Do not procrastinate at any time throughout the college recruiting process. It is very important to come up with a strategy of contacting college coaches and for student athletes to be seen by those college coaches.
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Is there too much coverage of high school sports?
It seems to me that the coverage of high school sports is growing to the level of coverage that college and pro sports receive. There are many people out there who wish that high school athletes receive no coverage so they can focus on their sport and academics. Maybe too much coverage can be a distraction to some high school student athletes.
I’m sure some high school athletes played to the cameras because they knew the cameras were in the gym or on the football field or the baseball diamond. Some coaches play towards the media as well by over-reacting or over-coaching when they see TV cameras.
That’s one of the examples I can think of regarding too much coverage of high school sports and how it can go to your head, in other words you would get big-headedness.
I can remember a long time ago when I was in high school in Virginia Beach, Virginia, when there was very little coverage of high school sports. On the local news channels the sports coverage would have some highlights and the scores of the games but that was about it.
In those days, you knew very little about the other players on the other teams because there was absolutely no coverage of what the players were doing. There was also no Internet so any information you heard about players was all rumors or speculation on what was going on in your league.
I think what changed was the fans who enjoy high school sports wanted to know about the players in the communities. It became a fascination of gathering information about high school athletes from all sports, from all cities and towns. We all wanted to know where the local kid was going for college or who was recruiting which players.
High school players have always been talked about in the newspapers, now that’s changed to having discussions on the Internet. High school athletes are being written about on blogs, message boards and many websites. If you want to see a player’s latest game just go to YouTube and just type in the athlete’s name and you may find a video. In most communities throughout this country, high school sporting events are being covered on local TV and streamed over the Internet. ESPN is now covering high school ball games.
The coverage of high school sports is big and getting bigger. It’s all because of the fans’ fascination about high school players. The public wants to know about these players so much that this is why there is TV networks covering all high school sports; why there are so many blogs posts and message boards about high school sports. So much exposure of these student athletes does help with recruiting. Recruiting is such a critical aspect of high school sports that many parents believe if their son or daughter is on the team that is getting national coverage those players will receive national recruiting coverage and exposure. I believe some of that to be true but you still have to be able to play the game, be an outstanding student and an outstanding person to get into college in the first place.
At some point, college athletes are going to get paid-it’s bound to happen and because high school sports is extremely popular those student athletes will also be looking for some kind of compensation. Look at it this way: no one is buying a ticket to see some student take a math test, who cares? But a lot of people are buying tickets to these high school games all the time because they, the fans, do care. High school student athletes at some point will receive some kind of special compensation for being an extremely privileged athlete.
There are some parts of this country where high school sports is so popular that the players are treated extremely special. Some communities have raised enough money where they have built incredible football stadiums or basketball facilities just to support high school sports. Now if that’s not privilege, I don’t know what it is!
This might sound kind of crazy but, I always felt that if high school coaches were paid full time to coach their sport like college coaches do I believe it would be a huge benefit to the sport, to the parents and most definitely the student athletes.
Paying high school coaches to coach full time would only work with high revenue producing sports. So if the soccer coach is not selling out a lot of tickets they wouldn’t be eligible for this new coaching role.
Recruiting is such a big deal these days; by having the high school coach totally focused on their players I believe this would help eliminate many recruiting problems and issues going on now.
There’s no way around it: high school sports is more popular than ever. The players are being over-exposed but that might not be a bad thing. If more people are talking about high school sports then that’s always a good thing.
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To get recruited for college, high school student athletes must do things in a certain way. In my opinion, the college recruiting process is only about getting the best players possible for that college program.
If you are an average or maybe slightly above average student athlete then you are going to have to do special things to gain the attention of college coaches. If you are blue chip superstar high school player you know you do not have to do anything special because your game will speak for itself.
All the other student athletes will have to do things in a certain way such as spend money to attend camps, tournaments, travel club-ball season, specialized workouts and purchasing expensive equipment all in an effort to get better and to gain the attention of college coaches.
When you really think about it, if there was a scientific survey done, you would find that less than 1% of all the student athletes in a particular state, maybe your home state, will actually receive an athletic scholarship. The other 99% of student athletes will have to do things a certain way to gain the attention of college coaches or they may not get into a college program.
With only so few scholarships to give out at the college level for a particular sport, it is almost a certainty that a huge number of high school athletes will be totally shut out of the college recruiting process.
When it comes down to it, there is really not enough college programs out there to fill the needs of all the student athletes who are looking to get a scholarship or some kind of financial package from a college program. The competition is incredibly challenging each and every year. Parents, student athletes and, with the assistance of high school coaches, are trying to come up with creative ways to gain the attention of college programs.
I believe there is no real scientific approach to the college recruiting process; I believe what will help is student athletes being seen by college programs over a number of years. If a student athlete can network with college coaches where the coaches can see them play their sport this could gain them a huge college recruiting advantage.
Sometimes common sense is more important than dollars and cents in the recruiting process.
I’ve heard stories about parents sending out hundreds of DVD’s at a huge expense. This type of expense may only make a slight difference in the college recruiting process. I’ve heard stories of parents driving great distances to meet college coaches only to be disappointed by the lack of interest from those coaches. I’ve heard stories about parents who have sent their kids to a different high school all in an effort to gain an edge in the recruiting process when it actually makes absolutely no difference what school they play at. I’ve heard stories where parents have paid thousands of dollars to recruiting services with the hope of gaining a full athletic scholarship only to be disappointed by the lack of professionalism by that recruiting service.
