NCSA College Athletic Scholarships Blog

Coach Taylor – How should I respond when a college coach asks what other coaches are interested in me?

Be Honest!  Here are a few common questions that college coaches will ask and the appropriate way to respond:

- What other colleges are recruiting you?

How you should respond:  Be honest and list the colleges that are comparable to, rivals with, or better than the colleges that are visiting you.

- What colleges will you visit?

How you should respond:  Be honest and name any colleges you have visited officially or unofficially.  If this is the first college you have visited, state that you are in the process of scheduling the rest of your visits.

- Has anyone offered you a scholarship?

How you should respond:  If you have been offered a scholarship you should tell the coach about it.  If you have visits scheduled but have yet to receive a scholarship offer, state that you are in the process of taking your visits and you plan to discuss scholarships with those coaches when you meet with them.  If no official visits are set, tell the coach you are in the process of setting up your official visits and name the colleges you are talking to.

Here is the secret:  You want to have as many options as possible when a college coach asks you these questions.  Why?  Leverage!

What is leverage and why is it important in the recruiting process?  Make sure to check out next week’s newsletter and I will give you the true key to recruiting success…

Hint, hint…If you are not hearing from numerous college coaches currently, you might not want to wait till next week and click here.

Letter from Coach, Sample #7

“Dear Brian:

Thank you for your interest in our program. We feel that the history of our program is truly unique. We have produced thirteen All-Americans and made ten NCAA appearances, including two trips to the Final Four. If you continue to have an interest in our program, please return the enclosed player questionnaire. Again, thank you for your interest, and best of luck in the recruitment process.

Sincerely,

Coach Anderson”

What this letter means, and how a student-athlete should respond:

Brian hasn’t made much of an impression. Nothing has been said about evaluating him in the future. The student received a response and profile form because admissions departments frown on college coaches who ignore prospective students. The intent of this letter could be to discourage the athlete from continuing to seek recruitment from this school. If he is still interested, he should fill out the form and hope that something he writes will make an impression. He should also call the coach and ask specific questions about how he can increase his likelihood of being recruited. He should also start connecting with other coaches who might make more of an effort to evaluate him.

This week marks the two big high school football all-star games.  During the Under Armour and US Army All-American bowls the highest rated prospects across the country will do battle on national TV.  One interesting point that viewers should take away is the incredible amount of players that have committed to schools further away from home than ever.

There are multiple reasons why recruits are traveling more than ever before including, the lower cost plane flights, expanded recruiting budgets, national combines, and more.  However, the biggest change is, of course, the Internet.  College coaches from across the country can complete their evaluations without ever boarding a plane.

Unfortunately, recruits usually only think this can occur at the highest level. The reality is that coaches at smaller schools need the internet to reduce recruiting costs far more than their larger counterparts.  Yet too many recruits at the lower division levels don’t use the internet to effectively broaden their search.  If they don’t pro-actively reach out to schools across the country they have, in all likelihood, no chance of ever being recruited further than a state away.

The biggest reason for this disconnect isn’t because unwillingness by coaches or players, but the time and work involved with making the long-distance connection.  Luckily for many recruits systems like NCSA’s Recruit-Match can make that connection in an instant.  If you are serious about expanding your recruiting reach to states your teammates can’t, contact an NCSA scout today.

Northwestern Head Football Coach Pat Fitzgerald delivered the keynote at the annual Tom Lemming All Area Banquet in Chicago recently. He had some valuable things to say that apply to recruiting in all sports. I watched his Talk on video and thought he had tremendous insight into the realities of recruiting. I jotted down some things that he said that stood out. Here they are:

“First off all, to NCSA, thank you for helping young people reach their dreams.”

“Every recruit I talk to I promise them one thing: athletics will end. The number one thing is to be marketable academically. You would be shocked how many kids I look at where their 10th and 11th grades are okay, but because their 9th grades were terrible, I can’t recruit them.”

“It is up to you to get on lists. As far as video, we want hilites, an appetizer where we see you make some plays. That needs to be followed up with a best game tape. If an offensive lineman gets beat on a tape, we watch how he responds. If a defensive player gives up a TD, does he pout or bounce back?”

“You have to take a very proactive approach in recruiting and find the right fit. Have a purpose on why you are visiting. Have questions. Do you see camaraderie in the locker rooms. Keep digging. Look.”

“We are looking for people with tremendous attitude. It takes zero talent to have a great attitude, and to go above and beyond the call of duty for team.”

“As far as where you can play in college, be honest with yourself. That’s hard to do at your age. There is no bigger waste of time than to compare with others. It’s about how you compare to your best self. Be honest with yourself. Improve. Say, ‘I’m not good enough yet.’ Set goals. Ask yourself what kind of legacy are you going to leave at your High School.”

“We are hear at this banquet. How many of you worked out today? You may have used tonight’s banquet as an excuse for not working out. Why didn’t you have a plan?”

– Pat Fitzgerald, Head Football Coach, Northwestern University

I encourage you to set aside 17 minutes to watch his complete talk. It is filled with recruiting insights that can help you understand what coaches are looking for in recruits.

As a follow up to my previous blog, Why You Should Consider The Junior College Option, I want to make sure you understand some key rules. This way you will be on the right path and have the ability to transfer without any hiccups.

Before you graduate from high school, you need to register with the NCAA Eligibility Center. The NCAA Eligibility Center will determine if you are a qualifier, partial qualifier or non-qualifier. They will determine where you stand, based on the core courses you took in high school, your grades in those courses, and your scores on the ACT and/or SAT.

