The Emerging Popularity of Recruiting Seminars Continued...

Recognizing the need to educate student-athletes and their parents, and even their coaches, on the college recruiting process, some individuals and some organizations have developed their own "seminar" programs which they market nationally. Usually one or two speakers will arrange a large group meeting, or seminar, with high school age athletes, coaches, and the parents of athletes. Sometimes it's a specific high school team, or club team, and sometimes it involves all the teams at a school. The seminars cover whatever the speaker feels is necessary to properly educate the group. Although, quite often the person conducting the program is primarily a motivation speaker and his lecture may not always contain a lot of useful information about the nuts and bolts of recruiting. Often, his lecture seems more like a cross between a fiery Baptist preacher at a hot summer night's revival service and a coach, whose team is losing big, giving a half-time desperation speech to his team. There is usually a fee involved. These fees are usually about $1,000, $1200, or sometimes even more, to put on these seminars. It is strictly a business and money-making venture for these companies and individuals. In fact, they often use this venue and captive audience to also sell their books or CDs about recruiting. On the other hand, American Coaches Federation sponsors and conducts, nationally, its seminars for any team or group sports organization free of charge. ACF does not conduct its seminars as a money-making project.

Are all recruiting seminars the same? Do they all have the same value or purpose? The answer to both questions is no! When booking a seminar, whether you choose the free ACF seminar or whether you choose one of the fee-based seminars, you should understand what the real agenda of the company or individual putting on the seminar is. Is the seminar for truly educating all those who attend or is it just a mask and the real purpose is to sell something? In many cases it's the latter and the initial fee that you pay is just the tip of the iceberg. You should be cautious of people who try to overly impress you with their personal credentials when booking a seminar for your group. This is a ploy used by some companies to apparently try to buy credibility through high profile name recognition. For example; a well-known ex athlete, or coach, who led his team to a super bowl championship might be impressive as a speaker and may help draw a good attendance but this person may know very little about present day recruiting and how it works for all the different sports and at all levels of college athletics. These speakers may be able to tell some interesting and entertaining stories but they are actually no more qualified than anyone else to conduct a recruiting seminar. The content and thoroughness of the material covered is what is important. In other words, the value received by those attending the seminar is in the message – the messenger has nothing to do with it regardless of his background or notoriety.

Some seminars are conducted for the sole purpose of selling something, and the seminar turns out to be just a sales pitch for the product or service that the company or individual represents. For example; some seminar speakers make most of their money by getting commissions, or kick-backs, (a kick-back is a term used when money is given to someone secretly because they don't want it publicized) from private scouting companies that they will endorse and push as part of their seminar outline. Remember, the person putting on the seminar is often a professional motivational speaker and super-salesman. He sometimes tries to scare the young prospects and their parents into believing that they may not have a good chance at being recruited for college athletics. Of course, this may very well be true in many cases. So he turns this fear into optimism by showing everyone how they can get recruited. This optimism turns to excitement at the end and this is when the sales pitch is introduced. Unfortunately, the speaker often leads every athlete in attendance into believing that he or she can play college ball if the right promotions are done for them. Then, of course, he will recommend a particular scouting company – the one that he has an arrangement with to pay him a referral "Bird Dog" commission later. The names of all prospects and their families are turned over to this company's out-of-state "boiler room" type telemarketing team of sales people who make their sales pitch to the families by phone. The scouting company then will have their out-of- state salesmen swoop in and sign-up everyone they can for their recruiting service. They rarely, if ever, personally scout and evaluate each athlete to determine his or her legitimacy as a prospect. It's all about making sales and it doesn't matter if you are a legitimate prospect or you're just a" wannabe". These are very, very questionable tactics and highly frowned on by college coaches because they are taking money from and misleading many families whose child may have no chance of becoming a legitimate college prospect.

ACF free seminars are often conducted by professional scouts and licensed owners of National Scouting Report, which is the oldest and largest private scouting company in the world. Every one of these individual speakers have been tested, certified, and approved by ACF. They are experts in all the rules and recruiting procedures that will be covered at the seminars. Even though they also represent a private scouting company, they are not allowed to promote or even mention their recruiting services as part of the seminar material covered. ACF has a strict outline to follow that covers recruiting, recruiting rules, and recruiting registrations and requirements. Everything is covered thoroughly from A to Z. Nothing is for sale! We believe that all seminars, whether it's free or whether you pay for it, should be conducted in this manner no matter who the speaker is or what company sponsors the seminar. National Scouting Report is a 30-year old company that is highly regarded by college coaches. They are endorsed by ACF because they have a strict policy of not enrolling any prospective student-athlete into their program unless this athlete has been personally scouted and has gone through a series of qualification evaluations, including a personal qualification interview with the prospect and his or her parents. And, of course, not all ACF seminar speakers are also associated with National Scouting Report but they all have equally good qualifications.