Things I learned about recruiting this week:
→ Delete X off your phone. Keep it on your laptop. You can still benefit from its network effects without the addictive, compulsivity and toxicity that comes with this app.
→ Everyone is talking to everyone. Assume that you’re never the only player a coach is talking to. Coaches assume they’re not the only school you’re talking to either. It’s a bit of a game.
→ Coaches love talking football. Yes, they’ll want to know you know what you’re doing academically, but even higher academic schools love talking ball. It’s easy to research schools’ offensive, defensive ST’s schemes and come ready to talk.
→ Conversely, few coaches talking “kicking kicking” like you’d talk about at a kicking camp. Think about kicking in service of the greater ST scheme vs. just talking kicking for kicking’s sake. That’s probably just us weirdo kicking coaches.
→ FBS teams recruit NFL legs.
→ FCS teams recruit FBS legs.
→ DII/DIII teams recruit FCS legs.
→ Kicking a 60 yarder off sticks is nice, but please do not think this means you are close to doing this in a game. Snap, hold, kick, protection, a million other things are in play. Kicking is practiced like golf, but it is played still, like football w/ 11 guys needing to execute simultaneously.
→ The more players and families talk about their trajectory and where they’ll ultimately end up, the more difficult it is to place them. Flexibility doesn’t mean you don’t have any goals, but you need to understand there a lot of recruiting is improv, not strategy (even if you have a great strategy!)
→ If you tell a coach that you are 100% going to commit to them if you are offered, you should probably commit when you are offered.
→ The post unproductive thing you can do as a player or parent of a recruit is get on this doom loop: We’ll only commit to get better at football if we know there will be a D1 pay off. OK, but if you don’t commit to getting better you won’t know what payoff you’ll get at all. There just is no guarantee whatsoever that recruiting will work out. You can court luck, but ultimately, a full ½ of recruiting just isn’t controllable.