NCSA College Athletic Scholarships Blog

by Chris Krause, NCSA Founder and President

Getting recruited to play college sports means paying attention to all of the important dates that are a part of the process.

Earlier this past week, we reached one of those important dates:  September 1st.

That’s the day that Juniors – the class of 2010 – can start receiving detailed recruiting information and materials from colleges that are seriously considering them for their programs, according to the NCAA recruiting calendar:

• Personalized letters from coaches at the college.
• Photocopies of newspaper articles about the team, the school, or the coach.
• College media guides.
• Schedule cards for the team.
• Official university and admissions publications and paperwork.

And, the contact for Juniors is not restricted to just mailings.  September 1st is also the date that coaches can send e-mails to you, and reply back to the e-mails that you send them.

So, with those facts in mind, it’s a good time to do a little self-assessment in terms of where you stand in the recruiting process today:

Have you received mail from a college coach yet?  If you are a Junior, be on the lookout for mail from colleges.  If you are a top prospect, it’s likely that you will be hearing from a college coach soon.  

The rules allow for even earlier contact if you are a men’s basketball or men’s ice hockey prospect:  College coaches within those sports can contact prospects as early as June 15 after a prospect’s Sophomore year.  

It’s certainly safe to say that if you are a Senior, and you haven’t yet received any mail or any contact from a college coach, you are not being recruited.  I would advise you not to wait to hopefully be discovered at some point during your Senior year.  Coaches at the college level need your information as soon as possible.  Click here to start the process.

Have you received an e-mail from a college coach yet?  If the answer is “no”, and you are a Junior or Senior in high school, that is a possible red flag as well.  E-mail is a very convenient, inexpensive way for coaches to communicate.  Many college programs opt for e-mail communication over regular mail, and any recruit that is on a coach’s radar is probably going to be receiving e-mail by now.  If you aren’t, you are probably not being seriously recruited by any schools (yet).

Whether you are getting initial contacts from colleges, or you find yourself on the outside looking in when it comes to recruiting, there are a few things that you can do to ramp-up your recruiting activity:

• Register with NCSA to ensure that coaches are matched with your athletic and academic skills.  It’s one of the best ways to make sure that every possible opportunity is uncovered.  Plus, you’ll have a former college athlete and recruiting expert from our staff personally assigned to you to answer your questions and help you through the process.  Doesn’t it make sense to have an experienced guide help you through the process from start to finish?
  
• Call a coach yourself.  The recruiting rules placed on coaches by the NCAA allow them to accept phone calls from prospects of any age, at any point in their high school career.  The advantage to picking up the phone and calling the coach yourself is that not many athletes do it.  They are intimidated, shy or just plain lazy when it comes to the idea of being proactive and getting in touch with a coach at the college level.  If you can overcome these things, you’ll really stand-out in the mind of a coach that you call.  And, you’ll really jump-start the recruiting process.
  
• Get highlight info, academic info, and a letter/e-mail of interest out to coaches immediately.  If you don’t want to register with NCSA as a verified student-athlete prospect, you will need to do some of this important work yourself.  Coaches need to see what you can do competitively, what kind of grades and test scores you have, and they’ll want to hear from you with some kind of personal statement so they get a sense for who you are and why you would be valuable to their program. Make sure you gather that information and distribute it to as many potential college coaches as possible.

September 1st has come and gone for 2008, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t take action to enhance your opportunities to hear from a college coach.  

The date does, however, give you a good indicator of where you sit on a college coach’s recruiting priority list.  Use that information to make sure you are where you want to be when it comes to getting the chance to play at the next level.  
 

Do you think the college athletic recruiting process should provide you with the highest number of opportunities? Do you think understanding college athletics recruiting can reveal the perfect college fit for you? How do you go about increasing your opportunities? What system should you employ to make sure you are selecting the right opportunity for you?

College coaches begin by initially contacting 1,000 or 2,000 or even 10,000 (depending on the sport) student athletes by sending them camp brochures, emails, questionnaires, etc. Those same college coaches are clearly not recruiting all of those student-athletes. Why do they start with such a large pool? They are following the advice of Marketing 101: the more kids who they find out about, the better chance they’ll find the really quality student-athlete who will help their program. If that’s a good strategy for college coaches, shouldn’t a student-athlete use the same strategy? Doing so will increase your number of opportunities.

