Collegiate recruiting has always been important t for the teams, but it has never received the public attention that Rivals.com and Scout.com give it now on a day-by-day basis. These sites have continued to grow, despite the ailing economy, and have managed to focus all of the random reports for gurus to gain a wealth of information.
There are many other ingredients to the recipe of a winning program. Coaching, strategy and player development are all important to a team, just to name a few, but nothing compares to quality player recruitment, said Barry Switzer, former head coach of the Oklahoma Sooners.
“The acquisition of talent is the key to any program,” he said. “You don’t win without talent. In most cases, the best talent usually wins the football game and in the college game, the acquisition of talent comes from recruiting.”
In the 1980’s, college recruiting was an all out free-for-all. The NCAA was seldom involved in recruiting affairs and coaches assumed free reign over the high school athletes they contacted, as well as when and how they did so.
However, the athletes themselves had the last say, said Switzer. Instead of signing a national letter of intent like they do now, a player had no obligation to a team until he or she attended their first class on a college campus.
The NCAA has set many restrictions on recruiting now, including scholarship limitations per program, when and how a coach can contact athletes, and what the coaches themselves can reveal about their recruiting efforts. However, recruiting continues to be a highly involved and long-term commitment if a team wants positive results.
Evaluation takes place through hours of watching game tape, attending high school games and scouting the players, and through different high school workout days that teams hold throughout the year and invite high school prospects to so the coaches can witness them in action.
“It’s a year round process, you’re constantly recruiting,” Switzer said. “Coaches look and go to specific areas and they have to evaluate talent in those areas throughout the country, nationally, locally, and regionally.”
“You go to them, the community, the coaches, you visit with them, bring them in for physical visits. You do all the things necessary to see if that individual fits into your program or not.”
Since the turn of the century, sports fanatics have taken a notice to recruiting news. Rivals.com is just one example of a Web site that has benefited from the growing attention that recruiting is receiving.
In the late 1990’s, fans settled for reading about the players in little detail once the school officially announced the members of their recruiting class after National Signing Day in February.
Recruiting Web sites like Rivals.com allows fans to follow recruiting as it happens, providing instant updates instead of waiting for the month of February to come along every year.
Rivals.com staff writer and reporter Josh McCuistion said these Web sites have provided a more narrow focus of interest on recruiting and have been very successful in their endeavors.
“As time wore on, more and more information became pursued by various reporters,” he said. “Once Rivals.com came up with the idea to centralize it and remove so many reporters operating independently but instead share information and work as a network, things have exploded.”
Today these Web sites are reaching out to more fans in more ways than ever before.
“As anyone knows once more information is provided, the only thing desired is more information,” McCuistion said. “So with each passing year you must find new ways to provide content and articles and with those things comes a wide variety of fans from each program and the thing just continues to mushroom.”
Sitting in a film room and attending games can tell a coach who they want, but convincing that prospect that they should come to a certain program is a different job. Coaches will result to a variety of different contacting outlets and strategies to reach the recruits they are interested in.
“Through recruiting there are various periods of contact by coaches be it by phone, in person, or being able to stop by a player's high school to let people see your presence,” McCuistion said. “The latter may seem small but these are high school kids, a young man being able to let all the guys on his team, and the girls he wants to impress, know that Bob Stoops, Mack Brown, or Nick Saban are coming by to see him.”
While appealing to high school prima donnas’ egos can be effective, McCuistion says there are other ways for coaches to effectively reach recruits.
“It's the coaches who get the most creative who tend to land the most recruits. A great example is several years ago when Steve Spurrier Jr. was on Oklahoma's initial staff under Bob Stoops, he called a recruit, acting as his father-who at the time was still at Florida-and left a message informing the recruit that the Gators were no longer interested. Of course at the end of his voice mail he informed the recruit that it was a joke but it clearly left an impression on him.”
Of course, that is easier said than done because the process is so involved, said OU men's golf coach Ryan Hybl.
"Landing recruit is tough in every sport, especially the ones you want, but it is very rewarding to get the guys you want," Hybl said. "We know who they are due to the efforts on the preparation of who we want to go after. Many things go into making that decision besides golf, for instance, grades, character and parents are critical in making that decision."
With all of the campus visits, coaches calling, texting and making visits to their home, and the countless reporters requesting interviews and publicizing their lives in the media, the recruiting process can be rough for the recruits themselves.
Most high school athletes do not ever experience what it is like to be recruited by a major college program. Some high schools may have several athletes that go to a big time school, while others have never had an athlete of such merit.
High school junior Kameel Jackson (right) committed to OU in the fall of 2009. Jackson is a highly touted wide receiver at Sam Houston High School in Arlington, Texas. He received countless scholarship offers besides OU including Tennessee, Notre Dame, Kansas, Texas A&M and Nebraska, according to Jackson’s profile on Rivals.com. While he made his decision much earlier than the average recruit, Jackson still got to taste plenty of the experience.
“Overall it’s been pretty fun just going through everything and getting attention through different colleges that you see on TV and from big colleges that you see big players like Adrian Peterson,” said Jackson.
After diving into the recruiting experience, Jackson found himself in a pickle and quickly realized that football recruiting at the college level was a business, among other things.
“For me it got pretty stressful real fast,” he said.
After completing his sophomore season, many schools had taken notice to Jackson. Furthermore, ESPN had named Jackson one of the high school class of 2011’s best wide receivers and listed him as one of the top 150 players in the country.
Family had Jackson confused and stressed over where he would decide to go to college. His older brother, Kenzee Jackson, is a year older but not nearly as high on evaluation lists around the country. While the two brothers had both received offers from Tulsa University, Kenzee was not going to receive one from OU.
“I didn’t want to commit to OU if (my brother) didn’t get that offer,” the little brother said. “We got to talking and he was just telling me that he wanted me to do what I wanted to do and to not worry about him, that he was going to be alright.”
So Kameel Jackson followed his heart and signed with OU. The next day, Tulsa withdrew both of their offers to the two brothers, revealing their only true interest was in the younger one. While Kameel Jackson was not pleased with their actions, he said he has to understand it from their perspective.
“Recruiting is big, but as much fun as it is, it’s a business and you’ve got to respect that. They’re paying for your education and they want somebody that’s going to come in and be worth the money.”
In the future, recruiting will only continue to receive more attention from the NCAA and the different college fan bases. With more quality talent being produced by high schools than ever before, the future of the trade is unknown. But if it is anything like it has been in the past, recruits could be receiving more attention than ever before in the coming years, while recruiting Web sites continue to gain fans.
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