Don’t Let a Tight Recruiting Budget Hurt Your Chances of an Athletic Scholarship
January 14th, 2009 - by The current economy is affecting families across the country. Many businesses across America have been reining in costs to combat lost revenue. The business of college sports is no different. Athletic departments are being forced to trim costs in any way possible therefore recruiting budgets are taking a hit. However, since a coach’s job is still tied to their winning 
percentage rather than cut back, coaches are getting creative. Today’s New York Times outlined how some schools are changing their ways:
At Amherst College, coaches have been asked to be more selective when sending out a bulk of recruiting letters and encouraged to send e-mail messages to recruits instead of worrying about telephone bills.
Amherst, a Division III college in Massachusetts, is mobilizing its alumni in an effort to have select graduates monitor their local newspapers and academic honor roll announcements to identify potential recruits. The college’s athletic director, Suzanne R. Coffey, said the alumni recruiters might meet on conference calls with coaches to discuss their findings.
“Before the financial crisis occurred, we were talking about ways to identify prospects outside our normal channels,” Coffey said. “Then in the past couple of months, we said this is the type of thing that will make even more sense with financial constraints even more prevalent.”
The Associated Press also put out a story on cost cutting efforts by schools and the NCAA:
The San Jose State football coach says he’ll avoid hotels when possible on recruiting trips. The athletics director at George Washington is wondering whether it’s time to turn out the gym lights earlier each night to save on electricity and heating bills.
Like the rest of the country, college sports is in economic meltdown mode, and not even a grand locale for the NCAA’s annual convention – along the Potomac River just south of Washington, D.C. – can mask the belt-tightening that is under way.
“It’s going to affect travel,” George Washington AD Jack Kvancz said. “It’s going to affect lodging. It’s going to affect all those things that you would obviously think it’s going to effect. You’re going to see schedules affected.”
With coaches cutting back on travel, phone calls, and letters it is more important than ever for recruits to take matters into their own hands and give coaches a vehicle to evaluate their talent. It will be vital for athletes to use tools like NCSA’s Verified Scouting Report to give coach’s a cheap yet extremely effective tool to evaluate their athletic and academic credentials.
It will also put more responsibility on families to follow up aggressively. If you haven’t gotten a phone call from a coach it is
up to the athlete to make sure they call directly. Even if they don’t get an immediate call back athletes will not to continue to stay on the offensive to make sure coaches get a chance to evaluate their Scouting Report.
In a challenging economy athletes have an opportunity to have their education paid in full, but it’s up to them to give coaches the chance to cheaply evaluate their talent.
