More proof that athletic recruiting letters don’t mean anything in the overall scheme of things

I have figured out there is still a reason that I am receiving Sports Illustrated for over the last 20 plus years.  While the articles are definitely something that I enjoy, a recent one really hit home and I knew right away that this would be something I would be writing about here.

George Dohrmann put together a piece entitled “You’ve Got (too  Much) Mail.  What Dohrmann basically does is workout an agreement with a sought after basketball recruit by the name of Roberto Nelson.  Basically the Nelson family agreed to keep all their recruiting letters and let Sports Illustrated go through them after.  And while there were no huge envelopes stuffed with cash, there were a lot of things to learn for those going through the basketball recruiting process or athletic recruiting process for that matter.

For those curious, the article is online and is something you can check out by clicking here now.  The reason the article was written was to prove if recruiting mail really matters.  Before jumping into some key points about the article, I must say that recruiting mail does not matter at all for top prospects.  They get so much of it I can guarantee you that it doesn’t matter at all to them because there are boxes and boxes full of it.  Who really has the time to go through it?

The mail that does matter is the ones that don’t end up playing at such a high level in college.  I have mentioned here before that I played Division III athletics.  Somehow as a junior I found my way onto the recruiting database of a Division I program.  I sent back a questionnaire and never heard a word from them (which I am not shocked about).  Anyways, I still have that envelope somewhere over a decade later.  If more Division I letters had come, I would have easily not cased.  But the letters matter the most to the athletes that are not that recruited overall, no matter what sport they play.

Anyways, here is what stood out for me throughout the article.

Nelson would eventually receive scholarship offers from UCLA, Florida, Ohio State and a dozen other top programs. A 6’3″ guard, he was ranked among the top 100 players in the class of 2009.

Basically just nothing that this athlete got some serious recruiting attention and options throughout the entire country.

The only significant change in the last decade has been the targeting of recruits at younger ages. Middle schoolers began receiving handwritten letters from basketball coaches, and some recruiters started sending notes to fifth- and sixth-graders. The NCAA changed the language in its bylaws last year and now prohibits coaches from mailing recruiting materials to a player before June 15 of his sophomore year of high school. But there is a loophole. Coaches are allowed to send camp brochures, questionnaires or NCAA-printed materials, such as eligibility guides, to prospects regardless of their age. Some recruiters inundate a young prospect with those documents so as to get envelopes embossed with their school’s logo into his mailbox. In one instance a basketball program sent one page of the NCAA’s 21-page Guide for College Bound Student-Athletes to a recruit each week over a stretch of more than five months.

The last sentence was definitely my favorite as coaches do what they can to be unique.

Most striking about the correspondence Nelson received was not the volume, not even Kentucky’s whopping total of 295 mailings, but how little of it was personalized. Of the 2,161 pieces of mail that arrived on Nelson’s doorstep, only 200—or 9.3%—featured writing tailored specifically for him. Everything else was a form letter, a media guide, a press release or, most often, a photocopy of a page from a media guide.

SI deemed correspondence to be personalized if a coach wrote anything unique on it. Washington (86 mailings) was the only school to personalize every piece of correspondence it sent Nelson, but rarely did the Huskies’ coaches pen more then a few words.

All of Kentucky’s dispatches were impersonal, as were those from Clemson (210), Tennessee (196), Oregon (93), Wisconsin (53), Kansas State (50), California (44), Florida (42), Kansas (41) and 27 other schools. In total, only 18 schools sent him any personalized mail.

Take a serious look at those numbers athletes.  You really think two letters from a school mean anything now?  Over 200 freaking letters by one school.  No wonder this athlete had no room for all the materials.

Five other top recruits—three from the class of 2009 and two from the class of 2010—say they also opened only a small percentage of their mail after realizing it was mostly impersonal. Why, then, do schools still send recruiting letters?

“Most coaches, especially the younger ones, know the mail is not the way to build a relationship anymore,” says a recruiter for one Pac-10 school. “But everyone else is doing it, so no one wants to be the one not to.”

Again, just stressing home that letters don’t matter in the overall scheme of the recruiting process.

In Nelson’s mass of mail it was easier to find an NCAA violation than a well-turned phrase. LSU, for example, sent Nelson four recruiting letters before the NCAA’s first allowable date, then Sept. 1 of the player’s junior year. “That occurred under the previous coaching staff,” says LSU associate AD Michael Bonnette.

“Schools often mistake what year in school a recruit is, or they are just trying to get a jump on everyone else,” says Foti Mellis, an associate athletic director at Cal.

Who should you blame here?  I would blame the 5,000 athletes in the recruiting database.  Just the other day I heard a Division III program football program had 3,000 prospects in their recruiting database.  Imagine at the Division I level.

During the summer before his senior year of high school, Nelson met Oregon State coach Craig Robinson, better known as President Barack Obama’s brother-in-law. Robinson called Nelson four times last fall and went to Santa Barbara to visit him in September. In November, Nelson spurned UCLA and Ohio State and signed a letter of intent to play for the Beavers.  How many pieces of recruiting mail did Robinson and Oregon State send Nelson?  Zero.

This was a fantastic ending to the article.  While I am overly surprised that the school that got him sent no mail, it shows how much mail matters.  What you should focus on is calls, visits, and things along those line.  That will help you judge how serious a college really is in you.

Recruiting-101 has written a 51-page E-Book that helps parents throughout the journey of the recruiting process. This includes an example recruiting profile, a step-by-step time line, and much more. It is currently available for sale for only $10.00.  Find out more about purchasing the e-book and what else is included by clicking here now!

Recruiting-101 has put together a 25-page e-book on how to Produce a Scholarship Worthy Highlight Video.  It breaks down the overall process of creating a Highlight Video and gives step by step instructions for football and basketball recruits.  Click here to learn more about the e-book now, which is currently on sale for only $7.50!

For position by position help throughout the football recruiting process, Recruiting-101 has put together a 28-page guide to help athletes get a better feel for what college coaches are looking for at each spot.  Click here to learn more about the e-book now, which is currently on sale for only $5.00!