Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
The College Recruiting Process By Al Woods
Reply
Tag Archives: high school ballplayers
The College Recruiting Process Has Always Been A Jigsaw Puzzle
The college recruiting process has always been a jigsaw puzzle with many rules and its confusing structure of hiring and firing of coaches. When a division one head coach leaves his job for a new job or is fired it creates a huge domino affect.
Now the university must go about the process of hiring a new head coach and new assistant coaches and that process could take weeks to fill the position. The problem is that high school players are being recruited by these coaches and won’t know where they could end up because of the coaching change.
Should they follow the coach who has gone on to a new job or sign with the school that recruited them? The players who are involved are affected by this coaching change. What other current players are on the roster? What is going on in their minds? Do they want to stay at the program or look to transfer?
The NCAA’s huge and ridiculous rulebook is not in favor of players transferring and being eligible to play if the coach who recruited them is either fired from that school or moves to a new job.
I believe these players should be given the opportunity to follow that coach if they choose to do so. It is not fair for a college player who wishes to transfer and must give up their eligibility, but a college coach can jump to new program whenever they feel like it or whenever an opportunity becomes available.
At the end of the college basketball season, it seems like its open season on the merry go round of coaches jumping from job to job.
It’s the same in college football. Sometimes these coaches quit on their team just before a bowl game to take another job leaving behind the players who played their guts out for that coach.
I think the larger picture here he is recruiting. Only the players are held hostage to a certain degree by college coaches and parents of high school student athletes who do not know or truly understand how recruiting works. In some situations, the parents don’t know what college or coach their son will play for.
The parents are also held hostage because they believe that a coach who is recruiting their son won’t be at the college they chose.
I understand the university wanting to replace the head coach with a new coach but sometimes in all of this shuffling around of coaches, the players are affected the most because there’s a new coach coming to the program and now those players have to adjust to that coach’s style of play.
The Letter of Intent is a contract between the high school athlete and the university which basically means that the university and the high school athlete are committed to each other for one year. The problem with that is that if that coach leaves the program or is fired before the start of next season, the players cannot get out of the Letter of Intent.
I don’t know what can be done to slow down the process of college coaches changing jobs so frequently or being fired so easily. The one thing I do know is that recruiting suffers.
Don’t Sleepwalk On The College Recruiting Process Now That School Has Started
All across the country, school has finally started for many high school student athletes. This is the most important time of their life.
The recruiting process for all high school student athletes never ends and this is more important for student athletes who are entering their senior year.
There are millions of high school student athletes out there all believing that somehow they will be found by college coaches. Parents and student athletes are misled into believing that college coaches will be interested in them because they are seniors. This, of course, is not true. College programs are only interested in the players that they know about and have established relationships with over a number of years.
In all my years of experience as a college recruiter I’ve spoken to thousands of parents who believed the recruiting process takes place at the end of the student athlete’s season. This is the worst mistake any parent or high school coach can make when it comes to recruiting. The longer you wait, the more opportunities disappear. The longer you hold off the recruiting process, the longer it will take to get college programs interested. The longer it takes for you to get a DVD into the hands of college coaches, the longer it will take for them to view it. The longer parents and high school coaches take in helping a student athlete with recruiting, is days and weeks of wasted time that could have been used to contact college coaches.
You are sleepwalking through the day to day details of the college recruiting process.
The only way the college recruiting process actually works is by actually doing something to make it work. Someone, whether it’s the parents or the high school coaches, must contact college coaches on a consistent basis for a period of years. The longer you delay this process the more opportunities that will be missed that you can never ever get back.
Think about how easy the recruiting process would be if parents, high school coaches and student athletes were consistent in contacting a large number of college coaches over a period of 2 to 4 years. With that kind of consistent effort I believe there would be a larger number of college scholarship opportunities but because many parents, high school coaches and some student athletes are sleepwalking through the entire college recruiting process opportunities are going to be lost forever.
When parents realize that there is a major problem with recruiting it’s generally at the end of the student athlete’s senior season which, by then, there may not be any time left. Parents are now scrambling around trying to find a quick solution to their college recruiting problem.
I focused a lot this conversation on parents because they are the ones with check writing power and are responsible for the student athlete in their family.
Because of money, laziness or being totally misinformed, parents are totally responsible for the success of the recruiting process or its failure.
I just think the college recruiting process is the last thing parents, high school coaches and student athletes should be sleepwalking through.
If you like this blog post, then please sign up for my weekly newsletter. It’s free! We also offer college recruiting tips and information along with reviews on sports athletic products and gear.