NCSA College Athletic Scholarships Blog

It seems we can’t go more than a few months now without a recruit causing a major stir and hurting his scholarship potential by posting something inappropriate on the Internet.  hWether it be YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, or an old-school message board recruits just can’t resist posting something detrimental to their future. The latest incident involved recruits on an official visit posting on Facebook about their trip to a nightclub.

SI’s Andy Staples penned an open letter to every recruit with Internet access pleading for them to use some discretion.

What the recruits don’t seem to realize is that the explosion of social networking sites has spawned an entirely new creature: the Recruitnik Cyberstalker. Unlike urchins such as myself who get paid to look for that stuff, these guys receive no compensation other than the joy of knowing they’ve made life miserable for a rival school.

In other words, players committed to Ohio State should understand that some Michigan fan is trolling the Web looking for their dirty laundry — and vice versa. Players committed to Miami should know that Florida and Florida State fans with too much time on their hands will scour Facebook profiles and MySpace pages looking for incriminating evidence.

The cyberstalkers may not have lives, but that doesn’t preclude them from discovering legitimate information. If a tip from a cyberstalker leads to a real story, I and the rest of the mainstream media will pursue it. Just ask USC coach Lane Kiffin. When Kiffin left Tennessee last week, his exit prompted so much anger that rumors started flying. Now, Kiffin has everyone from ESPN to TMZ chasing down leads about him. Fortunately for him, he didn’t have a public Facebook profile.

Heed this advice, recruits. If you don’t want me calling to ask if you went to a strip club or why you were photographed wearing a gang flag, don’t put it on the Internet. I was young once. I know there are things you’d rather your parents not read.

Like some of you, I even misbehaved on an official visit. I drank my first beer on the only all-expenses-paid football recruiting trip I took. Even in 1996, the NCAA forbade giving recruits alcohol, but my host — unbeknownst to the coaching staff — took me to a bartending class and then to a series of parties. My first sip of suds came from a keg of Milwaukee’s Best Light. (Shockingly, I didn’t swear off beer on the spot.) And what was the name of this renegade school?

Princeton.

Of course, no one of consequence found out, first because no one cared about my recruitment, and second because none of the friends I told had any outlet to distribute the information to the wider world. Facebook was eight years from being invented, and only the early adopters in my peer group had an e-mail address.

Maybe that’s why people in my generation and older can’t understand why today’s youngsters don’t grasp that everything on the Internet is public. When I was in high school, I never would have stood in a crowded public place and yelled out personal information I didn’t want my parents, teachers and coaches to know. Yet that’s exactly what recruits and other teens do — times a million — when they leave their Facebook pages open for public viewing.

Recruits, I love the fact that I can find most of your cell phone numbers with a few keystrokes. I love that I can find out which college you like today. It makes my job easier. But if you keep leaving all your information in the open for the world to blog about, it’s going to make your lives miserable.

I’m with you 100% Andy.  The worst consequence to me is that recruits don’t use the power of the Internet to their advantage fearing the worst.  Creating a recruiting specific Twitter, Facebook or Scouting Report website are all great uses of the net for recruiting.  The devil is in the details.  Recruits need to treat these tools responsibly or the run the risk of being dropped from coaches recruiting boards.

The NCSA team had a great week in San Antonio scouting some of the best high school athletes in America.  We also had the privilege of educating hundreds of families about the recruiting process.  If you are interested in talking one of our collegiate scouts or bringing recruiting education to your team contact NCSA.

Be sure to check out NCSA CEO and founder Chris Krause live on the Tom Lemming Show tonight at 7:30 EST on CSTV.  Chris and Tom will be discussing recruiting and the upcoming National Signing Day!

With all the coaching movement in recent weeks, there has been an outcry asking, “If a coach leaves why can’t the players in his program transfer without penalty?”  New recruits that have signed on to play for a coach can ask out of their letter of intent, however players in the program would have to sit out a year if they choose to transfer.

SI’s Joe Posnanski points out there are several good reasons that players can’t follow their coach out the door.

Well, as tempting as it is to bash the NCAA, there are viable reasons for the transfer penalty.  One to cut down on underhanded recruiting – nobody wants a feeding frenzy every time a coach leaves or gets fired.  Another is to maintain some stability.  Yet another is to prevent coaches trying to take the best players with them. “That would just not be right,” says Oklahoma athletic director Joe Castiglione.

He continues, “There can be unforeseen consequences.  A coach leaving is a very emotional thing, and I don’t know if you would want to make it to easy for student-athletes to make emotional decisions.”

Posnanski goes on to suggest a fair compromise.

In the end Castiglione says common sense should prevail.  I think that’s right.  I don’t think players should be allowed to follow coaches to their new schools; that could lead to shady package deals.  And I don’t think players should be allowed to transfer immediately after a coaching change, when emotions are running hottest.

