The Politics of College Sports Recruiting – And Why it Doesn’t Matter as Much as You Think
It is a narrative that I have heard all too often. That “my child would have been recruited at a high major program, if it weren’t for their high school coach”. In fact, I believed it once myself. In my mind I was a high school basketball player who should have been starting for my New York City private high school, who should have been playing varsity as a sophomore, if it weren’t for the politics. The reality of the situation is that high school and club coaches do play a large role in the recruitment journey of an athlete. In fact, they can almost become gatekeepers who determine which athletes get much needed playing time, exposure, and experience to get recruited. More importantly they can determine which athletes do not.
The Coach as Politician
The politics vary from sport to sport because recruiting structures vary across the NCAA. But the basic rule is that the more individualized a sport is, the less likely politics will be blamed for a sport recruits outcome. The more team focused the sport becomes, the more difficult it is to navigate without support from other stakeholders. Team sports allow a coach to interpret an athlete’s contribution as a part of the whole, and not just based on individual skill or stats. But eyepopping individual performances is what gets someone recruited right? It is almost unheard of for a coach to take a fast distance runner off of their front 7 in Cross Country for example, while it is much easier for a coach to find a reason to play a different third baseman in baseball, or outside hitter in volleyball. Team chemistry is the variable that most coaches are trying to manage, and if they feel they can improve it without you, then you will likely not play much.
High school sports provides a landscape for the most talented athletes to gain separation from their peers and get recruited to the next level of competition. Years ago high school sports through the schools provided a general layer of standardization to sports for all prospective student-athletes. Every state had a state championship, and the goal was simple, you compete to be the best in hopes of becoming that team. But today almost all college sports have a teenage level competition equivalent that is varied. The Amateur Athletic Union became perhaps the first of many organizations who have set up competitive athletics outside of the schools. And the more that athletes and their families have gravitated away from the schools, often looking for better coaching and training opportunities, has complicated the recruitment landscape exponentially. Enter the politics!
The Meat Market
The politics of recruiting come down to college coaches looking to find the “meat market” for their sport. It sounds bad because perhaps it is. Coaches want to find a way to get into a room to find the most amount of qualified athletes to choose from, to make recruiting time efficient and most cost effective. This hurts the high school athlete because the politics immediately get worse the more a sport trends away from the school systems as the cornerstone of the athletic experience. In sports like tennis, baseball, softball, soccer, and volleyball, most of the high-level competition is happening away from high school competition in the present day. Basketball and football seem to be trailing behind but not as far as one might think. Though summer track and field is a thing, in that sport high school performances hold just as much weight because the clock is king. This doesn’t mean that high school sports mean nothing. But what drives the politics of recruitment is the emphasis on recruiting talented athletes to help the most competitive schools win. The truth without photoshop is that college coaches at the highest levels want to find the most talented athletes to put on their uniform and their recruitment habits are fueled by this desire, and not much else. If athletes and families decide to gather in a weekend tournament in the middle of nowhere at a convention center who are deemed to be talented… there will likely be college coaches who waltz on in, hoping to catch a glimpse of a future star player.
The high school sports system as a recruiting hotbed essentially has been collapsing for some time as the players that support it began self-selecting out, or at least prioritizing other leagues and travel competitions above it. College coaches weren’t even mad about it because instead of having to mine the high schools across their entire state, or much more their region/country, they could simply find a list of where the top “travel teams” were going to “travel to” and make sure they coordinated their trips accordingly. It was never about AAU, USATF, ECNL, JVA, EYBL, or any other acronym that an event organizer can dream up. Coaches don’t care where the talent is. They just want to know how to find it, hopefully a lot of it.
Embracing the Politicking
The funny thing is that this is why the politics don’t matter as much as people seem to think they do. Gatekeepers exist in the recruitment game. College liaisons for softball clubs, or recruiting coordinators for AAU basketball are legitimate titles that serve a function. It is even fair to suggest that even a high school coach who doesn’t play an athlete as much as they could, will limit the game film, and opportunities to perform in ways that would get an athlete noticed. But college coaches are much smarter than we seem to give them credit for. Across the NCAA college coaches are some of the most dedicated and intelligent individuals you may come across in your lifetime. And if finding talent is what they set out to do, they certainly have a plan that is more nuanced than checking which names a liaison says they should give a phone call. The fact of the matter is cream does rise to the top. College coaches can basically spot the most talented kids from a mile away, “hundreds of miles away with the internet’s help”. These 10s on a scale of 1 to 10 once identified set the standard of recruitment for that year’s incoming class in the sport. Wherever they go, is the place to be because they are in attendance. Every other recruit will now be measured based on how they measure up to that standard.
Once the “top” talent is identified, the consensus number 1 athlete in a state perhaps, it is simple logic from there who a coach would want to recruit. Watch the kids who compete against the best, and see who has success against them. The funny thing about the “political” rankings that are handed out of high school aged players is they read rather basic on talent evaluation if you know the sport. The kid who won everything likely gets to be number 1. Whoever lost to them in the championship will likely be second. The ones who lost to them both will follow soon after, and the one who weren’t even at the tournament… well you can kind of see where I’m headed with this. They won’t be on the list at that point.
Running your Campaign
If politics is the name of the game, than taking control of your recruitment is akin to running your own campaign to get elected for a college roster. Effective campaigning will come into play the most with athletes who honestly are on the fringes of the NCAA’s different tiers of competition. A large percentage of Division 1, 2, and 3 athletes overlap in talent. But the most talented athletes, particularly in Division 1 are pretty solidified as top recruits in the eyes of coaches. There are many D2 athletes who could “fit in” at the low half of D1. But who gets to go where and why is reduced to what competitions you attended, what teams you were on, and other “vanity metrics.” These may or may not truly reflect who will become a better college athlete. Many athletes don’t want to hear this but all of these “overlapping athletes” are essentially replacement level anyway for most coaches. In other words, it doesn’t matter so much to a coach whether it is Jane or Meg who you recruit if they will more or less serve the same role on a college team.
Football recruiting especially has shifted heavily to a “camp” model for ranking athletes. Since full contact games are hard to play year-round, these performance camps become the place for a player to achieve and validate rankings. Once you get on the list, politically, it is hard to fall off it. And college coaches once again must follow the talent. If a player who is already ranked highly goes into their upcoming high school season, coaches will be watching. But the irony is that while they are watching the alleged superstar “Mike”, they coincidentally have to watch everyone else Mike is playing against. If “Jimmy” is as good as he thinks he is, then he should be able to outduel the star recruit on the high school stage. If he doesn’t then it seems that the ranking is not only justified for the superstar “Mike”, but the simultaneous unranked status of Jimmy. Many of the “diamonds in the rough” who will show themselves at the college level are talented kids who never got much of an opportunity to show what they can do on a major stage. If the high-level tournaments and camps around the country are now America’s “sports recruiting jewelers”, then high school sports alone might as well be the “rough”.
Overcoming the Politics
The politics of recruiting are legitimate but nowhere near as complex as people seem to believe. Coaches will always try to identify top talent, as early as possible. Wherever those athletes are will become the meeting place for coaches to evaluate talent. We can’t predict whether “Mike” really is the best player in his recruiting class But we can use him as a benchmark to evaluate everyone else. Coaches have limited time and resources. So gathering allegedly talented players into one place makes sports recruiting a lot easier. There are always talented kids that slip through the cracks, but you can’t miss what you never knew existed. The best way to fight against the politics is the same way people did it before AAU ever was invented. If you win, and keep winning, you can silence all the critics.
KNOW THE GAME. WIN THE GAME.
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