NCSA College Athletic Scholarships Blog

One thing young people can do to increase their chances of playing College Sports is to study remarkable players like the great Jerry Rice. Many players were born with greater physical blessings, but his work ethic and desire were so great he carved out an unforgettable college and pro football experience. I recently went to hear the former 49ers great (although he jokes now that many people know him more for Dancing with the Stars) speak at the Key Bank Gridiron Legends Luncheon Series put on by the College Football Hall of Fame. Rice played at Mississippi Valley State and then twenty years in the NFL. I took notes of what he said.

“I miss football every day,” he said. “It’s hard. It was a passion. I can understand what Brett Favre has gone through.”

It’s important for young people to know that you only have so long to play the sport you love in a structured manner. Most won’t play pro, so the window is just a short number of years.

One time I visited with a female athlete at State University of New York at New Paltz. She said, “I love my sport. I figure I’ve got 4 years in High School and 4 years of College and that’s it as far as playing in an organized setting. I am not about to miss that chance.”

This past March before I delivered College Recruiting Simplified at the NIKE ESPN Rise Combine in Cincinnati, a High School football coach told me something that really stuck. He said he tells all his players that are capable of playing some level of college, and that love the sport of football, that they shouldn’t miss the window.

“I tell them that when they are done with high school and college football, good luck trying to get 21 other guys together in full pads to play a game of football.”

That’s why you shouldn’t leave any stone unturned in doing everything you can to play college sports, IF you love your sport.

Back to Rice. He is considered the greatest receiver to ever play football, did not get a single Division One offer. He played at 1-AA (as it was called then and I still like to call it) Mississippi Valley State. His family didn’t know how to get the word out about his skills in high school.

“Things happen for a reason,” Rice said of not playing at the highest level of college. “I was meant to go to Mississippi Valley State. In San Francisco I played with Ronnie Lott who played at Southern Cal and Joe Montana who played at Notre Dame. I respect their schools but I felt I did a pretty good job coming out of Mississippi Valley State.”

Here are some other things I heard Rice say that can benefit potential college athletes in all sports, and those in their families:

ON HIS WORK ETHIC: “My first ten years in the NFL, I did not take a vacation. I felt I had to prove myself every year.”

ON WHY HE RAN 60 TO 80 YARDS AFTER EVERY BALL HE CAUGHT IN PRACTICE (WHICH

TEAMMATES COULDN’T UNDERSTAND): “I did that so that in a game I would know what to do with the ball. It wouldn’t be, “I’ve caught the ball, now what?”

ON HUSTLE:  “I like watching college basketball better than the NBA because you see the hustle.

ON FUNDAMENTALS: “You don’t see the fundamentals in football as much now. You are not seeing the quality of football.”

ON BEING COACHABLE DEEP INTO HIS NFL CAREER:

“When I was with the Raiders late in my NFL career, I told the coaches that if they saw something, to tell me. You never get to a point to where you can’t learn.”

ON BEING COACHED BY BILL WALSH, ONE OF THE GREATEST COACHES:

“If we didn’t practice well, Bill would start practice over again. The game was merely an extension of practice. One time after a game where I had 11 catches and 3 TD’s, he brought me into his office the next Monday and looked me square in the eye and said, “I need more from you.” He had told Joe Montana and others the same thing. That’s why we won so many Super Bowls.”

ON WHY HE WORKED SO HARD IN THE OFF SEASON AND IN PRACTICE: “My strategy was I wanted to finish the 4th Quarter like the 1st Quarter. I would wear my opponent down. Even if a play went the other way from me, I ran deep to wear out my opponent. Even if the play ran away, I blocked my opponent hard to have them worn out by the final Quarter. I worked hard every practice of my life. I always wanted to walk away from practice with something.

During the NFL season its become an almost mortal lock that I share an opinion from ESPN writer Gregg Easterbrook’s weekly TMQ column outlining his thoughts on everything from amateur sports to NASA.  This week Easterbrook highlights a new joint venture between the NCAA and NBA.

The Menace of the AAU: Recently the NBA and NCAA signed a $30 million deal to establish some kind of prep academy for top basketball players, in hopes of reducing the negative influence of basketball-based “high schools” where athletes spend more time in the gym than in class. (The insidious aspect of basketball academies is that all states require public school students to pass proficiency exams to receive high school diplomas; but there are no such rules for private schools, which can issue any diplomas they please, thus encouraging the diploma-mill approach to circumventing the high school graduation requirement.) The NBA-NCAA plan is an effort to undercut the AAU, where the basketball emphasis is on flash, stats and strutting, while teamwork is a taboo. The NBA and NCAA have worried for years that AAU influence — top high school players are constantly participating in “all-star games” where there isn’t even any attempt to engage in team basketball — is lowering the overall quality of play. This threatens the goose that lays the golden eggs.

