The transfer portal has now made it an unfair game to get recruited out of high school.

Instead of going against fellow 17-18 year olds you are now going against, sometimes 24 year olds - literally grown men (some even with families) - and players with multiple years’ game experience at the college level.

For many young men, physical development tends to come later than female athletes and that one extra year of HS sports might be the difference between going to a DIII/DII program and going to an FCS or bigger program.

Might is doing a lot of work in that previous sentence. There are still a lot of things to consider before you go down the road of trying to do a post graduate year.

Most post graduate spots are limited - at least in the NEPSAC (New England Prep School Athletic Conference). There are only 3-6 PG spots per team depending on the school’s size. So the competition that you are up against for these spots is tremendous. Most schools field hundreds of inquiries for a single PG spot.

The first use of an PG year comes down to injury. Let’s say you were injured and missed a junior or senior year (both critical in your recruiting). Then, that makes a lot of sense. You can take another year to get healthier, stronger and prove to coaches you are ready to compete at a high level again.

Academics are another consideration. There may be a scenario where a college or university really want to offer you but your grades are just too low. Another year of high school to get your academic house in order could work wonders.

It’s possible there are Ivy, Patriot or NESCAC schools that would take you but for your academics and that extra year to boost your grades can make a difference.

There are also the cases where a player just found football really late playing only their junior or senior year who could really benefit from another year to train, and, more importantly, learn how to play the game.

In some other cases, maybe you are a player coming from a program that doesn’t play very good competition that college coaches overlook. “But you’re good they’ll find you!” Yes, sometimes, but not always. You can still be an unknown in some parts of HS football - even in 2026. In general, most boarding prep school teams’ starting 11 are all college-bound athletes in some capacity (not always football). Because these teams can recruit, too, they can sometimes find more talent than is always available at your local school.

A PG year is beneficial because you are not going to start your NCAA eligibility clock to do it. So, in a way, it is like getting the benefit of a JUCO (Junior College) but, without losing that year of eligibility. Yes, JUCO’s are often more affordable than boarding prep schools, but you come out of them without your full eligibility.

Boarding prep schools can sometimes more expensive routes than going to a JUCO or staying at your public school. I say sometimes because most schools have very generous financial aid packages and most schools meet your family’s full financial needs. You won’t know this, however, until you send in your full application (both financial aid application and regular school application).

PG years are, however, not golden tickets. They will not automatically turn a kid from 6’0 to 6’4 and put on 50lbs and make a DIII/DII a P4 FBS player. You can do a PG year, do everything right academically, socially and athletically, and still, potentially, not end up at your dream school.

That’s because recruiting - regardless of a PG year or not - relies on timing, chance and luck, inordinately more than most people would like to openly admit.

The quirky things college coaches sometimes look for are just arbitrary - good handshake firmness, eye contact, the questions you ask, your “demeanor”. Sometimes, a lot of recruiting really comes down to what side of the bed the head coach wakes up on that given day.

I think it might be more useful to think of taking a PG year as an educated bet more than it is to think of it as a cure-all for your football troubles. You also need to understand what a “good outcome” is for you, your child or your parents at the end of this whole process. The statistical likelihood is for recruiting to, generally, not go according to plan.

In a word: no one ends up where they think they are going to go play college football.

Generally, you will need to pursue being both a PG and a recruited college freshmen in parallel with each other until one pathway pans out more than the other. That’s going to be very stressful at times. But, until you know for sure you have an admissions spot as a supported PG, it’s unwise to rely on that coming through (unless the boarding prep school has a form of Early Decision, which some do).

Again, the admissions process is hyper competitive - coaches get hundreds of inquires a year about PG spots. You need to protect yourself and give yourself options.

On the other end of the spectrum you have reclass years where you repeat a grade as a 9th, 10th or 11th grader instead of doing a post graduate year after your 12th grade year.

As far as admissions goes for reclassing, generally, prep boarding schools prefer those who are going to have more years as a student in the school. The younger you are when you apply to a prep/boarding school, the higher your admissions odds as, generally, admissions will have more open seats in their lower vs. older grades.

This earlier switch might make sense if you are concerned with the level of play at your current high school, massive injury/setback, maybe experienced a coaching change or know you really want a different school environment from where you currently are.

You will still, ultimately, get all the benefits of a post-graduate year, which is five full years of high school instead of just four, just in a different manner.

Again, a reclass year won’t make you 6’6 300lbs or run a 4.4 but it can increase the likelihood of you finishing with stronger grades and being recruited to a higher level just by simply having another year to develop physically, mentally and emotionally.

Especially for guys, that “Executive Functioning” train is usually a year or two behind our female scholar-athletes.

Generally, reclassing also kicks up tensions between players, parents, their original high school programs and their new destination. Boarding prep schools can recruit, public and Catholic schools cannot. Boarding prep schools can reclassify scholar-athletes easily. Public and catholic schools cannot.

One school of thought is: “If you’re good, it doesn’t matter where you play, college coaches will find you.” Which, is true to some extent - 6’9 300lbs is 6’9 300lbs whether it’s at a public or private school. But, recruiting has become so complicated and college coaches’ DMs so inundated with traffic, they do tend to rely on HS programs known for churning out talented prospects as short cuts to get names.

That’s why even public school programs now deploy some kind of recruiting support in most stronger public schools - which they didn’t in years past. In many ways, the more competitive public HS programs have more recruiting support now, in house, than they ever have in the past.

There are kids who reclass and that extra year was exactly what they needed to turn into an FBS prospect with an NIL deal. And, there are other kids who reclass and end up where they might have if they had never reclassed in the first place. I’m not here to judge what you decide either way. All a reclass year does is increase the surface area of your luck in landing a school of your choice. But, by itself, it’s no guarantee. You still need to put in the work. Public or private. Day school or boarding school.

Coach Cahill

I work with a handful of 4-5 families at any given time who want to navigate the recruiting process for the Ivy League, Patriot League and NESCAC League or other DIII high academics.

We cover:

Does it work?

Past clients have recieved an offer or committed to play at every Ivy League, Patriot League and NESCAC School in the past decade, including other high academic FBS programs like Duke, Boston College, Michigan, Northwestern, Notre Dame and more.

If you might like to learn more about working together, feel free to schedule a free discovery call here:

I’ve come across a new tool, Sports Recruits that seems to actually deliver on its promise of connecting prospective recruits to interested college coaches.

It’s a simple set up that allows you to see which coaches are evaluating your film, allows coaches and players to contact each other directly, and, more importantly, it’s a platform college coaches actually are using and not auto-deleting emails from (unlike some other services out there).

I’m not affiliated with these guys at all, but I think it’s potentially a great tool to learn more about.

That’s all for now,

Coach Cahill