NCSA College Athletic Scholarships Blog

Mike and Mike,

I enjoy your show but missed your discussion about offering the 13 year old a football scholarship.

I evaluate football players for a living and in fact have a list of the class of 2014(8th grade) and 2013(in- coming freshmen) kids. I also make recruiting presentations on behalf of the NCSA at camps and combines around the country.

With over 30 years of college football experience, most of it in recruiting as a coordinator, etc. I’ve been involved in offering scholarships to many underclassmen.

One of the keys to offering a freshman or sophomore is to have a face to face on your campus. An unofficial visit is what it really is. If the young man is in your office there’s no restriction to recruiting the kid.

The prospect goes into the head coach’s office preferably with his parent(s). The head coach is accompanied by the area recruiting coach, position coach and recruiting coordinator. This allows more ears to hear the offer and the answer.

Back in the day at UCLA we had three underclassmen commit to us before signing day but had them wait until after signing to announce their commitment so as to not scare any of our current signees. The day after the NLIs were signed it was all over the internet. This was in 1999, a big coup back then.

Having underclassmen come to games in any sport on your campus is gold because this is an unofficial visit and allows you total access to recruit the prospect.

OFFERING AN UNDERCLASSMAN AT A CAMP IS A VIOLATION!

In fact, to have an unofficial visit at the school following a camp the prospect has to leave campus the day it ends and come back the next day to have a legal unofficial visit. There is to be zero recruiting discussion during the camp per the NCAA.

Another time when college coaches offer an underclassman is when they’re on the high school campus. This must be done through the high school coach as it would be a violation to talk to the underclassman directly. Using the HS coach is technically against the rules too but done regularly.

To offer the 7th or 8th grader is actually easier because at this time these youngsters aren’t considered recruitable student athletes in football. Just this year the NCAA declared 7th and 8th graders recruited student athletes in basketball because the bball coaches were using the lack of rules to get in the door early.

I know many top D1 football programs are sending hand written notes with questionnaires to 7th and 8th grade kids getting their foot in the door.

Much more to the recruiting process that goes on behind the scenes and I’d be glad to share if you’re interested.

All my best,

Randy Taylor
Football Recruiting Coordinator
National Collegiate Scouting Association

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 at 1:58 pm and is filed under College Football. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.