Recruiting Issues Addressed by ACF

• College Athletic Recruiting and How Modern Technology Has Changed It.

Basically, college athletic recruiting may be described simply by saying it’s the process of finding a student-athlete that you want and who qualifies for your program and then selling that person on accepting the offer that you make. You might say it’s a 2-part procedure. Of course, this is not so easy to do and it involves a long and complex process. Some coaches love to recruit while others say it’s the toughest and most dreaded part of their job. But no matter how coaches feel about recruiting they can’t survive without it. Generally, how well a team recruits will be reflected later on in how successful the team is – and how successful the coaches are. The first part, finding and evaluating the right prospects, is the most time-consuming and critical. College coaches seem to have one thing in common – they all feel they are experts when it comes to recruiting and they won’t hesitate to tell you exactly how it should be done. Some coaches still cling to their old methods of finding and evaluating prospects while others are taking advantage of modern technology. Old methods might be defined as only considering prospects that you have personally seen in action and not trusting any outside evaluations or information. Of course, this works pretty well except that you severely limit your prospect base and you limit the amount of information that you get on prospects. With the Internet, e-mail, private prospect Web sites, and high-speed online direct video transfer services being made available to college coaches, most are taking advantage and therefore drastically improving their recruiting. One ACF member coach recently said “ I can’t afford to not take advantage of some of these services because my competitor coaches are using them and I can’t let them have this advantage over me. I want to see all the same prospects they are seeing”.   
 

• Finding Prospects Early and Getting Useful Scouting Evaluations.

College recruiters are able to locate more legitimate potential prospects at an earlier stage than ever before. High school age athletes are developing into legitimate college prospects sooner than they have in the past because of increased competition and specialized training. In many sports, for example, club teams have become more dominating than the high school team and the players are better and have matured athletically at a younger age. Coaches can attend the tournaments and showcases that these teams are involved in to personally evaluate the talent. They can also receive individual statistical information on prospects from these events – even videos, in some cases. One of the biggest reasons colleges can locate and evaluate prospects earlier now is because of the emergence of private scouting services. They are all over the country; however, there is only a handful that are truly worthwhile to a college coach (see our “Scouting Company Comparison” link.) These companies compile complete bios of a large number of potential prospects and usually furnish this information to colleges free of charge.

• The Different Kinds of Private Recruiting Companies.

There are basically three kinds of companies that deal with college recruiting. There are the football listing services that do nothing but rate the top “blue chip” athletes and keep up with their recruiting activities. They sell their services through magazine subscriptions or online subscriptions. They rate the college recruiting classes when National Letter of Intent signing day is over. It makes for interesting reading for the thousands of football recruiting groupies but these services are of little or no use to colleges. These services gather their information from each other, from local newspaper sports sections, from the prospects themselves, and from a few high school coaches. They do not get their information from college coaches as is often reported and as they often lead you to believe. This would be a violation of NCAA rules – even if a college would be foolish enough to make public their personal recruiting activities. The second kind of recruiting services are those that compile prospect information, or video, and sell this information to colleges for up to $10,000. These services are usually limited to football and men’s basketball because there is not enough market for the minor sports with low recruiting budgets. The third and most dominating kind of recruiting organizations are those that locate and evaluate large numbers of prospects and provide their services to colleges free of charge.

• Scouting Companies Sometime Get A Bad Rap Because Their Value Is Often Misunderstood.

Every year, just before the National Signing Day for football, dozens of articles are published about private scouting services. In almost 100% of the cases the information in these articles is largely incorrect, incomplete, misquoted, and very biased. The real truth never seems to ever come out. Maybe it’s because of the writer’s ignorance of the subject matter or perhaps in some cases the writer’s desire to stir up controversy. Therefore, are going to address some of these typical news article subjects. (a) They almost always refer to every scouting company as being the same kind of company or all as being equal. This is wrong. There is night and day difference between scouting companies. There are only a few truly credible ones and they shouldn’t be grouped with the others. The article more often than not will feature at least one of the bad companies. (b) Thousands of college coaches at all levels use the top scouting services but the writer always seems to find one that he quotes as saying something like “These services are worthless and we never use them”. In a great number of cases the coach’s comments were taken out of context and the real meaning was distorted.

