NCSA College Athletic Scholarships Blog

Many recruits across the country assume a resume that reads two-time all-state running back guarantees a Division I scholarship.  Guess again.  At this time of year many top recruits are playing the waiting game, not sure where they will end up.  Rivals.com examines a group of players who find themselves sitting on the fence between Division I and I-AA.

Welcome to the other side of football recruiting.

For every blue-chip player who goes on TV and plays a silly shell game with hats before deciding which big-time program he’s going to play for, there are dozens of quality football players caught in the middle of a high-stakes game of chicken.

• Some are “Plan B” kids, players who I-A coaches will offer only after being turned down by other athletes at their position.

• Some are given opportunities as “preferred walk-ons,” kids that recruiters try to lure to their program with the carrot of being on a Division I-A team and the promise of a potential scholarship down the line – but no scholarship now or maybe ever.

• Others are FCS (I-AA) or Division III players, kids who are perceived by the recruiters to be not good enough for the highest-level of college football but can certainly make contributions on the field.

The problem is there’s no way of telling what group you actually belong in. One school’s “Plan B” is another school’s walk-on. Committing early to an FCS school could cost an athlete the chance to get a late I-A offer; waiting too long for a I-A offer could make a I-AA school turn to someone else.

“The next two months are very challenging,” Mat Taylor, the head coach of Sammamish (Wash.) Skyline said. “Unfortunately for a lot of parents and players so much changes daily.”

Certainly reading a situation that changes daily can be extremely frustrating and confusing.  NCSA specializes in navigating the process and reading the right signs from college coaches.  Our recruiting coaches have been through the process with hundreds of athletes and understand how to advise athletes who are going through it for the first time.  If you are worried about sitting on the recruiting fence at the last second it might make a lot of sense to contact an NCSA Scout today.

Once again Lane Kiffin is a man on the move.  Within a 5 year span he has moved from assistant coach at USC, to head coach of the Oakland Raiders, Tennessee Volunteers and last night moved back to be the head coach of USC.  Along the way he promised many a recruit that he would be their coach and that they would build something special at school X.

Three weeks away from National Signing Day he has once again packed up his bags to leave a school and left dozens of recruits in complete limbo.  Many Volunteer commits like Brandon Willis were actually ready to start classes today!

“They had the nerve to call me and ask me to come to Southern Cal. And coach Ed Orgeron [who is going with Kiffin to USC] said that he was going to be my coach at Tennessee.”

Contrasting his feelings  are those of J.C. Copeland.

“I didn’t commit to Tennessee because of the coach, I committed because of the school.”

It might not be the easiest thought to stomach for a 17 year old, but they need to understand the business side of college sports and realize the coach that recruits them could easily be gone well before graduation.  For that reason recruits need to choose a school based on a myriad of factors.  It also helps to have several choices in case the rug is pulled out from under you at the last second and you are suddenly searching for a new school.

Recruits need to be prepared for anything to happen because all to often it does happen.

Coach Taylor – What does it take to play my sport at each division level?

We get this question a lot at NCSA.  There is a lot that goes into an evaluation by a college coach.  NCSA has spent the last 10 years evaluating players for college coaches and has a tremendous amount of data stored up.  We used this data to develop our Exclusive Recruiting Guidelines to help give recruits an idea of what schools they should realistically be targeting.  They are guidelines, not hard fast rules, but they can give recruits an idea of where they fit.

Baseball Recruiting Guidelines

Men’s Basketball Recruiting Guidelines

Women’s Basketball Recruiting Guidelines

Men’s Cross Country Recruiting Guidelines

Women’s Cross Country Recruiting Guidelines

Field Hockey Recruiting Guidelines

Football Recruiting Guidelines

Water Polo Recruiting Guidelines

Men’s Golf Recruiting Guidelines

Women’s Golf Recruiting Guidelines

Ice Hockey Recruiting Guidelines

Men’s Lacrosse Recruiting Guidelines

Women’s Lacrosse Recruiting Guidelines

Soccer Recruiting Guidelines

Softball Recruiting Guidelines

Swimming Recruiting Guidelines

Men’s Tennis Recruiting Guidelines

Women’s Tennis Recruiting Guidelines

Men’s Track and Field Recruiting Guidelines

Women’s Track and Field Recruiting Guidelines

Men’s Volleyball Recruiting Guidelines

Women’s Volleyball Recruiting Guidelines

Wrestling Recruiting Guidelines

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.

