Disregard the Age, Pay Attention to the Relationship
February 15th, 2010 - byHeadlines were made last week when USC received the verbal commitment from 13 year old quarterback David Sills. Yes, you read that right 13 YEARS OLD! The first question that everyone logically raises is, “How could this happen?” One word; relationships.
This scholarship offer was made because USC Coach and Lane Kiffin has a long relationship with Sill’s private quarterback coach, Steve Clarkson. ESPN interviewed Sills’ father to get the back story about this shocking turn of events.
Sills’ recruitment had little to do with his father and everything to do with Clarkson and his relationship with Kiffin. Clarkson was the one who called Kiffin and told him about Sills.
“Steve called me and I didn’t even take the call because I was at a job site,” said Sills’ father, who is a commercial developer and contractor. “So I called him back and he said, ‘You’re never going to believe it.’ He was talking to Lane about some junior quarterbacks and potential recruits who were juniors and he said, ‘Look, I gave you Matt Leinart, I gave you Matt Barkley, you trust me and we’ve known each other for a long time and if you really want to look at a kid you need to look at this kid from Delaware.’ So Lane looked at the video, called Steve back and said, ‘I’ll offer that kid a scholarship right now.’ Steve told us that he couldn’t call us so we had to call him and gave us his number.”
Sills sat down with his parents and discussed the offer before calling Kiffin. But it didn’t long for them to decide that USC was the right school. It wasn’t a surprise considering Clarkson, who has USC memorabilia throughout his office, had taken Sills to USC games, introduced him to Pete Carroll after watching spring practices and brought in Leinart and Barkley to work with him.
“He has more of a relationship with USC for all these weird reasons than any other school. If any other school had asked him to do this I would have told him to say no,” Sills’ father said. “He decided if he was a senior he’d pick USC, if he was a junior he’d pick USC, if he was a sophomore he’d pick USC, if he was a freshman he’d pick USC. So why not just pick USC now? You think about a recruiting process taking two years and this recruiting process took three hours.”
Clarkson has earned the trust of Lane Kiffin and he trusted the evaluation enough to make an unprecedented move. While the timing is earlier than others, the manner in which the scholarship offer was made is extremely similar to what will play out across the country to hundreds of freshman and sophomores. The coach was alerted to a prospect by a trusted 3rd party’s evaluation. The coach watched enough tape to confirm that evaluation and used the 3rd party to get in contact with the family in accordance with NCAA rules. The coach made an offer and there was a verbal commitment. Nothing illegal. Nothing official. But barring an unexpected turn of events David Sills will be a Divsion I football player on full scholarship.
Recruiting is ALL about Relationships. The key is starting early and forming the right relationships.