Some college coaches seem to have blinders on when it comes to using a private scouting service to identify and evaluate potential prospects. It’s almost like they are being insulted because someone not involved with their program is referring prospects to them. They question the credibility of the source and doubt the legitimacy of the prospect and the prospect’s statistics. Coaches have been known to make statements like the following:

1. “If a kid is good enough, colleges will know about him and they don’t need any information from scouting companies.”
2. “Scouting companies will take anyone, even if they are not a prospect.”
3. “We can’t rely on statistics and information from scouting companies.”
4. “When I get e-mails and prospect scouting information from one of these companies I throw it away.”
5. “If a high school athlete is a true prospect he or she doesn’t have to pay a scouting service to promote them. I will not recruit someone who pays a scouting service because I don’t consider them a prospect.”
6. “Scouting services only get the lower level athletes. The good prospects don’t sign with scouting services because they don’t need to.”
7. “Our coaches don’t need any help from outside scouting companies.”
8. “A prospect can do anything for himself that a scouting company can do for him, and he doesn’t have to pay a fee. I will look at a kid that contacts me personally but I won’t look at a kid that is referred by a private scouting company.” 

These are not only negative responses about scouting companies but they are largely inaccurate, mostly based on a misunderstanding of the industry. If coaches will have an open mind about private scouting companies they just might find them useful and they also may improve their recruiting program. Let’s examine each one of these statements and give an unbiased, logical response. (1) This is like an old wives tale – it just simply isn’t true. In some sports you may know most of the top prospects but you don’t know all of them. And even if you did, you still have to gather statistical information and evaluate each one so that you can eliminate those you are not interested in. Isn’t that a big part of recruiting and wouldn’t any outside help be beneficial? (2) In any industry there are good companies and bad ones. This also applies to the private scouting industry. There are several fly-by-night companies around who will take money from a high school athlete’s family and tell them their kid is a college prospect, regardless of his qualifications. However, it is totally unfair for a college coach to think all companies are like this and to label all scouting companies the same. They are not all like this and they are not all the same. There are a few scouting companies that have been around for many years and who are totally honest and credible. These companies personally scout and evaluate everyone they enroll on their service. They do not accept anyone that is not projected to be a legitimate prospect at some level of college athletics. Athletes cannot just buy their way onto one of these services, as some college coaches may think. The companies listed on our Web site and who are endorsed by ACF all meet this criteria. (3) Actually, you also can’t rely 100% on the information you get from a prospect’s high school coach either. You can’t rely on local newspaper information and certainly not the information published in recruiting magazines. So what source can you rely on for accurate scouting information? While private scouting companies are paid by the prospect to promote the prospect they still are probably the most accurate source of information for a college coach. A good scouting service personally scouts each athlete, talks with the prospect’s coach, verifies statistics, interviews each prospect and his parents, and reports his information honestly even though they are trying to sell the colleges on the prospect. In the end it’s still the college recruiter’s job to sift through all the scouting information and make decisions based on this information. The more information you get the more accurate your assessment will be. Not utilizing a scouting service for evaluations seems very foolish, especially since it is free. (4) Any coach, at any level, that throws legitimate scouting information away is just plain foolish. The small minority of coaches that do this are probably either old-fashion in their recruiting methods or they are ignorant to the kind of information a good scouting company can provide. Of course, the secret to getting good, legitimate information is knowing who the information is coming from. If it’s coming from one of the many small start-up or online scouting companies then you might just as well throw it away because it is completely unreliable. However, if it is coming from one of the established scouting companies, like those endorsed and approved by ACF, then this could be valuable and certainly should be kept and reviewed. (5) This is a ridiculous statement. Anyone making this statement is insinuating that it is wrong to have an experienced professional to promote your abilities so that you can ensure that you will get what you deserve. And also to ensure that you will gain an advantage. This is not wrong – it is smart! It’s a normal thing to do in ever phase of business or personal walk of life. To say that a parent does not have the right to promote their own child’s abilities through a professional organization is ludicrous. For any college coach to assume this individual is automatically not a good prospect is even more ludicrous. (6) Not true. The good scouting companies have better than a 90% success ratio for prospects getting scholarship offers. At least 1/3 of these offers are from division I colleges. On the other hand, less than 20% of prospects referred by high school coaches get scholarship offers. All three of the top scouting companies say that many of their promoted athletes were college All-Americans or went on to successful professional sports careers. For example: Hines Ward of the Pittsburgh Steelers was named the 2006 Super Bowl MVP. He was enrolled in the National Scouting Report program and was promoted by them since he was in high school.  (7) Maybe they really do need it but they just won’t take advantage. The two largest companies, National Scouting Report and College Prospects of America both say that college coaches from all levels and for all sports call their offices daily requesting prospect information or prospect videos. The fact is, smart college recruiters are utilizing many of the services of the good scouting companies. Scouting companies have the flexibility to get prospect information that colleges cannot because of NCAA rules, budget constraints, lack of sufficient personnel, etc. Of course, both NSR and CPOA have International offices so that they can scout the good foreign athletes. It would be impossible for colleges to do this. Therefore, some of these college recruiters should think twice about looking a gift horse in the mouth. (8) This statement may have been at least partially true in the past but it’s not anymore. People who make this statement don’t understand everything some scouting companies do. They also may not be aware of the tremendous investment in equipment, technical personnel, and facilities that a couple of the large scouting companies made in order to provide their services.