Let’s look at the following facts:

1)       The average cost of a college education is over $140,000

2)       There are over 20,000 high schools with athletic programs

3)       Only 5% or high school athletes will play in college

4)       The internet has made it so college coaches can look at kids from all over the world

How competitive is it to secure a college roster spot with some funding attached to it?  In the last 10 years, the competitiveness has increased exponentially because of the above 4 facts and these points.   When you examine how competitive it is, when do you think you should be competing for a college roster spot?  Senior year, junior year, sophomore year, freshman year, or younger?   If you said younger, that’s the correct answer.  If you’re a sophomore, junior or senior, it isn’t too late, but I bet you wished you had begun earlier, right? 

If you understand what you need to do to compete, then you’ll understand why college recruiting begins as early as 7^th and 8^th grade.  And if you don’t know anyone who are doing these things, that doesn’t mean there aren’t thousands of your peers around the country who are.  They are ahead in the recruiting race right now.  So here’s what you need to do to compete:

There are 3 legs that lead to a college scholarship, 1) academics, 2) athletics, and 3) college recruiting.  You can work real hard on those first 2 legs and that means nothing if a college coach doesn’t know about you.  When you delay working every day on college recruiting you are making a HUGE mistake that thousands of your peers are not.  Every day you wait to do something about college recruiting you lose ground to the kids who are doing something.

College coaches tell us that if they’ve known a kid since 7^th or 8^th grade and they find out about a similar student-athlete when that one is a sophomore or junior, he’ll offer the scholarship to the kid he has known the longest. 

Remember college recruiting is putting you in a position to earn a spot in a $140,000 job.  If you’re not making the effort to be recruited, what you do academically and athletically doesn’t matter.  You won’t get that job.  And waiting only hurts your chances.

The beauty of NCSA is we’ll take care of all of the heavy lifting on your recruiting effort.  That way you can focus on your work in the classroom and improving your athletic skills.  You’ll also get on the radar of college coaches so your hard work on those first 2 legs are being followed by those coaches. 

 If you want to play college sports and you’ve already played a season in high school, you’re beginning the recruiting process late.  If you need to catch up to your peers or don’t want to be left behind go here to be competitive.

“Can’t my high school coach use his contacts to help me get a scholarship?” It is a question we hear a lot at NCSA.  Quite frankly, there was a time when a high school coach could easily call in a few favors to get his top players a shot at the college level.  Unfortunately, for high school athletes at powerhouse high schools, those days are no more.  Lets take a look back at all of the events that have occurred to change the relationship between high school and college coaches.

1) At one point college coaches were extremely dependent on high school coaches to identify the top talent in their recruiting areas.  High school coaches were the only ones with access to what little 16 mm film was shot of games.  Slowly, this began to change…

2) Increasing high school sport participation and specialization meant there were more qualified athletes than ever before.  Unfortunately, NCAA scholarship limits started to squeeze roster sizes (At one point a college coach could have 100 scholarship athletes on his freshman football team!) and forced college coaches to make tougher evaluations and scholarships decisions. Never before had they had so many talented athletes with so few scholarships available.

3) Technology broke down recruiting boundaries.  First the VHS tape, then DVD and finally the Internet allowed recruiting information and video footage to travel at an ever increasing rate.   Coaches could now watch recruits from their office across the country and make an evaluation.  Calling a high school coach on the phone for his opinion of a player was no longer necesary.

4)  Finally, the dollar amounts involved with recruiting exploded.  Camps popped up across the country.  Shoe companies started sponsoring combines and tournaments.  Most importantly, coaching salaries exploded.  Their jobs were now on the line every single week as dictated by big money boosters.  In short, the days of a friendly conversation between a high school and college coach leading to a scholarship were over.

Is this bad news for recruits?  Not really.  Sure, some recruits will now have to put effort into the recruiting process, but it allows for everyone to have an opportunity to impress a coach.  Cronyism is taken out of the picture.  The responsibility for taking ownership of the recruiting process now lies solely on the recruit.  Perhaps that is how it should have been all along.

“At Georgia Southern, we don’t cheat. That costs money and we don’t have any.”

Erk Russell / Georgia Southern.

“Football is only a game. Spiritual things are eternal. Nevertheless, Beat Texas.”

Seen on a church sign in Arkansas prior to the 1969 game.

“After you retire, there’s only one big event left….and I ain’t ready for that.”

