Football Scholarship Offers – When You Should Expect Them
July 17th, 2009 - byOne of the most common questions we get in the football department at NCSA is, “What are the timelines for football recruiting, specifically about when should I expect to receive scholarship offers?” The curiosity stems from recruits seeing so many other prospects getting offers and committing on Rivals or Scout.com.With that in mind, I thought it would be helpful to provide a timeline of football recruiting that will offer some perspective for recruits and shape their expectations.
Division 1-A offers technically can be offered at anytime in a recruits career, but for the most part a majority of them will come during the May Evaluation period of your Junior year. Whether it comes by phone call, letter, or in-person contact, we have seen most D1-A schools offer around 10-20 players during this time. The remaining 5-15 offers typically occur during the camp season in June-July.
Those recruits who did not receive an offer during either of those periods most likely had some sort of question mark surrounding their ability to play at that level. For example: is he really 6’5? Can he compete against top level competition? Is he a high character recruit?
August is usually a very slow month. Part of this is due to the month being a quiet period, but more importantly this is often time the only opportunity a coach has free time for their family and vacations, etc. Not to mention the beginning of two-a-days and practice.
However, come September 1st, coaches are allowed to start calling prospects again, and student-athletes can start taking official visits. Therefore, most D1-A programs are finished recruiting by the beginning of a recruit’s senior year, but might have a few holes to fill depending on their efforts.
If you want to know if you are one of those guys still “in the mix,” I suggest you call the coaching staff and ask if you can setup an official visit. More times than not, a program will invite 35-50 recruits for an official visit (most of them already with offers).
D1-AA offers are not necessarily going to be given out as early as DI-A. Remember, those schools are trying to get the best of the D1 caliber players that “fell off the map”. Not receiving an offer right away is not the biggest problem in the world, just be sure to keep in contact with them. However, an official visit offer would be a must if you want to be considered a legit recruit.
DII /NAIA throw a wrench in the mix. These are the only levels of play that are allowed to host tryouts. These tryouts are after the season (October, November, December) with offers soon to follow (November, December, January).
DIII schools are last to finish the process. NCSA had over 50 DIII coaches respond as late as May letting us know they were still in the market for senior prospects.
I hope this timeline gives you some insight as to what level of recruitment you should expect based on your ability. Remember, these timeframes are not absolutes, but rather general rules of thumb to follow for recruits.
