University of North Carolina Athletics
Recruiting In The Modern Age
February 4, 2014 | Football
By Mike Ingersoll
Rivals, Scout.com, the ESPN 300 and 150, and ESPN Insider-and those are just the heavy-hitters. Welcome to the world of high school recruiting, and in 2014, it is vastly different, almost unrecognizable, from when my freshman classmates and I were recruited and signed eight years ago.
It has become big business, with each of these web sites offering paid memberships to get all the "exclusive," "in-depth," and "inside" information on the latest recruits, All-America candidates, and up-and-comers the consumer could ever want (which, essentially, boils down to 'He plays high school football good' or 'He's not so good at high school football'-the weak grammar is intentional).
Gone are the days of fans becoming enamored with a freshman phenom from a no-name town at the college level, playing step-for-step with senior All-Americans, because no one expected it or saw him coming (and understandably so, because six months earlier he was in HIGH SCHOOL). No, these days, everyone needs the inside track on him while he's still going through puberty, leading to expectations that, to be frank, most freshmen fall short of their first year (resulting in a lot of these kids being considered "busts" as freshman or-gasp-sophomores, when they don't live up to the hype).
Enter recruiting camps. For roughly $100 a head, your son can come and showcase his talent in front of those deemed evaluators during the summer months. These camps have cropped up all over the country, and college recruiters love them because they allow for recruiting and scouting services to observe and evaluate high school players when they can't, during the NCAA-imposed "dead period" over June and July.
Not only are the camps beneficial for college coaches, mind you, they are an invaluable resource to the athletes, themselves. It used to be, as during my recruitment, that you had to go to these one-day evaluation camps at whichever school you chose, typically held on the final day of a university-hosted high school team camp or somewhere in the vicinity of that date. These camps were simple: run a couple forty-yard dashes, some combine drills, and compete in some one-on-one sessions with fellow campers and recruits (these camps, by the way, are still around, and still serve as the most effective way for schools to recruit and for players to be noticed).
These days, in addition to the one-day camps, athletes can also attend evaluation camps, the two most prominent, currently, being the Nike SPARQ camp and the VTO camp (started by UNC's own, and my former roommate, Vince Jacobs).
The purpose of these camps is to give the media something to chew on and give kids who aren't as heavily recruited, as well as some of the more prominent national recruits, a chance to compete against one another and get noticed. They are scored, using a system completely subjective to that particular camp, and their results can be sent out to college coaches across the nation. It's kind of like a standardized test for football abilities-the scores give coaches an idea of your aptitude without actually seeing you in person. It's brilliant. And it's here to stay.
As far as film is concerned, the latest advancement in highlight tapes and game film for recruiting is the online database. In 2006, I remember sitting in my head coach's office at Butler High School in Charlotte splicing together segments of game film to create my "highlight tape" to send out to the list of schools-of-interest I'd comprised for him. I say "send out" because that tape, along with my game film, was then copied to a VHS tape (ancient) and mailed out to those schools (archaic)--all of which were either ACC or SEC schools, because I wasn't even aware they had college football west of the Mississippi.
The year was 2006 (cue Liev Schreiber in his HBO documentary voice).
Beginning around 2011, most high schools began to utilize a film database program known as HUDL, which allows them to share game film amongst each other, but also allows players to control their own account. The account serves two purposes: first, they can watch game tape on the team they are about to play for game planning purposes (something else I never even knew people did when I was in high school), and second, so they can upload their own personal highlight tapes and game film into folders that they can then send to college recruiters.
College coaches can now simply open a link on their laptop and watch as much film on a player as they can get their hands on. No longer do graduate assistants have to file boxes and boxes of VHS tapes or DVDs into massive file cabinets in the football center. It's become so simple. Recruitment is only a click away (anyone at HUDL need a marketing exec? I'm pretty sure I just figured out your next slogan-trademark pending).
Gone are the days of the sleeper recruit. Had Patrick Willis been five years younger, Ole Miss would have never been his only major D-1 offer. Gone are the days of regional recruiting. Howard Schnellenberger's stranglehold on the talent in Dade County at Miami in the 1980s is an anomaly today.
The recruiting pipelines have opened wide, and recruits flow freely amongst schools from California to Florida and everywhere in between. The world has been opened up to kids from small towns in Georgia, Mississippi, and Pennsylvania. There is nothing stopping them from going somewhere a day away that they always grew up thinking was "exotic." If there is a kid that plays high school football in America, he's been evaluated.
It's created so many opportunities that might otherwise not be there, and the transition hit warp speed between 2006 and 2011, in just five short years, and it shows no signs of slowing down. There is Facebook, Twitter, Vine, Instagram, and the ever-so-trusty email. If a coach wants a kid, he'll give himself a shot one way or another.
It's created wonderful opportunities and leveled the playing field, but unfortunately, in our everyone-gets-a-trophy culture, riddled with a misplaced sense of entitlement, these advances in recruiting have created a lot of delusion. Everyone is not a Division I college football player, and even fewer will go pro. Yet, every kid on the team, from the 5-star quarterback to the kid who barely dresses out on Friday night, has a highlight tape, and a lot of hearts get broken come Signing Day.
Modern recruiting has created opportunities, yes, but it's also created a lot of unrealistic expectations. That, unfortunately, shows no signs of slowing down, either, but that's a different column for a different day.
The college football landscape has changed. When it comes to recruiting, the world is now flat, and if you can't afford a plane ticket, all you need is a smartphone and a mouse. The next Heisman winner is out there, waiting to be over-evaluated and micro-scrutinized. If you hurry, you might just beat ESPN there. But if you don't, for just $9.99 a month you can know everything they think they know. Happy hunting.
Now, does anyone have a VCR? All this high school football talk makes me want to reminisce.
Mike Ingersoll played four years for the Tar Heels and graduated after the 2010 season. He has played with both the Tampa Bay Bucs and the Kansas City Chiefs.
