Fun facts …
I went to a breakfast meeting and heard from a D1 staff employee who Is also a former D1 player and has 31 years experience in recruiting, player personnel and as NFL player liaison. Random thoughts …
They (SEC school) recruit from 2,853 high schools across 4 states. Ten position coaches manage the workload because head coaches can now only visit once a year in Jan.
SEC is capping the ceiling for revenue distribution. So say School A has a budget of $200M and School B has a budget of $103M. Both will be capped at $100M for purposes of revenue distribution so that they are on an equal footing. Total distribution is 22%, or $22 million.
Football gets 75%, basketball gets 15%, women‘s basketball gets 5%, all other sports get the rest. Each school decides how much a particular player gets.
The number one thing players want is money. There’s probably 20-30 players a week asking for more money. (The answer is no.) With teams moving down from 120 to a roster of 105, no one knows if that will be all scholly or 85 scholly and 20 walk on, etc.
It's really hard to recruit to smaller schools. They operate on the same rules as everyone else … 1 visit. So schools that are larger, easier to get to, have built in advantages.
There is no player in high school today that is not known to their recruiters. Six full time analysts watch film, divided by position. That gets catalogued and evaluated. Most get screened out based on size, weight, speed, agility.
Star ratings are considered irrelevant. They are not generated by coaches, but media people based on who is being recruited by whom. Players being recruited by Top Ten schools score higher stars but if they sign with a Second Ten team, their star rating goes down. Overall, useful to know but stats are better.
Coaches today don’t have time to build networks. They post to social media and hope for the best. The winners are personally picking up the phone and calling high school head coaches every day.
NFL scouts are present every Monday and Tuesday. So everyone knows the feedback and who is going to the League and most likely, what round. Very useful for player retention, development and managing expectations.
Really interesting stuff.