I was a college recruiter for a long time and I’ve heard these stories from parents and the expenses they had in order to help their sons or daughters with the college recruiting process. Because there is no exact formula on how to make the college recruiting process work for you, parents are doing a lot of things a certain way to get results.
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There was a situation recently where a high school basketball coach used the “N” word towards African American athletes. This coach’s lamed-brain excuse was to motivate the players to be better. The players were extremely offended by this coach’s actions and refused to play anymore games until this coach was removed.
I know that this generation of high school athletes is a little bit on the softer side; they’re not as hardcore and tough mentally and physically like they used to be back in the day.
A lot of these new generation student athletes cannot take harsh or strong language from high school coaches and this is where conflict begins. I don’t have a problem with the coach getting in the face of a student athlete if that’s what it’s going to take to make that athlete better or to motivate that player to do better. Coaching is about teaching and about motivating players and coaches do have a tendency to yell at players.
African Americans are improving economically and are no longer interested in living in the inner cities where the school systems are bad, the crime is high and the housing situations are horrible. African Americans who have improved economically deserve the right to move to a better neighborhood with better schools and with better housing. It only makes sense to do that.
Now African Americans are invading into white folk’s territory; going to their schools, living in their houses and shopping in their stores that used to be all white all night. I think what’s happening now is white people are not use to being around black people and maybe they’re somewhat offended by the fact that blacks have moved into their neighborhoods and are in their schools and are improving academically and athletically.
There are some coaches who are white who may not be totally accustomed to the culture of African Americans and they may say things as a joke or make racial slurs or comments not thinking that they have caused some kind of harm and offense. These coaches feel that they were just joking around and that it is OK to do or say certain things towards blacks.
These types of inappropriate comments towards African American athletes does not do anything but piss people off, get people fired and cause a whole bunch of unnecessary B.S.
African Americans are also guilty of using the “N” word towards each other and that’s totally inappropriate as well. Using that kind of language is a racial slur and if white people hear enough black people using that word then they’re going to think it’s OK for whites to say it also.
It comes down to understanding of people of different ethnicities on the part of white high school coaches. If white coaches are going to be coaching African American athletes (and other students of color) then I think it’s important for those coaches to understand all races.
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My Second Question of The Day: Should college scholarships be guaranteed for 4 years?
Currently, the way it stands now is a college scholarship is only guaranteed for one year and renewable at the coach’s discretion for the following season. Your thoughts.
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The BCS system when choosing a national champion in football is totally unfair to all the good players at college programs in this country. How I understand it to be is: if you’re a big-money college program that plays football in a major college conference, that makes you eligible to compete for a national championship.
All other college program do not have a chance to compete for a national championship because of the unbalanced rules and unfair ranking system.
There are many outstanding football programs in the country and I’m sure they would be more willing to compete for a national championship instead of playing in some meaningless bowl game.
When the NFL goes to scout players, they don’t look at players from only the BCS schools; no, they look at all the players who played college football. It would make sense to only scout players who play in the SEC or Big Ten-Pac 10. So my point here is to give all football programs a chance to be ranked in the top 25 and have a playoff system centered around the bowl games.
The fans who enjoy college football have asked for a playoff system when the games are played on the field and not predetermined by a college poll or a newspaper poll! In my opinion, there are too many days off between the last game of the regular season and the first bowl game.
Certainly the time is there to have an actual on-the-field playoff, either the top 12 teams or eight teams or whatever! Play the game on the field! I also got to thinking about how do we know who can really beat who?
There are smaller lesser-known college programs that upsets major college programs. You see this happen all the time during the NCAA March Madness tournament.
Upsets happen every other hour that past; the fascination of March Madness where every team has a chance at winning on the court and not in some worthless poll.
Some of the arguments I’ve heard about a playoff system is that it would hurt the precious bowl system or that it wanted hurt the student athlete because of missed class time. To those arguments I say, so what. They did use the college players in all sports as unpaid labor.
These college athletes are not there for an education. No, it seems to me that they are there to make money for their institution of higher learning and if they get a degree then that’s okay, too.
Make no mistake, that big-time college sports is about big money, big games on TV and even bigger money come tournament time along with big-money coaches making their big salaries on the backs of young athletes.
College football is huge. The game is very popular with millions of fans enjoying the games every Saturday afternoon but if your team loses its first game of the season or a game in the middle of the season then their chances are over to play for a national championship.
To me, that makes no sense because teams do better as the seasons goes on. Circumstances do change therefore, a playoff system is so desperately needed. I’ve never understood why college athletes are not paid, especially those athletes who receive a full scholarship.
What I’m saying here is the money is there to pay college players. You can increase the worth of a scholarship to allow weekly or biweekly stipends to these hard-working and over achieving college student athletes.
If you can pay a college coach more than $1 million per year, then you can find a way to give some of that money to the players.
These college coaches would be nothing without these kids. It is the players who make college coaches and their college programs strong and sometimes, many of these college athletes leave college without obtaining a college degree but are giving 110% of their blood, sweat and tears to make that college program a success!