A savvy student-athlete will learn as early as freshman year that they need to develop trust-based relationships with college coaches. This can only happen through communication. Since the NCAA restricts the amount and timing of contacts initiated by college coaches, the student-athlete must be proactive. Unfortunately, the 14 or 15 year old student-athlete doesn’t have the life experiences or the maturity to begin building relationships with adults. The good news is they can be trained in that skill set. It’s like interviewing for a job. 

College recruiting boils down to trust-based relationships between college coaches and student-athletes. What college coach is going to make a significant investment in a student-athlete unless they know a lot more about that student-athlete than her/his performance on the playing field?

If you agree with playing the numbers game and building trust-based relationships with college coaches, have you thought about how you would do that? If you’re a student-athlete reading this, do you think your parents can do this for you? If so, you better forget about playing sports in college. Do you think your coach can do this for you? Again, if so, you better forget about finding the perfect college fit for you. You are the one that needs to take charge. You can only do that if you develop the skill set to do so. Who will teach you that?

Finally, if you do all of the above correctly, how do you determine the right fit? There are many different factors including: academic quality of the school, size of school, location of school, financial aid package, level of competition, opportunity to play early, getting along with the coaching staff and players, receiving tutoring help (if necessary), etc. There is a way to logically sort out all of those factors. If you need help, go here.

 The NCAA is always playing catch up to coaches who are looking for any advantage in recruiting.  They ban text messaging and coaches soon find a new way get their message across to recruits.  In the last few years camps have become an increasingly important evaluation tool for coaches.  ESPN’s Bruce Feldman wrote a piece for the magazine detailing the trend.

In the past, holding camp meant eager high school players could get some tips and college coaches could collect some easy pay on the side. Then a few schools began using camps to evaluate the skills and coachability of recruits. Five years ago, Rutgers set up shop way off campus-in Florida-moving the NCAA to forbid schools from holding camps outside of their state lines. So the Scarlet Knights-along with schools like Oklahoma State, Rice and Southern Miss-put together roving seminars in their states. “It works great because with the rising cost of gas, lots of kids and their coaches can’t make long drives to campus,” says USM coach Tony Hughes.

Another trick: full-pad camps. Many prep governing bodies limit the number of live practices. But coaches noticed that those rules don’t address full-contact college camps. Now prep coaches can cram in extra practice time, while recruiters get a good gander at prospects in pads. “It’s a tremendous draw,” one assistant says.

The NCAA forbids invite-only camps, but some schools stay within the rules by barely advertising certain sessions and relying on word of mouth to attract top talent. Florida stages Friday Night Lights on July 18, an event in which many of the nation’s top recruits will compete on UF’s field. At USC’s Rising Stars Camp in June, Pete Carroll hosted blue-chippers from Arizona, Texas, South Carolina and Tennessee.

And in a copycat industry, that means the stakes have grown to where coaches now have to recruit kids just to come to their camps. Want to bet the NCAA is watching?

That is exactly why athletes need to be proactively contacting schools to find out which camps to attend.  They can not afford to waste valuable time and resources attending the wrong camps.  Trying to catch a coach’s eye at a camp could end up being a huge mistake if you miss attending a camp for a school that is actively recruiting you.  You need to find out where you qualify!

 Why do high school student athletes want to play collegiate athletics?  I speak with so many student athletes who express that commitment on a daily basis and often times I wonder if they truly realize the advantages of being a collegiate athlete. Outside of love for their sport which is the best reason to want to continue to play at the next level, I believe that if student athletes realized the ancillary benefits of partaking in collegiate athletics, their desire to maximize the recruiting process would increase significantly. 

I have often contemplated writing a list of all the rewards that accompany playing collegiate athletics to pass along to prospective student athletes, but quickly realized that it might take hours if not days.  Secondary advantages such as an immediate community of possible friends on a new college campus all the way to an instant alumni network for career opportunities after college fall into this extensive list that student athletes should think about.  I believe it will inherently create more value on the goal at hand and thus a greater attention to the steps required to achieve that goal.   

Student athletes should realize that a love for their sport should serve as their main motivation for working hard in the classroom, on the field, and throughout the recruiting process.  However, they should also understand the ramifications of taking part in collegiate athletics and how that might change their entire life.  Knowing what’s at stake, every student athletes should make sure to maximize this process.  What are some other advantages that college athletes receive?  I think that is a topic well worth a discussion…

 I was recently reading a few posts from blogs that I frequent and the topic that athletic scholarships are not guaranteed for four years but rather a renewable contract that is signed each year at the discretion of the head coach came up a number of times.  I suppose this information is new to many parents and student athletes, so I encourage you to read more about the specifics, but I would rather focus on a different aspect of this topic.

