College Recruiting: Billion-Dollar Enterprise or Poorly Run Business (or Both)?

College recruiting represents the best of times and the worst of times.  I have seen the process as a recruit, a parent of a recruit and in helping recruit.

I have to say, I have been involved in sales for 30 years and have seen just about every tactic possible, from highly educated intelligent individuals to barely literate and somehow also walking at the same folks, and have never experienced the absolute total mess of a process that is college recruiting.

While there are those coaches, assistant coaches and recruiting staff that do carry themselves and their recruiting process on in a professional manner, it’s the “BIZARRO” world (from Superman lore, the opposite of normal) of recruiting that has not only given me lasting memories, but recurring nightmares simultaneously.

The areas that quickly come to mind are: 1) the “Traveling Salesman,” er, I mean assistant coach/recruiter of an area; 2) the recruiting services (Scout, Rivals), their periphery and their effect on recruiting today; and 3) the Unofficial/Official visit and the “sales dance” process.

The local recruiter for a geographic area is usually a position coach that has former ties by relationship in that region or may have coached in a prior life in the area. While this gives them a leg up on some competition from other schools that may recruit the area, it also can jade their assessment of the “true” ability or character of players from the high schools represented there.

They sometimes rely on “word of mouth” in trying to visit as many schools/recruits as possible and subsequently really spend no time actually watching a recruit practice or go through drills or talking with them to see how they really carry themselves.

Our recent experience with many of these coaches is one of a pretty large ego or macho attitude that while their school may have had a 2-9 record for the past five years, they are only looking for a “prototype” player at certain positions or only look for 4- or 5-star recruits to fill openings.

This is really where the hilarious nature of the process starts. The basic assumption is that all parents and high school coaches are absolute morons and are simply lucky to be able to talk or blow a whistle without falling down.

From here, all the recruiters want us (the not-so-qualified coaches and parents) to assemble the previous season’s game film, edit it to find 15 to 25 key plays of our player’s action plays (as they already think we can’t tell a good play from a bad one), copy it and send it along with three to five full game films to them so they can review it.

I did this along with a coach, bought thousands of dollars of blank DVDs and became an amateur post-production specialist in the art of high school game film. I repeated the process at least 60 times for schools and then again as I followed up with them and found out that they apparently never received the film or it was lost upon receipt by some grad assistant with responsibility to take it to the appropriate position coach on the staff.

Here’s a tip: If they say this to you, they aren’t interested in your kid or recruiting them. I wish I had not been naive enough to buy this story from each coach I spoke with.

The reality, which I found out later sitting in the office of a coach I actually got to know and liked from well out of our area that actually cared about doing the recruiting process the right way, was that 90 percent of all film is never even viewed. Coaching staffs have their “favorites” they are talking with, and they will string you along sometimes for a couple of years in pretending they have interest in your kid.

Another favorite ruse is to tell you they will be in your area at a certain time (a couple of days) and as you call them at the tail end of the visit in your area, they will say they had to catch an earlier flight than expected or were called back by their head coach early and will catch up with you on their next trip.

Translation: “I wish I actually cared about your kid, but the reality is that I don’t and you should probably forget us ever making them an offer.”

One of the major issues with this type of recruiting is that unless the coach is the position coach for what your kid actually plays, they don’t have a good sense of how to grade the kid’s ability or fit for the program since they don’t coach that position. Which leads me to the great substitute for distance recruiting...

The Internet recruiting service. Scout.com and Rivals.com (and others) have burst upon the scene in the last several years in such a way that the basic Joe (like me, unfortunately) can be brought up to the minute on the recruiting process with one or multiple schools. The public has a right to know, right? Maybe, but this has created as many problems as solutions for schools in the recruiting process.

While the small schools (Division II and Division III) may now have more information, tools and recruits at their fingertips than ever before and can use these services like inexpensive outsourcing for a very expensive and labor intensive process when done properly, the larger schools' use of it has become an excuse to be lazy.

I truly feel this is why you can see a school have several consecutive years of highly-rated recruiting classes and not have it translate to W’s in the annual W-L record.

There are a few reasons for this. It’s very similar to buying through the Internet. Some products are just better seen in person and actually “handled” to see if it’s what you are looking for or if the fit is right. Kids, parents and coaches are the same way. I don’t think there is a substitute for sitting face to face with a person and talking with them about “stuff.”

There’s also no way for an evaluation scout for the Internet services to be able to tell what a kid is like off the field, in the locker room or in “crunch” time.

If I had not seen this process substitute for real recruiting, I wouldn’t be able to say it because I know you are thinking, “There is no way a major Division I college recruiter is going to only assess who they are recruiting without really spending time with these athletes, their families and evaluating them on film and in person SEVERAL TIMES, right?!" I think you would be surprised at how often it is really done or really NOT done.

College coaches put in 80- to 100-hour weeks and want time off like anyone else. The time after the season and leading up to a bowl game (if they actually are bowl-eligible) is time to recruit. You and I both know these guys are tired and details are missed, recruiting trips are cut short, info is misplaced, interviews are rescheduled and things just don’t get done.

Leading up to national signing day, it can be tempting to just rely on someone else for those last important determining facts on some recruits.

The other side of the recruiting services not often discussed is their tie to equipment companies, training groups, camps and the like. It takes a great deal of dedication, time and money to get noticed properly, and don’t kid yourself—the services have their darlings, and they get more coverage than others.

These darlings may or may not translate to quality within a program once recruited just because they had a bunch of stars next to their name on the Internet.

Finally, we get to the stand-up comedy routine, or the equivalent of the Seinfeld show in recruiting: the campus visit (official or unofficial). As you all know by this time after the show has gone into worldwide syndication, the Seinfeld show was a show about nothing.

The campus visit is the same: The absolute best foot is put forward for the “date” when we all know there isn’t a single thing that’s real or genuine that will be represented, shown or said, but we all act as if we buy into and believe everything we see and hear as if there isn’t a massive elephant hidden under a coffee table.

This is when the aspects of the coaching staff, team, culture, campus, activities, facilities, dorms, food and class life are all on grand display. Promises are made, commitments shared, babies hugged and tears shed. Then the weekend is over and the world returns to normal.

If, on the trip home, you can make yourself admit and live with the fact that very little of what you heard will happen and you still enjoyed the ride, you are in a good place.

I hope this hasn’t given anyone a bad impression of the recruiting process in the world of college athletics. The reality is that while I have lived through the process as a recruit, a recruiter and the parent of a kid being recruited, I can tell you that all this and more happens. I can also tell you that I will begin going through it again with my last child soon, and that this time I sure hope there is a pony in the closet!