these schools. If you sit around and wait for schools to find you, you are just hoping to get lucky. There may be a school out there that is a perfect match for you academically, athletically, and socially however they do not call your high school coach and in turn never find out about you. If you are passive in the process, your future is completely at the mercy of other people.
Lastly, you must realize that this is your future. You and your family are the only ones that will benefit or suffer in this process based on how you approach it. The college that you attend and play football at is an extremely important decision to your future. Where you go to college may affect the type of job that you get after college, where you settle down and possibly even who you marry. You can not trust this decision to somebody else. Recruiting services will attempt to persuade you that they are professional organizations that are well respected and well connected in the world of college athletics. Nothing could be further from the truth. While their websites are slick, recruiting services are not respected by college coaches and are rarely utilized by them. They claim to represent you by contacting colleges personally and by placing your information on a marketing web site where you will be found. The truth is this, it is against NCAA rules for recruiting services to speak in person or on the phone with a coach at an NCAA institution. If they can’t speak with them personally what can they do for you that you can’t do for yourself? The other fact is this, there are no college coaches surfing the web looking for prospects. College coaches work through high school coaches and information that they receive directly from prospects themselves.
Recruiting services will attempt to persuade you that they are professional organizations that are well respected and well connected in the world of college athletics. Nothing could be further from the truth. While their websites are slick, recruiting services are not respected by college coaches and are rarely utilized by them.
If you will take the time to learn about the recruiting process and then put great effort into executing a recruiting game plan, you will have a great advantage over the majority of high school players and families who sit back and wait for the phone to ring.
Bob Swank is a former college and high school football coach. Coach Swank has had great success on both sides of the recruiting process. He is currently educating families about the recruiting process with his consulting company The Recruiting Checklist. You can learn more about the recruiting process and how to develop a recruiting game plan at www.therecruitingchecklist.com . You can also follow Coach Swank’s free recruiting posts on Twitter at http://twitter.com/recruitingcheck .
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This is a great article! I am experiencing a little bit of this right now with my 16 year old junior. He’s 6′3″, 205 lbs. and plays DE and punts (nice combo, huh?). He goes to a small Christian private school, so the level of competition is not the same as it would be if he were playing for the local high school here, which is usually in the state playoffs. Still, even at this level he is receiving letters of interest from some smaller/lower division schools from Vermont, Wisconsin, out in the midwest and here in the Carolinas. I realize these are just letters trying to get him to come visit the campus, etc. and he has no official offer, but I can only imagine what it might be like next year as a senior and how overwhelming it could get as he gets bigger and stronger.
I have told him that while the attention is nice, he needs to have some realistic expectations of what it all means and that if it comes down to a few schools who do offer him some kind of scholarship, we will have to it down and truly evaluate what we need to do. Coach Swank may very well get a call from me if/when we get closer to that time.
Thanks for the article!