To avoid any hiccups, you need to be classified as a qualifier by the NCAA Eligibility Center and of course, be academically in good standing at the junior college you are attending, while completing the right amount of credit hours for each term of full-time attendance.

If you do not register with the NCAA Eligibility Center or do not meet the minimum requirements, you will need to graduate from your junior college, without taking summer classes, to transfer to a DI or DII program.

**For more details on all the transfer rules, you can read the NCAA publication, Transfer 101, by clicking here.

**For more details on registering for the NCAA Eligibility Center and the requirements to become a qualifier, please click here.

When a recruit finally reaches pay dirt and receives their first scholarship offer, it is usually a moment of rejoice.  When the second, third and fourth offers arrive the uncertainty and doubt that characterize the entire process creep back.  Recruits need to weigh several academic and athletic factors when choosing a school.  However, its never as simple as it may seem.  Unquantifiable factors, like jersey color, crowd size, weight room equipment and countless other thoughts pop up in the recruits minds.  In the end a recruit has to make his own decision about where fits best.

ESPN reports on the decision making process of top recruit Blake Barker.

Blake Barker did his research. A high school senior with one eye on the classroom and one eye on the football field, he wasn’t leaving anything to chance.

During his summer of soul-searching, a summer that included a much-publicized commitment that stunned the recruiting world, Barker reached out to any expert who had been in his cleats.

Given that the 6-foot-6, 238-pound tight end from Buckingham Browne & Nichols in Cambridge, Mass., was debating whether to decommit from Stanford and announce he would play at Harvard, the more facts, the better.

Recruiting gurus would question why a potential pro talent would rather play at a non-scholarship, Football Championship Subdivision school than a landing spot out West for the athletic and academic elite. Veterans of the coaching business would wonder if his choice was indicative of his desire to play the game.

Some can’t figure out why he wants to perform in front of several thousand fans against Yale or Dartmouth instead of 100,000 against USC or UCLA.

To a complicated question, Barker’s response is simple.

“I realized I didn’t want to be all the way out on the West Coast,” said Barker, who also plays defensive end. “I wanted to be closer to home and that kind of made my decision. Harvard has everything I want. I couldn’t be happier about my decision.”

And if the sure-handed pass-catcher and mauling blocker needed any encouragement, he got some from Isaiah Kacyvenski, a former Seattle Seahawks linebacker who arrived in the NFL after a star-studded career at Harvard.

“If I’m capable,” Barker said Kacyvenski told him, “the NFL will find me anyhow if I work hard enough.”

That was all he needed. By the end of the summer, in a move that shocked those who had watched him morph into a national prospect weighing offers from Tennessee, Florida and Boston College, Barker said he would play at Harvard. Commitments are non-binding until Feb. 3, national signing day.

Kudos to Barker for making the decision that was right for him, not what others expected.  Every recruit needs to weigh this decision with unbelievable attention.  Its clear that Barker took the time to make the right choice.

Recruiting testimonial from Allison Kippers who will be a freshman on the McNeese State University women’s golf team fall 2010.

When I first began playing golf, I never would have thought that I would have advanced to the game I have today. Before joining with NCSA, I was emailing colleges like I was supposed to. I sent them my transcript, my resume, and a nice statement of interest, but I never got anything back.

Once I joined with NCSA, they told me that the reason I was not getting anything was because the emails being sent weren’t from someone of professional stature: being NCSA. They took the same material I sent before, and sent them to colleges, again. The change in responses was phenomenal. I was getting actual scholarship offers rather than simple letters of interest. It was amazing.

The only regret I have with joining with NCSA my senior year is that I wish I would have joined my sophomore year. The amount of colleges that would have shown interest would have been significantly different. Once with NCSA, the recruiting process of simple. I just sat back and watched the emails roll in.

 The only tough part was letting the colleges that had interest in me know that I had just signed with another college, and would not be attending their college.

If you are questioning whether or not to join with NCSA, do join. They will get you signed with a college. They actually care about your success and future, which was a bright surprise for me. So keep up the hard work, improve your game, maintain a good GPA, and join NCSA. You are guaranteed to get a scholarship with them.

There are over 1,800 colleges that offer student-athletes the ability to continue their sporting careers at the collegiate level.  Too many high school recruits ignore this critical fact about college recruiting and only focus on the creme de le creme of athletic programs.  And then a night like last night happens where not one, but two of the little guys had the spotlight shining brightly on them.

Boise State topped TCU in the Fiesta Bowl in a battle of two Non-BCS schools crashing a BCS bowl, and the University of North Carolina lost in basketball to the College of Charleston.

Both games are a reminder to the thousands of athletes that their options are far greater than just the schools you see on TV.  The problem that many athletes have is the inability to get noticed by all the other schools that have scholarship dollars, but not necessarily recruiting dollars available.  The solution for recruits is to reach out to coaches rather than hoping they come to them.

It is absolutely critical that they receive an objective evaluation and target the proper schools in a pro-active manner.  If recruits fail to do so, they face the chances that they will be the little guy left out of the mix.

One of the biggest myths about an NCAA scholarship is that the offer is good until graduation, or at least until their NCAA eligibility is exhausted.  However, as the Kentucky example proves, nothing could be further from the truth.  The example proves just how important it is to choose the right school in the first place.  One thing that sticks out during the video is how so many players are now on their 3rd or even 4th schools!

Recruits need to take their time looking at as many different schools as possible.  They need to have a clear understanding of every option available.  Only with a comprehensive search can players minimize their chances of picking the wrong school.  Remember, its not just about getting a scholarship, its about setting yourself up for the next 40 years of your life!