A lot of recruiting is the appearance of being recruited.
The appearance of being recruited happens when you carefully curate your X profile to show you are wanted by competitive schools by posting visit photos or camp invites.
It is performative, but, then again, all social media is performative and recruiting is no different.
Creating the appearance of being recruited can, and in someways does, help you actually get recruited.
There is a narrow, painfully slim opening in a coach’s brain for a new recruit to make an impression - if you are top of mind because of your presence or status on X, that is game won.
You got the coach to take a look at your film in a fair and open minded way.
Posting offers, visits or weird recruiting services’ reports on you can get you “noticed”, but noticed means “oh interesting, sure I’ll follow the kid but I’m no where near close to offering them anything”
When you’ve been through recruiting after a while, you get jaded and can read through the lines.
But, families who are going through their first (and only) recruiting rodeo, don’t know any better. It feels nice to have a college coach with a cool logo tell you how good you or your son is.
Even families who have gone through recruiting previously with other children at other positions in the same sport are often left scratching their heads.
There is an absolutely phenomenal line I came across while reading Morgan Housel (great financial author):
One of the most important things to find out but we’ll never know is the exact role luck played in another person’s success.
It is possible for some to “win” the appearance game of being recruited on X who end up with no semblance of success for where they’re going to play college football. They got addicted to the cheap likes and dopamine hits of late night X scrolling.
Coaches still, ultimately, recruit speed, size, frames and game tape. No amount of X followers is going to make you 6’0 from being 5’11 (which is actually a 5’10 in real life). Brass tax still comes from the world of atoms, not digital bytes (at least for now).
Whatever amount of money you are about to go spend on a summer camp, combine or more travel, reinvest it all, instead, on the unchanging things that move the needle in recruiting:
Academic performances - especially the SAT/ACT score.
Athletic performances in game.
Athletic development off the field.
I am not here to say it is an “either/or” situation. You cannot ignore the role that X and social media play in getting you in front of college coaches’ eyes, and, at the same time, you cannot also ignore the role that size, height, speed, frames, game tape and talent plays too.
Social media gets you on a coach’s radar, but your ability still gets you on the team.
That’s all for now,
Coach Cahill
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