But if after a fair period of time-maybe 30 days after a new coach get hired-it becomes clear than any players (of any class) in good academic standing does not fit with the new coach and no longer believes the situation is right, well, he or she should be allowed a one-time transfer penalty.  College sports, even big time college sports, are supposed to be about the players. At least that’s what I want to believe.

What do you think about his proposed rule?

Football/Soccer clubs across the world have quite a large scouting base.  Since it’s by far the world’s most popular sport the number of potential players dwarfs those of any other sport.  Additionally, since there are also far and away more professional teams than any other sport, competition for the top players is extremely competitive.  Lately, the stakes for those players have reached astronomical levels as transfer fees (what a professional club pays another for a player on their team) have skyrocketed.

Due to the skyrocketing costs team have begun to scout the entire world for players rather than looking at their traditional recruiting base.  Obviously, this creates a logistical and cost nightmare for any recruiting budget.  Now clubs are turning to the Internet, just like college teams in the United States, to effectively shrink the recruiting landscape.  The Wall Street Journal reports on Football Clubs scouting over the Internet.

The intense competition for players means the days of pro scouts hiding in trees or behind bushes with a notepad and pencil, hoping to catch a glimpse of a future star, are over.

But for Europe’s leading football clubs, finding the next Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo just got easier. A new wave of sophisticated online-scouting systems have revolutionized the way teams track potential superstars.

Last month, the Wolverhampton Wanderers became the first Premier League team to sign up to a new scouting system that will allow talent-spotters to scour the globe for potential targets at the touch of the button. The Scout7Xeatre.tv system, a collaboration between U.K.-based scouting-and-recruitment consultancy Scout7 and German media-solutions provider Xeatre.tv, was launched last year and provides clubs with a world-wide feed of player information and video footage.

It already has been adopted by Borussia Dortmund in Germany, Olympique Marseille in France and Valencia in Spain. Lee Jamison, the managing director of Scout7, says two additional Premier League clubs are currently in the process of implementing the system. Within six months, he expects half of the top-flight clubs in England to be signed up.

“It’s completely changed the landscape,” Mr. Jamison says. “Instead of having the ability to watch perhaps 40 games a month, this enables clubs to watch 10 times that number.”

The Scout7 database covers more than 110,000 players from more than 160 leagues and 127 international squads, with 30 correspondents around the world constantly updating the system. The database includes key statistical information such as contract expiry dates, agent details and the injury history of each player, enabling clubs to use the information to search for the kind of player they are seeking.

Through the Xeatre video technology, teams can monitor their targets by tapping into broadcast footage from around the globe before making a transfer bid.

“Through the system, they’ll be able to search for the sort of player they want, draw up a short list of maybe five to 10 players to monitor and have all of their scouts analyze that player from home. Then that list of 10 becomes a list of three, which they can proceed with,” says Mr. Jamison, whose company has offices in Germany, France and Argentina as well as full-time researchers in the Netherlands, Poland and Chile. “It enables clubs to be very proactive about their player research whereas before teams have tended to have a knee-jerk reaction to recruitment.”

Although Scout7Xeatre is the only scouting database that offers access to broadcast footage, similar systems are also helping to transform the way clubs recruit players.

Panathinaikos in Greece and Russia’s CSKA Moscow are among the subscribers to IM Scouting, an Israel-based consultancy that counts super-agent Pini Zahavi as a board member and boasts a database of 40,000 players world-wide. Elsewhere, Premier League side Everton signed an exclusive deal with U.K. computer-game developer Sports Interactive, enabling the club to use the game’s database of more than 370,000 players and staff at 20,000 teams in 50 countries as a real-life scouting tool.

It isn’t hard to see why a club might prefer to search for a player using a PC rather than paying someone to spend weeks and months trawling the leagues of Eastern Europe, South America or Africa. While a chief scout in the Premier League could be on upward of £100,000 ($163,000) a year, an annual subscription to the Scout7Xeatre system costs roughly £50,000.

In an age of rising travel costs, it also cuts the outlay of the entire recruitment operation by limiting the number of fruitless overseas scouting trips, while also offering due diligence on the costly transfer process.

“Sometimes you identify a player, only you’re not in a position to sign him at that moment. This technology allows you to revisit your assessment three months later without having to go and watch him again,” Mr. Clarke says. “When I was at [Glasgow] Celtic, we’d been looking at a player in Paraguay, but going to South America to see a one-off game, that’s a 40,000 mile trip—especially when he might get injured or be on the substitutes’ bench. Instead, this lets the manager get a feel for the player and really confirm what you’re telling him.”