There are certain reasons for a college coach to not renew an athletic scholarship that most reasonable people would find understandable.  Failing to meet academic requirements, legal issues away from the field, and poor work ethic on the field all seem like logical reasons for a coach to decide against renewing a scholarship.  The most controversial and least publicized reason for a college coaching neglecting to renew the scholarship is the student athlete simply not being good enough to play for that program.  The reason this issue is controversial is because coaches do not take advantage of it enough!

The reality is that college coaches are fearful of negative publicity when they decide not to renew a scholarship which will frighten potential recruits in the future.  Rather than experience this backlash, the coach will often times become brutally honest (or manipulative in my opinion) with the athlete and let him or her know that the chances of them playing anytime in the near future are very slim in the hopes that this will discourage the athlete from staying with the program and maintaining their athletic scholarship.  To me this seems cowardly. 

***Warning…What I am about to write might upset many people***

I believe college athletics would be better served if the college coaches would simply tell the student athlete they are not good enough to play at their program and they have decided not to renew their scholarship.  While this might upset the student athlete, at least they will have an opportunity to pursue a school where they will have a realistic chance to play.  I realize the downside to what I am proposing, but I ask the naysayers this; is it that much worse than what is currently being done?  Wouldn’t we all prefer the coaches actually be honest with a student athlete rather than give some distorted version of the truth in the hopes that the student athlete will do them a favor and leave the program on their own accord, thus saving their reputation for future recruits?

Athletic Scholarship or pro contract?  That is the question.  Recently, Brandon Jennings has made headlines because he is going to play professional basketball in Europe rather than maintain his amateur status and play college basketball.  Many people have criticized Brandon for this decision, but I think it’s brilliant.  Brandon does not have interest in being a student athlete, he dreams to be a professional basketball player which is exactly what he will be.  Why should he spend a year in college in the U.S. simply because the current system requires that?

Basketball is not the only sport that regulates the process of being drafted into the professional ranks.  The NFLalso demands that players spend two years in college before they are eligible to enter the draft.  While their reasons are quite logical and pertain to the physical difference between the college and pro game, basketball does not have the same argument.  Many players have made the leap from high school basketball to professional basketball and found a great deal of success.  In fact, two of the best players in the game made that leap and do not seem to be having any problem.  Ever heard of Kobe Bryant and Lebron James? 

Rather than create a system that requires athletes who have no interest in being students play a year in college before entering the draft, the NCAA should focus on improving its basketball game and making high school athletes realize that playing college basketball will help their transition to the pro game.  If the NCAA were able to prove that through its coaching and personal development of its athletes that they have a higher probability of success both in professional basketball and the years following their pro career then more high school athletes will view that as the best option. 

If you look at the evolution of baseball, you will notice how this can work.  Each year, more college baseball players are drafted very high in the MLB draft because they have proven to have an impact quicker than the high school players who take years to develop in the minors.  High school baseball players have seen this and are now considering college baseball as the best option even when they are drafted out of high school. 

The reality is that there are a handful of high school basketball players who are actually capable of going straight to the NBA after high school and finding success immediately.  I realize that eliminating the requirements to enter the NBA draft will result in many high school players making a poor decision and entering the draft prematurely.  However, how many players have spent three or four years in college and still failed to find success in the NBA? The answer is a lot!  If the NCAA were able to prove that attending college for even a year or two will result in a better life then maybe those that consider making the leap prematurely will choose college instead of the NBA…This way the problem will fix itself rather than creating a system that hurts the most talented athletes in the world who truly belong in the NBA at age 18.

The college recruiting experience has many twists and turns.  There are many factors that play into recruiting for a student-athlete but one they have control over is doing the research.  Every student-athlete’s process is completely unique and different.  Doing research on the colleges and the process should be one of the top priorities!

Not only is the Stanford University one of the top academics schools in the country but it is also one of the best athletic programs (Stanford has won 14 consecutive Directors’ Cup).  The Stanford baseball program is a regulaly in the College World Series and is a two time National Champion. 