And it inculcates an attitude that all that matters is showing off for the NBA draft, not achieving anything lasting. Think of the Ohio State team that lost the NCAA men’s championship game in 2007, or the Memphis team that lost the following year. Either team, if together a while, might have become really memorable — Ohio State had Greg Oden and Mike Conley Jr., Memphis had Derrick Rose and Chris Douglas-Roberts. Since three of those four were freshmen, if they’d all stuck around in college longer and stayed eligible, those teams might have improved and become truly great a year or two down the road. Instead, everybody split early for the pros. It’s said that in the locker room after Memphis botched the final two minutes of what would have been a national championship, Rose cried inconsolably. He’ll make lots of money in the pros, but will he ever be involved in anything worth crying about?

Any attempt to re-focus college athletics on academics is right up my alley. Here’s to hoping the venture is successful.

One of the biggest parts of the athletic recruiting process is visiting a college campus.  This can either happen officially during senior year, where the school pays, or unofficially at any time.  Recruits differ on which type of visit is more important, but it is clear that visiting campuses is a key to the decision making process.

ESPN recently intrerviewed a series of recruits to get their take on the official versus unofficial visit.  It became clear that the athletes that were prepared for their visits and were looking at more aspects besides just the football program got more value from their time on campus.

Some student-athletes suggest there’s not much difference between the two other than whether or not there’s a game.

“To be honest, it’s not much different,” Joyner said, “other than you’re there on the college dime.”

Others find otherwise.

“Most of the time you don’t have a player host [on an unofficial]; it’s a person they hire,” said Cassius Marsh, a defensive tackle from Oaks Christian High (Calif.). He made numerous unofficial visits to Cal, USC and UCLA, and official visits to Cal, Arizona State and LSU. “It’s not as intense, much more laid-back than officials.”

Marsh said his official visit to Cal didn’t do much for him: “I was kind of bored since I’d already seen just about everything.”

His official to LSU? Ding! Ding! Ding! Great value. In fact, Marsh called LSU coaches Monday and committed to play for the Tigers. Here’s part of the reason:

“The Cox [Communications Academic] Center is a great support system [at LSU] for students. And the overall atmosphere, the history of the team, and how promising every single season can be,” he said. “LSU had like 50,000 tailgaters when I was there.

“The fans are much more intense than any of the fans in the PAC 10. LSU pretty much blows everybody else out the window.”

Aramide Olaniyan, an outside linebacker at Woodberry Forest (Va.) School, made his first official visit a few weeks ago, to UCLA. He’s also considering Duke, North Carolina, Miami, NC State, Vanderbilt and Michigan. He, too, has made unofficial visits, saying “at Michigan, we got to check out the business school, and that was a blast.”

He said one obvious benefit to making an official visit when the team has a game that weekend is “You get to know the coaches better, and see how they interact with players in game situations.”

College coaches often would rather host official visits in the offseason, or between the end of the regular season and a bowl game because they have more time.

“Some of the good things about coming in during the season are seeing a game and enjoying the atmosphere,” said Texas wide receivers coach and assistant recruiting coordinator Bobby Kennedy. “Instead of having one or two guys in at a time, we like to try to get the whole group lined up to come in during the banquet weekend in December.

“That works best for us because people see our team at the banquet and they get to come to a practice, so they get a good sense of what our program is all about.”

Players usually arrive Saturday morning after having played the night before.

“They all pretty much do things the same way,” Marsh said. “You basically meet the coaches, have breakfast, and go tour the campus, do the pregame activities, go on the field during the game. Once you’ve watched the game you go with your [player] host [for social activities], and you got curfew. The next morning, you sit in on meetings.”

Though much of an official visit is conducted in group form — other than meetings with position coaches and the like — Garner said part of each official is usually tailor-made.

“We have a general itinerary that we follow for every official visit,” he said. “And we try to make sure we get the prospective student-athlete to meet with a faculty member in the area of his academic interest.”

At Texas, “We always try to tailor visits to what the prospects want to see,” Kennedy said. “You’re going to tailor each visit a certain way so you can put your best foot forward, but also show them what they need to see to make to make an informed decision on what school’s best for them.”

Joyner, who has made unofficial visits to Georgia, Miami and Tennessee in addition to FSU and Florida, said he will make official visits to USC and Alabama. “I’m going to be real picky about the last one. I don’t know yet,” he said. “Somewhere out of state because I’ve been to Florida and Florida State plenty.”