Bobby Bowden / Florida State

“The man who complains about the way the ball bounces is likely to be the one who dropped it.”

Lou Holtz / Arkansas

“When you win, nothing hurts.”

Joe Namath / Alabama

“Motivation is simple. You eliminate those who are not motivated.”

Lou Holtz / Arkansas

“If you want to walk the heavenly streets of gold, you gotta know the password,

“Roll, tide, roll!”

Bear Bryant / Alabama

“A school without football is in danger of deteriorating into a medieval study hall.”

Frank Leahy / Notre Dame

“There’s nothing that cleanses your soul like getting the hell kicked out of you.”

Woody Hayes / Ohio State

“I don’t expect to win enough games to be put on NCAA probation. I just want to win enough to warrant an investigation.”

Bob Devaney / Nebraska

“In Alabama, an atheist is someone who doesn’t believe inBear Bryant.”

Wally Butts / Georgia

“You can learn more character on the two-yard line than anywhere else in life.”

Paul Dietzel / LSU

“It’s kind of hard to rally around a math class.”

Bear Bryant / Alabama

When asked if Fayetteville was the end of the world.

“No, but you can see it from here.”

Lou Holtz / Arkansas…

“I make my practices real hard because if a player is a quitter, I want him to quit in practice, not in a game.”

Bear Bryant / Alabama

“There’s one sure way to stop us from scoring-give us the ball near the goal line.”

Matty Bell / SMU

“Lads,you’re not to miss practice unless your parents died or you died.”

Frank Leahy / Notre Dame

“I never graduated from Iowa, but I was only there for two terms -

Truman’s and Eisenhower’s.”

Alex Karras / Iowa

“My advice to defensive players: Take the shortest route to the ball

and arrive in a bad humor.”

Bowden Wyatt / Tennessee

“I could have been a Rhodes Scholar, except for my grades.”

Duffy Daugherty / Michigan State

“Always remember ….. Goliath was a 40 point favorite over David.”

Shug Jordan / Auburn

“They cut us up like boarding house pie. And that’s real small pieces.”

Darrell Royal / Texas

“Show me a good and gracious loser, and I’ll show you a failure.”

Knute Rockne / Notre Dame

“They whipped us like a tied up goat.”

Spike Dykes / Texas Tech

“I asked Darrell Royal, the coach of the Texas Longhorns, why he didn’t recruit me and he said: “Well,Walt, we took a look at you and you weren’t any good.”

Walt Garrison / Oklahoma State

“Son, you’ve got a good engine, but your hands aren’t on the steering wheel.”

Bobby Bowden / Florida State

“Football is not a contact sport – it is a collision sport. Dancing is a contact sport.”

Duffy Daugherty / Michigan State

After USC lost 51-0 to Notre Dame, his postgame message to his team:

“All those who need showers, take them.”

John McKay / USC

“If lessons are learned in defeat, our team is getting a great education.”

Murray Warmath / Minnesota

“The only qualifications for a lineman are to be big and dumb.

To be a back, you only have to be dumb.”

Knute Rockne / Notre Dame

“Oh, we played about like three tons of buzzard puke this afternoon.”

Spike Dykes / Texas Tech

“It isn’t necessary to see a good tackle. You can hear it.”

Knute Rockne / Notre Dame

“We live one day at a time and scratch where it itches.”

Darrell Royal / Texas

“We didn’t tackle well today but we made up for it by not blocking.”

John McKay / USC

“Three things can happen when you throw the ball, and two of them are bad .”

Darrell Royal / University of Texas

“I’ve found that prayers work best when you have big players.”

Knute Rockne / Notre Dame

“Gentlemen, it is better to have died a small boy than to fumble this football”

John Heisman

“Always do the right thing!!” said the High School Coach.

I had just finished delivering College Recruiting Simplified at South Bend Adams High School. Longtime Softball Coach John Woodruff, who had made sure his team was in attendance, was asked by Athletic Director Bill Groves to share an unforgettable story about Character and Opportunity.

“Always do the right thing, young people!” Woodruff said to the audience, which included athletes for all kinds of sports, and parents. “You never know how doing the wrong thing can impact your recruiting.”

Woodruff went onto share a story that left us all speechless.

At the time, the Notre Dame Football coaching staff changed dramatically with the departure of Head Coach Charlie Weis and the arrival of new Head Coach Brian Kelly. Woodruff told the audience about one of the Notre Dame assistant coaches. While in South Bend as an assistant coach at ND, he was aware of a certain local high school football player. The player was a good one, but wasn’t evaluated to be a Notre Dame player. He was good enough to play D1, but not quite at Notre Dame’s level. So, that assistant coach wasn’t interested in offering him while he was on the ND staff.