It’s almost impossible for a prospect to promote himself as well as a good, reputable scouting company could. The self-promoted prospect is at a big disadvantage because college coaches are inundated with information from kids, most of whom are unqualified for their program, and therefore they are likely to disregard information that they receive from them. Whereas, a prospect promoted by one of the trusted scouting companies has been vetted and pre-qualified. The coach knows he’s looking at a legitimate prospect and that the information on that prospect is reliable.

• Recruiting In The Future

The trends in college recruiting are changing and will continue to change in the future. Modern technology will allow coaches to get better information on more prospects and to get this information much faster than before. The following are some of the trends we see evolving:

1. Coaches will place more emphasis on personal video to evaluate prospects. Since video quality has improved drastically and the transfer of this video can be done online at a high speed – with the proper equipment – this makes it much easier to evaluate large numbers of prospects.
2. Teleconferencing will be used more and more for coaches to conduct interviews with prospects and their parents. This will become more common, especially with the smaller programs or those that have small recruiting budgets. It will allow them to expand their recruiting radius and attract more potential student-athletes.
3. More International students will be recruited.
4. In many sports, high school teams will not be recruited as much as the more competitive club teams. Tournaments and showcase events will be better than high school contests, for recruiting purposes.
5. Private scouting and recruiting companies will play an important part in college recruiting. Almost all college athletic programs will utilize good scouting companies because this is where the best and most recruiting information will come from. Even those programs that rarely use these services now will be forced to in the future if they want to compete with the all the other colleges. Most prospects will sign up with a good scouting company which will provide their personal information, statistics and ongoing scouting reports, evaluation videos, and other promotional information to a large number of colleges nationwide. This means that those prospects who don’t use a scouting service will be at a big disadvantage. Colleges will go to where the most and best information is and therefore they will be forced to use a top scouting service. The good companies will have the ability to provide high-speed video transfer, International prospect information – including videos and teleconferencing, and they will screen their applicants so that they take only legitimate college prospects. There will only be two or three dominating companies that will provide the bulk of the scouting information to colleges. These companies will become much larger because of a tremendous increase in the number of prospects that they will be servicing. The smaller, less-established scouting companies – especially the online profile services that have no quality control – will probably fade into history.
6. Potential prospects in all sports will be under pressure to become better athletes and better students in order to compete for scholarship offers. Many will take private instruction or seek specialized tutoring. They will compete on advanced club teams as well as the high school teams. And they will compete in private tournaments, showcases, and combines. The better trained and most skilled athletes are the ones colleges are going to be interested in. As their numbers increase, so does the competition.