Like Marsh, Joyner said he got something special out of official visits to Ohio State and Notre Dame, where he was looking out not only for his athletic and academic interests, but for life after football.

He attended the spring game at Ohio State on an unofficial, but learned things in his official visit that he hadn’t before.

“I was looking for the feel from the town, the atmosphere, the fans, the players, the way they’re being coached,” he said. “I want to know how does the place feel? Can I climatize? My thing is I want to be successful, and if I am going to be, I’m going to have to man up and maybe live in some weather [unlike south Florida]. And are the guys on the team good guys, or are they going to go partying around every day? Everybody has fun in college, but you’ve got to stay focused.

“It’s bigger than football. After I graduate, if I don’t make the NFL, will they be here to support me? What kind of name will I make myself for myself at Ohio State? Ohio State was louder, more fans, bigger alumni base. Notre Dame. … I know the association with fans is probably as big, but in terms of fan base, Ohio State had an edge. I had a good time at both.”

That final quote should really ring true for recruits and their parents.  The objective of going to college is to set yourself up for the next 40 years of your life.  That means getting a meaningful degree and setting yourself up for a rewarding career.

From the various quotes above, you can see that each athlete found value in different visits.  Therefore my advice to student-athletes is to visit schools early and often.  Take both unofficial and official visits.  Visit with members of academic and athletic support teams.  Visit athletic facilities and academic facilities.

The more visits you take and the more information you gather, the greater chance of finding the right home to continue your athletic career.

My name is Megan Mayfield and I’m going on a softball scholarship to Lynn University.  Being recruited isn’t something that just happens overnight and you can’t just rely on talent alone, a lot of work goes on behind the scenes.  Between team and individual practices, the hours spent on the practice field are uncountable. If you’re struggling with something, work on it until you get it. Go out with a coach, a parent, or even one of your teammates and practice it until you get it. Playing softball is only part of the process; you can’t be recruited if no one knows about you.  You have to get your letters out, get them out early, and make them personal. No coach wants to get a mass email; if you can’t take enough time out of your day to personally contact them, why do they want to take time out their day and personally come watch you?  When you get to the tournament, you can’t do anything more so relax and just do your best.  Make yourself standout from the rest of the team, my coach will tell you that the only reason she started watching me was because she saw me take off on a dead sprint to my position in outfield. Do something to get yourself noticed, be loud, be focused, hustle, or wear bright crazy sunglasses anything to make them look at you, because they’re looking at you they’re watching you.

There are ups and downs to be recruited.  Being denied is the worst part about the recruiting process and I was denied like there was no tomorrow.  I’ve been told that I was too small to play college ball since I was a kid, but when a college coach says it, it can be discouraging. However, I was determined to get recruited so I shook that stuff off and kept doing my best. The first time a coach waits behind the dugout after your game to talk to you is the most exciting part of being recruited. In your mind you’re thinking I did it, I got recruited and now all those practices, games, batting slumps, everything else pays off. The NCSA did the best they could’ve done for me, they put reality in perspective. They made me realize how competitive being recruited was and they helped me have a chance in that competition by telling me what I needed to do. They gave me an upper hand on all the other athletes that didn’t have someone walking them through the long process.  The only thing I can tell anyone wanting to get recruited is never give up, hustle everywhere you go, be competitive,  challenge yourself, and most importantly have just have fun.

Last week the Division II President’s Council affirmed its support for a new proposal aimed to streamline seasons and reduce the maximum number of contests in 10 sports.  The “Life in Balance,” initiative is part of an overall aim to align playing and practice season policies with the division’s long term strategic-positioning.

While the measure may seem minor, it is extremely interesting to see Division II actively trying to separate itself from Division I.  Division I schools have some built in advantages in the recruiting process. They have larger student bodies, better facilities, larger campuses and receive more media exposure.  More times than not they will win in the recruiting process.  However, every year there is always a large group of athletes that pass up Division I offers to attend a Division II school.

The main reasons athletes make this choice is they find a better fit at the Division II level.  Many times it is the slightly less rigorous schedule that gives an student-athlete time to focus on other pursuits that give Division II schools that edge.  The shame is that most athletes never consider the Division II or Division III option.

The schools have much smaller recruiting budgets, so unless athletes are actively seeking them out, they can be easy to miss.  The ability to target schools of all sizes across the county is one of the huge advantages NCSA offers student-athletes.  We have the relationships able to connect coaches to recruits and the ability to connect them cost effectively.  If you want to learn about the many opportunities out there, submit your Recruiting Profile to NCSA.