Today America is approximately two years into the Covid 19 pandemic and things are still just about as unstable as they have ever been. After the mass lockdowns and closures that occurred early in 2020, the sports world has found ways to move forward, but the impact of the virus is much more insidious than most people realize. The shutdown of all spring sports, coinciding with a highly unusual fall and winter 2021 athletic season have drastically changed college recruiting in ways that few people are fully aware of. In an attempt to offer an “equitable” experience to all of the athletes impacted by the virus, the NCAA elected to offer eligibility waivers to all college athletes and nobody seems to be talking about it enough.

Covid 19 Eligibility waivers are as the name suggests. It started with all of the athletes who were in college losing their spring 2020 competition seasons. This was an emotional experience, for athletes and coaches alike. Myself, I was an NJCAA Head Coach at the time of a spring sports team that had recruited heavily for the season. The reality that all of the prep work for a season that would never happen was in vain, was hard to cope with at the time. The blow was softened for athletes by offering them these “waivers” which essentially gives everybody an additional year of eligibility to atone for the one they lost. This sounds great in theory until you realize that high schools across America did not join in providing such waivers. Soon the NCAA felt forced to offer participation waivers to fall and winter sports athletes in 2020-21 as well. Though some teams did contest athletics, they did so with no eligibility being lost to athletes. So as a result all three sports seasons, fall, winter, and spring, received competition waivers. An extra year for all athletes. It reminds me of Oprah’s favorite things, “You get a year of eligibility! You get a year of eligibility! Everybody gets a year of eligibility!”

High school recruits and families that are unfamiliar with the NCAA’s recruitment structure are mostly unaware of the impact that this decision has had on their prospects of finding the right school. Adding a year of eligibility to any athlete in college at the time of the pandemic has meant that now 5 years worth of athletes are seeking roster spots for 4 years worth of remaining eligibility. In other words there is a log jam of nearly 20% more eligible student-athletes for fewer spots and fewer available scholarship dollars than we have ever seen in the past two decades. This impact will last at least through 2024! A freshmen soccer player in the fall of 2020 will now be eligible to play during the fall of 2024 when they normally would have been out of college. Whether or not they proceed as a grad transfer or stay at their original school is irrelevant. If they are on a college athletic roster, they now take a spot, and potentially scholarship dollars that would have gone to an incoming freshman.

The end result of all of this is that the game of college recruitment has gotten harder rather than easier, and those who will be most successful on both the institutional and student side will have to change to accommodate that landscape. If a coach is on the cutting edge of recruitment, they would have figured out pretty quickly that they can jumpstart their program by looking for “grad transfers” across the transfer portal landscape. If I were a coach at a public Division 1 program for example, especially one in a lower conference, I would look for highly talented athletes outside of D1 to “pull up”. I could infuse these Senior leaders who can help the program win at the conference level, and potentially make a run for national relevancy. That process can be repeated every year through 2024 without ever needing to recruit an unproven high school freshman. More available recruits is a great thing for a knowledgeable college coach. More talent on the board means more talent to help me win!

Add to this that many high school athletes lost a year of competition across America. That’s a year of stats, development, film, and opportunity to impress college coaches that will be gone without a way to replace it. There becomes a black hole in recruiting High School athletes that must be overcome by coaches to get the right athletes. High D1 programs like to recruit athletes who prove they are elite at the high school level. In a sport like Track & Field that trend gets magnified because the entirety of the sport starts to amount to recorded performances on a ranking list. High School Freshmen typically will not produce more than 5 to 10 “First Team National Elite” members in track & field. But by Junior year that number has multiplied ten fold. Losing a sophomore year, or even worse a junior year of performance, erases a valuable piece of the puzzle necessary to determine how good a recruit actually is, and coincidentally how good they will be at the next level. This makes it even easier for college coaches to rely on their handy dandy transfer portal to recruit proven talent in place of one with a missing year of performance to review.

For high school recruits, 20% more competition is as detrimental as it sounds. What it does is easily squeeze the percentages out of the talent pool at the margins. Plainly put, athletes who would have been high D1 may now only end up at a mid major program. Those at mid majors may be at small conference schools. Athletes who are on the fringes of D1 will not fall out of into D2, and the domino effect will continue all the way down to lowest rungs of college sports. Class of 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024 recruits will have a harder time finding the right school. There is no way around it, but that does not mean that doing so is not possible.

The solution to the covid recruiting problem goes back to the problem itself. Recruitment is a competitive game and not everyone can win. Some people are going to miss out on roster spots and scholarship offers who would have gotten them without the pandemic. That’s just the way it is. But if you know your talent level and can present yourself to schools that are looking for athletes like yourself, you are in position to be recruited. College coaches will still need to recruit high school athletes, even if there are fewer spots. Relying on database services and word of mouth referrals alone will hurt some recruits more than others. But the ones most likely to get the remaining spots will be the self advocates.

Coaches know what they want out of a recruit and they are not mad if someone serves it up to them on a silver platter. If you are college coach looking for a talented softball pitcher with a 4.0 GPA and then one fills out a questionnaire and leaves you an e-mail. You would not be mad at that coincidence. In fact you would be thankful for not having to spend so much time looking for that athlete in camps, tournaments, and online. It’s no different than wanting to buy a brand new Toyota and then noticing that a new Toyota dealership is opening next to your house. It does not promise that you will buy a Toyota, but makes it much more likely that you buy one from them, since you were already in the market for a Toyota!

The Covid 19 pandemic will have a lasting impact on college athletics that is still developing. The pandemic challenged college budgets in all departments and froze revenue from all streams in a way that has closed athletic programs at all levels, shutdown entire athletic departments, and even shut down entire colleges for good. There will be a ripple effect on recruitment that affects all sports and all recruits who are caught in the crossfire of the times we live in. But though the game has changed, it can still be won by any recruit willing to learn what is changing towards. The legendary coach of Lafayette College Track & Field Julio Piazza used to always say “the great ones adjust”. That has never been more true than today in recruitment. The recruits with great outcomes will be the ones who adjusted. If the game has changed, you might have to change with it.

KNOW THE GAME. WIN THE GAME.

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