Well, things change in life. After the ND coaching turnover, that assistant coach was soon hired to be head coach of another Division One program in the Mid American Conference. As he left South Bend for his new coaching position, he drove to the High School of that player that just weeks before he didn’t feel was quite a Notre Dame player, but was definitely a Mid American Conference (MAC) player (mid level D1). He was ready to offer a full athletic scholarship to have him play there.

The coach got to the school, and got the High School coach to locate what class he was to be in. They walked to the class to dramatically change the life of the young man.

He wasn’t there.

He had decided to skip afternoon classes.

The College coach wasted little time in leaving the High School. He was out of there! Along with him went a scholarship amounting to about $30,000 a year and the opportunity to play in the Mid American Conference.

You could have heard a pin drop in the Auditorium at John Adams High when Coach Woodruff shared that story.

“Needless to say,” Coach Woodruff said, “his father isn’t very happy.”

“ALWAYS do the right thing!!!,” he said, as every athlete was listening to every word of the story. “That young man decided to pick a Tuesday before Christmas break to skip afternoon classes. It cost him a scholarship!”

College coaches, especially ones taking over as head coaches at new programs, have high standards. Why would they ever want to use scholarship money on anyone who skipped even an afternoon session of classes?! Would that athlete skip a play by not going all out in a certain part of a game, or an offseason workout? Recruiting is so competitive now that a Coach can simply move to the next qualified prospect on their list and offer them. Unless you are legitimately sick or have a valid excuse, don’t EVER be absent from school.

“I have a sign that reads ‘Character is doing what’s right when no one is looking,’” said Coach Woodruff. “This young man wasn’t doing what was right, and the College coach was looking.”

And it cost him over $120,000 in scholarship money. It was the only D1 offer that was going to be offered to him…

To Talk with a College Scout to Learn what You HAVE to do to Get Recruited

Charlie Adams, Speaker

NCSA Athletic Recruiting Network

cadams@ncsasports.org

NCSA is proud to announce the commitment of Jacob Podolnick to theAir Force Academy.  Jacob is a 2010 graduate from Flanders, New Jersey where he attends Mt. Olive High School. He was recently featured in the  Daily Record “ Mt. Olive’s Podolnick taking game to Air Force ”  Jacob is an outstanding kid that will serve our country well.  NCSA wishes him the best in his future endeavors.

If you’ve read these pages enough, you know that a college decision is a life-altering, life time decision.  To make that decision without fully understanding the vast landscape of opportunities available is irresponsible at best and negligent at worst.  Another motivation for doing all you can to make a great college choice is found in Bob Greene’s article talking about great, enduring friendship.

Last night, most of the college sporting world had their eyes focused on the BCS championship between SEC Champion Alabama and Big 12 Champion Texas.   Throughout the game the announcers made frequent comments where various players are projected to go in the upcoming NFL Draft.  Both teams are littered with prospects who should be making quite a bit of cash in the very near future, however a different group of college players will have the light shining on them this NFL Playoff weekend.

A breakdown of NFL Playoff Rosters by conference shows that neither the Big 12 nor SEC will represent the majority of players on the field.

SEC – 104

Big Ten -97

Big 12 – 87

ACC – 84

PAC 10 – 70

Big East – 47

Mountain West – 33

WAC – 24

Conference USA – 25

MAC – 18

Independents – 11

Sun Belt – 8

Division 1-AA, D-2, NAIA, and D3 – 118

Why does something like this happen?  There are many reasons starting with some players just develop later than others.  However, the vast majority of these players very well could have played at major Division I colleges and more importantly received a full athletic scholarship.  The reason they never received a scholarship is because coaches didn’t know who they were coming out of high school.  For all of the advances in scouting the last several years, coaches still depend on verified lists and trusted third parties to develop their initial recruiting boards.  A college coach can’t evaluate you and offer a scholarship if they never know your name.

Student-Athletes need to understand that if they don’t pro-actively tell coaches about their athletic and academic qualities they have the very real chance of being passed over for a player of lesser talent.  Recruiting isn’t a science and coaches will never grab the very best players, but if every athlete understood the process and used system’s like Recruit-Match, the number of NFL talents playing at smaller schools would dwindle.