The three things I want to answer for you in each installment is:
1) What’s going on in the world of college football for college coaches right now? Hopefully gives you an idea of what their day to day is like
2) What’s going on in my world? well because this is my blog and maybe my story can be helpful to others
3) What should you be doing right now? Whether you’re a student-athlete, HS coach, or parent... just some quick tips on putting yourself in a great position to maximize the time
so to answer question 1 - we are knee deep in the offseason for coaches. Signing day has passed, most early action deadlines have passed. So for a lot of college football recruiting is done. There are still a ton of places looking, but these are probably a handful of FCS & D2 programs, and a bunch of D3, NAIA, and JUCO. Most coaches are on an abbreviated schedule, maybe they get into the office a little later than in-season, or they have a 3 day weekend, but this is the time of year they DIVE into cut ups.
They are watching every snap of their season. They are studying other teams, usually a program or coordinator who’s done really well, and they are trying to figure out how they can get better for next season. They are making changes to the playbook and prepping for spring ball, but recruiting is really on the back burner unless they are finishing their class later. They may start looking at the class of ‘24 & ‘25, they’ll host Junior Days (that will be a separate entry, don’t get me started on Junior Days) but for the most part they are focused on spring and watching their current team develop throughout winter training.
What should you be doing right now?
If you’re a student-athlete, you have got to be crushing school... if you’re playing a winter sport, focus on that... but taking care of your business. Junior Days are popping up, whether you’re invited or not.. can make them or not... is not a huge deal. They are very general and usually have nothing to do with whether you are being recruited their or not. So take care of business.. if you’re in the class of 23 - FIND A HOME... no d1′s are reaching out this late... find a home
24′s - start to reach out to programs. Again if you read what coaches are doing right now, they aren’t going to be lighting the phones up yet... but they are building their boards for the future
25′s and younger - you probably won’t hear anything unless you’re the top 1% of HS players who are getting FBS offers. Stay patient
Parents - be ready for Junior Days, again they aren’t the end all and be all. But summer camps are coming up in a few months, there are a lot of them... everyone is going to want your money... We’ll talk more in future installments on how to get the most out of your summer camp circuit and hopefully get your son infront of the right people
HS Coaches - keep sending your lists out. I think it’s really important to find college coaches and get to know them and what their program looks for. At Whittier, we paid for a handful of services but almost every kid we recruited was from NCSA or Verified Athletics and in the state of California. Because it fit our footprint, we weren’t going to get a random kid from South Carolina unless that kid was dead set on Southern California and he had money to spend. In the same way, UCLA has access to such powerful recruiting services... they probably know about your kids already and if they don’t they probably aren’t going to be a fit at a P5 program. When I was at Akron, we had some good recruiting services but we also relied on uncovering kids through coaches in our footprint. So it runs the gambit, but educating yourself on your college coach connections will help build rapport with those programs
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