The Baseball Assistant Coach Dean Stotz at Stanford talks about the importance of research and choosing a college; “I have been doing this a long time, and if I may be so bold, I would like to help you simplify the process of selecting what college you will attend. First of all, please have respect for the magnitude of this college decision. You will live with this decision THE REST OF YOUR LIFE! This is not a “four year” decision, but a “FORTY YEAR DECISION”. There are no “mulligans”, no “do-overs”. Consider the task as if you are doing the most important research paper of your young life. The title of your research paper is: Where will I attend college? Now, how do you do well on a research paper?–RESEARCH!!!

There are three broad areas of risk in your college decision. You must decide what type of “academic challenge”, what type of “baseball challenge”, and what type of what I call “social challenge” you wish to take on.  In Coach Marquess’s and my 31 years we have not graduated 9 people who attended Stanford for four years.” What do you think?  Please post a comment on this topic!!

 The topic of character in the college athletic recruiting process becomes more relevant each day as the freshest news story about a college athlete being arrested is flashed across espn.com or reported about in the local newspaper.  While it’s hard to say whether college athletes are getting into more trouble or there is simply increased attention leading to a greater awareness, most people assume the former.  Due to the sentiment that college athletes are having more character issues in today’s age, college coaches have emphasized the role of character in their recruitment of student athletes.  Clara Aucoin from the Laurel Leader-Call writes about this in her column today.

I have no doubt that college coaches are paying closer attention to the character of student athletes while they develop relationships in the recruiting process.  However, I am confident that coaches also feel the pressure to win and realize that recruiting the best talent is critical in building a winning program.  Faced with recruiting a blue chip caliber athlete with questionable character over a boy scout who volunteers at the local soup kitchen who runs a 5.6 40, I would guess that Urban Meyer will take a risk on the stud athlete.  Certainly character can be a differentiating factor if two student athletes are very similar athletically, but I feel as though this idea of “recruiting character” has been exaggerated. 

With that in mind, I believe student athletes should be encouraged to have good character because it’s the right thing to do, not because it will help them get recruited.  Good character will serve someone well throughout their entire life and rather than allow student athletes to think that character is simply a tool to earn something they desire (roster spot, job, etc.), we should be promoting good character because it will improve our society.  That being said, it certainly will not hurt to have good character if you want to play college sports, so long story short; be the best person you can be and it will serve you well regardless of what you are trying to do.

For most Americans July Fourth symbolizes hot dogs, fireworks and star spangled parades. For many of NCSA’s student-athletes, however, July Fourth equals recruiting season. Every summer thousands of college prospects travel to camps and showcases to better their skills and network with college coaches. If you are traveling near a college campus, the summer is a perfect time to take an unofficial visit.

Unofficial visits give student-athletes a perfect opportunity to meet college coaches on their turf and get a close-up perspective of the campus. Visiting a campus before senior year will help you get a sense for what you like or dislike about a school, coach or team.

Here are a few tips to help you prepare for your unofficial visits:

1) Remember that “unofficial” means the school can not pay for your trip.

2) Unofficial visits can be taken as early as freshman year of high school!

3) Contact the coach! Do not show up on campus unexpected and expect the coach to be accommodating. Call him/her in advance to schedule the visit.

4) When you talk to the coach, use the term “unofficial visit”. By using proper recruiting terms you will demonstrate that you are serious and informed about your college search.

5) Ask questions!

6) Pay attention. This is your insider glimpse into the school so be sure to keep your eyes wide open.

7) Send a thank you note. Always say “thank you” to the coach and any other member of the staff or admissions department who took the time to introduce you to their college or university.

8) Have fun!

 In the world of the college recruiting “market,” the college coaches represent the sellers and the student athletes (and their families) the buyers.  In this market, the currency is athletic scholarships and roster spots.  Much like the housing market right now, this is a buyers market!

The reason for this is not because there are far more scholarships than student athletes making them easy to receive and inexpensive.  The reason the college recruiting “market” is in favor of the buyer (student athletes) is because there are almost zero rules preventing them from researching and doing everything in their power to receive them. 

While the sellers (college coaches) are hindered with rules and restrictions placed on them by the NCAA preventing them from pitching their school as the perfect fit for hundreds of student athletes, student athletes face very few of those rules.  A student athlete can call, write, and visit a school anytime they want!  This is a huge advantage in the marketplace. 

When buying a car or house, rarely does the consumer sit at home and wait for a car salesman or realtor to knock on their door and offer them the perfect car or house.  With that in mind, why do so many student athletes sit around and assume a coach is going to write, call, or visit?  If you want a scholarship, you should become a proactive consumer, find the best product for you situation, and then use your strengths and abilities to buy it!