Top Ten Athletic Recruiting Articles of 2007

While the new year is still only in its infancy, Recruiting-101.com wants readers to be able to check out our favorite content from 2007. With a great deal of must read articles, it will be tough to pin it down to what we feel are our top ten articles from last year. But we might as well help you out and pick the ones that we feel are most beneficial for those going through the recruiting process.

Our lists includes a variety of different aspects in recruiting, but we will only be counting our Five Steps to a Scholarship as one article. That will help give this article more bang for the buck. Anyways, onto our top ten (Click on the heading to see the full article):

1.) Five Steps to a Scholarship
Over the past decade plus, I have seen a lot on the recruiting trails, studied some of the rules, and talked to enough people in the know that I have a good grasp of the recruiting process. So in order to help out those athletes, I am going to be looking at five steps that I would do for my kids when they are about to enter into the recruiting process. Most of these steps will be links back to previous articles but for new users of this site, this may give you a chance to become familiar with some of the past work that has been done on this site.

2.) Recruiting is a GAME
After having gone through the recruiting process myself at the lower level, the older I get the more I realize how much recruiting is a game. By that I mean coaches at the scholarship level have to do what they can to lead on as many prospects as they can to land the best talent that they can. For example, say the University of Illinois is looking to add two running backs in their recruiting class. For this to happen, they have to have a number of different levels of recruits. There could be around five top tier players throughout the entire country that the team has already offered. If they can land commitments from these top rated athletes, they would surely take them if possible. But if those options fall through, the team will not have but all of their eggs in one basket.

3.) Levels of interest from college coaches
When receiving your first recruiting letters at the high school level, it is important to realize the differences between form letters, camp invites, hand written letters, phone calls, and scholarship offers. These coaches have to find a very broad list of athletes to recruit so when you receive something from a Division I school, don’t be shocked if you are one of 5,000 other players in your class receiving the same letter.

4.) Don’t be THAT Parent
It doesn’t seem to matter much what sport is being played, at what age level, or even at any location in the country. Over the past years, there has seemed to creep up a very excessive number of obnoxious parents that are not realistic about their child’s abilities. These parents are the ones sitting in the stands second guessing the coach and questioning every decision he or she makes. This article is that you don’t want to be that parent.

5.) How important are grades in getting an athletic scholarship?
When writing an article, I always seem to have to preface it first just in case someone is reading into it too much. But let me tell you, grades are vital to getting an athletic scholarship as well as an academic scholarship. I wanted to say first that just because you have a 4.0, you have to be able to play your sport of choice very well if you want an athletic scholarship. That 4.0 grade point average will help with academic scholarships, but you need to be able to play if you want that money for athletics.

6.) How college coaches narrow down who to offer athletic scholarships
As I have mentioned before in other articles, some coaches begin the recruiting process with over 5,000 prospective recruits. With a list like that, it is definitely not an overnight project to narrow it down to the third to fifty (That number varies by school) prospects that they will eventually offer athletic scholarships. Schools like Nebraska, Air Force, Mississippi and others have been renowned for offering hundreds of prospects but I would guess that most college programs end up offering athletic scholarships to forty or fifty sought after prospects. That will depend on how many players they need to sign and if they are landing any of these athletes.

7.) Keep the door open during the athletic recruiting process
No matter what sport you play or are considering at the high school level, it is imperative that you keep all of your options for colleges. Even if you feel that you are a sure fire Division I prospect, things can change quickly in the game of recruiting. There are a few reasons why this needs to be done.

8.) A parent who has been through the basketball recruiting process – Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
Over the past few years, I have had a chance to get in contact with a number of parents and athletes that have worked hard to help their child end up with an athletic scholarship at the college level. I tried to help where I could but parents do most of the work in almost all of the situations. Anyways, I had a chance to email back and fourth with the parent of a basketball player who did the most marketing of their son to college coaches. This family did a fantastic job throughout the entire process and I wanted to post some of their answers to the questions I asked. Just to let you know, here son ended up at a Division II basketball program out of state. Onto the questions (Look for more parts later as well).

9.) What happens on an official visit for athletics?
This article was written by George Dohrmann and I found the article posted on a message board. In the article, wide receiver Marvin Jones from California does a player diary throughout the course of an official visit to California. This is a good look at how college coaches pull out all the stops when they have top rated prospects in for visits. While everyone taking official visits will not have the exact same experience, this is a look at what it is like to be a highly sought after athlete.

10.) When is the right time to make a verbal commitment to a college athletic program?
One of the toughest questions in the recruiting process involves when the timing is right to make a final college decision. There are so many different things involved that make the process tough. But of course, I am here to help athletes and parents look at some of the most important aspects of why making a decision now versus two months in the future could be a lot different.