Sound familiar?  College Coaches in the US use the Internet the exact same way.  They use it to scout more players over a wider base, save on travel costs, and monitor their progress.  In fact the advanced database that is rolling out in Europe has been around for years at NCSA.  Our Recruit-Match technology has been matching coaches with athletes since 2000.  The only question I would have to an athlete looking t0 get recruited is; Why aren’t you listed in Recruit-Match?

Coach Taylor -  My son is not receiving much playing time from his coach due to politics and favortism.  How can I help him maintain his focus and earn more playing time in the hopes of pursuing collegiate opportunities?

We get a lot of questions concerning “politics” and playing time.  The truth is that 99% of the time there is an underlying reason why a coach isn’t playing an athlete.  The answers can range from off-court behavior, practice habits, respect for the coaching staff, roster makeup, and the toughest of all – lack of talent.  Remember in team sports its a coaches responsibility to field the best unit, not group of individuals.  Sometimes players are asked to sacrifice for the team.  Many times players are unwilling or unable to do this.

My best advice for any athlete who feels they are being slighted on playing time is to talk to the coach.  Never, bring the parents into the equation.  This always escalates the situation.  The player should find the right time to polietly and professionally ask his coach if he would mind sitting down to discuss an issue.  If a player is honest with his coach and treats the conversation professionally they should receive an answer.  The player may not like the answer, but its up to him to take the advice and run with it.

The other important thing to remember is that a player now has more options to market themselves to coaches.  A player might be a back-up, but can still prove to a college coach they have collegiate ability.  Getting together any film you have and getting it to a college coach is sometimes enough to gain initial interest.   From there its up to the recruit to take the ball and run with it.

Send your recruiting questions to askcoachtaylor@ncsasports.org

If you would like to speak with a NCSA Recruiting Coordinator about your personal recruiting situation, call 866-579-6272.

Coach Taylor – My question is how can I look up current Head Coach / Recruiting Coordinator contact info? I have spent several hours going directly to College websites but it’s very hard to pinpoint proper contact info? Do you have any advice?

Unfortunately, if a family makes the decision to navigate this process on their own and take the appropriate five steps, visiting each website and searching for contact info is the best way. 

As we have mentioned in the past, getting recruiting successfully can be a full time job at times.  Part of that work involves finding the contact info all the right coaches at 50-100 college programs (keep in mind each staff might have several coaches depending on the sport). 

While time consuming, searching through all those websites might not even be the most frustrating step in the process.  Once you have collected the info, the next step is typically to send your recruiting profile and video.  However, since the contact info is available on most websites, hundreds to thousands of other recruits are doing the exact same thing.  Are they going to look at your information?  Maybe, maybe not…make sure you have a way to find out.

Remember that college coaches are more likely to review information sent from trusted third parties that you can take advantage of.  Some credible sources already have established relationships that will save you the time of searching through websites and also efficient methods to distribute your information. 

Send your recruiting questions to askcoachtaylor@ncsasports.org

If you would like to speak with a NCSA Recruiting Coordinator about your personal recruiting situation, call 866-579-6272.

By Steve Wieberg, USA TODAY

ATLANTA — Football coaches’ recent misadventures aside, basketball remains perhaps the NCAA’s most challenging sport. There, among other things, lie long-term concerns with the recruiting environment. And the latest release of graduation rates showed academics are continuing to lag.

The association is to address both fronts in the next couple of days. Meeting during the association’s annual convention, which begins today, the 31-member board that oversees rules changes in Division I is expected to endorse separate packages of proposals that target men’s basketball.

One proposal is designed to clamp down on the funneling of money to recruits’ handlers and other associates, in part by banning the hiring of “an individual associated with a prospect” for two years before or after the player’s arrival on campus. Those hired before Oct. 29, 2009, would be grandfathered.

To read the full article, click here.

NCSA is proud to announce that Nichole Monhait, a 2010 grad, has committed to Colorado College where she will be a member of the women’s basketball team.

Monhait is a 5’7″ combo guard from Highland Park, IL. Currently she averaging, 11 PPG, 5 RPG, 5 APG, 39% FG, and 67% 3-Pt.

Monhait said, “NCSA led me to research different schools and opened my eyes to many other opportunities. Thank you for all your help!”

We wish Monhait the best, as she finishes her senior season and as she embarks on the start of her collegiate career.

One final statistic to remind athletes that they need to choose a school based on the total package, not just a relationship with a coach.  77 of the 120 NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision teams have seen their head coach turnover at least once in the past four years. High School Seniors committing to a college had about a 36% chance that the coach they committed to would see them through graduation.

Granted, the turnover at Division I football is greater than other sports and division levels, however every student-athlete should prepare for this scenario.  Recruits that create leverage and have more scholarship offers, always have the best chance of finding the right OVERALL fit.