By KEVIN MOBLEY – Guest Writer
The media evolution of college football recruiting began more than a decade ago, and it swept across the country captivating fans everywhere.
Football recruiting has transformed from a side job for college football media to a major aspect of the sport, and it originated from the art of persuasion.
As the popularity of social media has grown, it has become a large part of the college recruiting craze.
“You’re convincing people that what you’re a part of is what they should be a part of too, and that you can have a positive impact on their life,” ESPN Southeast Reporter Kipp Adams said. “There are a lot of people that are also out there recruiting, and trying to sell the same ideals that you’re trying to sell.”
In football recruiting, there are three roles: the recruit, the scout and the recruiter. Each is crucial to the process.
In simple terms, it’s like a broken triangle. The scout evaluates the recruit for the fans, the recruiter evaluates the recruit for the school, the recruiter tries to persuade the recruit to come to his school. However, the scout and the recruiter have no relation whatsoever.
According to University of Georgia tight ends Coach John Lilly, who would be classified as a recruiter, recruiting boils down to two things.
The first is the talent level.
“As a coach, generally you’re only going to be as good as your players,” Lilly said. “From a recruiting standpoint your recruiting is going to build your team, it’s going to deal with your personnel, and that’s going to dictate the talent level and the opportunity to win that you’re going to have.”
The second thing has nothing to do with football, but rather a personal connection between a coach and his players.
“I think the other thing besides just filling your team with talent is recruiting equals relationships,” Lilly said. “You’re going to meet an awful lot of great people, you’re going to meet a lot of great players and their families, and you’re going to form some really special relationships with those people.”
Football recruiting has existed since football itself began. Coaches had to recruit players before they could play. But it has only been a facet of fanaticism for a decade or so according to Adams. He credits the development to the invention of the Internet.
“Around that time of 1998-2000, people were still starting to become mainstream as far as everyone having a computer,” Adams said. “Message boards were starting to form in different places. It was the perfect storm as far as providing college football fans information on a program that you used to have to buy in a magazine.”
Initially the recruiting process involved only the recruiter and the recruit, but then the scout was added to combine recruiting with media. Among the first of these outlets were Rivals.com and Scout.com, but since then 247Sports has entered into the mix and ESPN has branched out its college football coverage to encompass recruiting as well.
This is what sparked the recruiting “explosion,” as Adams described it.
“The websites like Rivals and Scout realized ‘You know what? It’s not just money to be made, but this is an industry we can really benefit from.’ They were very smart,” Adams said. “They facilitated that and it just exploded. Rivals is selling for 60 million dollars to Yahoo, and Scout with Fox for similar money. Obviously they were right.”
Public interest in recruiting has also skyrocketed because of the evolution of the fast-paced social media universe. The consensus No. 1 recruit for the Class of 2013, Grayson High School’s Robert Nkemdiche, has 36,400 Twitter followers.
“There’s not a lot that goes on behind the scenes nowadays. Everything’s out in public, especially with Twitter,” Adams said.
One of the biggest aspects of recruiting that remains timeless is the evaluation. Scouts often assess on the “star scale,” where higher-rated recruits get the most stars, up to five. Adams thinks this contributed to the marketability of recruiting.
“People did want to know, and the 5-stars and the 4-stars of the world get a lot of attention,” Adams said.
Coaches often evaluate how a particular player fits their program in certain categories.
“I think there’s so many different levels of evaluation because you evaluate each prospect on a variety of factors,” Lilly said. “Certainly the athletic ability comes into play, but also their character and their academics come into play.”
Though Lilly says that character and academic eligibility may determine whether or not a program will pursue a prospect, the utmost priority in recruiting is talent.
“If you really pinned me down and said the first thing, the reality is, as important as their academics and their character are, obviously athletic ability is the first thing that you notice,” Lilly said. “Because if I was a recruit, I could be a great guy and have a 4.0 GPA, but if I can’t play, nobody’s going to recruit me.”
At UGA, the coaching staff covers the entire state of Georgia searching for recruits, and they’re always looking for future recruits, as well.
“Our coaches go in every high school in Georgia at least once a year,” Lilly said. “So even if that high school doesn’t have a prospect that you think is a Georgia or an SEC or a national championship-type prospect say for the 2013 class, they may have a 2015. So you already know where they are in this state.”
But Lilly and Adams, both being evaluators, did acknowledge that the system of assessment is imperfect, and that evaluations often vary widely from person to person.
“You never know, everybody gets them wrong. We get 5-stars wrong, college coaches make bad evaluations all the time. There’s always going to be 2-stars that come out and have great careers,” Adams said.
Even though the system has its flaws, fans are attracted to the spectacle regardless.
“Fan is short for fanatic for a reason,” Adams said. “You’re passionate about the program and want to know who’s going to be the next guy to go to Georgia and be the next Aaron Murray, be the next A.J. Green. They want to see that premier player join their program and take them to the next level.”
Recruiting coverage has flourished because of its compelling nature. The emotion, coupled with the sense of community that fans can find on recruiting websites, has made interest in recruiting increase exponentially.
“People spend hours in the day just on (websites), chatting with other people and being excited about the team that they loved,” Adams said. “I think that’s something that a lot of people just cannot get enough of. That’s really how it took off.”
However, though there is no end in sight for the popularity of recruiting, new NCAA rule modifications could alter the system entirely.
Some of the changes that primarily affect recruiting include:11-2, which will eliminate rules on functions designated to the head coach or assistant coach. 11-4 will allow all coaches to engage in off-campus recruiting. 13-1 will let schools treat prospects as student-athletes once they have signed a Letter of Intent. 13-3 will open up ways for coaches to contact recruits that were previously banned. 13-5-A will do away with rules on sending printed recruiting materials to recruits, and 13-8 will open up more access in regard to camps in clinics.
The NCAA describes these changes as an act of “deregulation.” Coach Lilly feels that these amendments towards a more open and public type of recruitment could affect him and other college coaches across the country directly.
“There have been some recent rules changes which have taken out many restrictions on contacting recruits and in regard to the types of materials we can send them,” Lilly said. “I think some of this is dangerous because it may lead to coaches rarely having a moment away from the job.”
These changes will have an effect on the future of the recruiting process, and it is unforeseen whether the new direction that the NCAA has taken will have a positive or negative impact. It could lead to “burnout” in coaches, as Coach Lilly has suggested, or it could allow the recruiting process to be more accessible, as the NCAA predicts.
Only time will tell.
