When should I sign up for summer football recruiting camps?

The summer may seem like something in the far off distance but for junior and sophomore athletes out there ready this, the rest of the winter and the spring will fly by. Before you know it, the summer season will be upon you. So with that in mind, it may be important to at least have a strategy for your summer football camp schedule.

The single most important role when signing up for a football camp is by NOT picking a camp based on one camp invite that you received from the school. Let me stress this again (and I should just repeat this about twenty more times). If you are a junior and the only “recruiting” that a college does is send you a camp invite, do not go. They are not interested in you as a player. They are interested in you to make money during the summer months. These coaches can really improve their income by bringing in as many athletes as they can. So with money on the line, they are going to mass invite athletes from all over their area.

All schools send out these camps invites to pad their camp numbers as well as their wallets. These invites are being sent out while you read this and football recruits across the country may really think that this program is interested in them. Again, if you have received little to nothing else from the school outside of a camp invite, save your money (or the cash of your parents) because this is a waste of time. There is one school in the Midwest known for sending out camp invites to anyone. My guess is that if they know you started on the football team, you are good enough for a camp invite. Keep that in mind before getting excited and quickly signing up.

If you are a sophomore, then picking camps are much different. Until the first day of your junior year of school, all college coaches can send you is questionnaires and camp invites. The problem is because it is so early, it is really tough to tell if the school sending the camp invite is really interested. That is why I would not take these camp invites all that serious, even this early in the football recruiting process.

As a sophomore, you should dictate what schools you decide to attend camps at. Yes, it would be great to get a scholarship while at the camp but the odds are very slim so don’t count on it. Go in thinking that the reason you are going to the camps are to get better as a player and hopefully show the coaches enough that they will evaluate you later on in the recruiting process.

For picking camps as a sophomore, I honestly wouldn’t do all that many. Just pick somewhere between two and four that you feel can help you. You may decide that you want to go to two in-state schools and another dream program that you have followed for years. Again, getting yourself exposed to different coaches should help you become a better football player if you listen and work hard.

Signing up for a summer football camp as a junior is completely different. Because college coaches can send you all the mail that they want and eventually call you in May, I would strongly advise to not sign up until May. I would say in 98% of the situations that unless a school calls you in the month of May, then they are not going to offer you a scholarship while at the camp (there are exceptions but I am stressing that the mass majority do not come out of nowhere for a scholarship offer. The athlete is at least someone they know to watch coming in). So the question is why pay a school hundreds of dollars when the reason you are going is to be recruited and they are not going to take you all that serious as a potential player at their level?

As a junior, your goal for camps is to get evaluated and either get a scholarship or show enough ability that they will be looking at you down the road. With this in my, there is no reason why you should have to attend more than one day at the camp. I have talked about this before but when speaking with the coaches that call in May, ask them about how you can attend one day at camp and what the process is to sign up for that.

The reason to only attend one day of the camp is simple. First, it saves you a great deal of money. That is going to be a huge benefit in the long term scheme of things. The second is that as a college coach, they have the ability to evaluate an athlete very quickly. If they know you can’t play, why stay there hoping to impress them? You are not suddenly going to turn into Tim Tebow from the second to third night.

Anyways, going back to the original question, signing up for camps does differ. As a sophomore, pick a few camps that you are interested and go to those. As a junior, find out what schools are really interested in you (and that means by calling you in May, which is more than a college coach visiting your high school) and then talk to them about attending one day at their camp. Then it will save you money and give you more flexibility to get to different camps around your area.

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I’m a junior football player with no offers and no college interest. What should I do?

While seniors are finishing up the recruiting process and trying to figure out where they will be playing in college, for those juniors out there, many are wondering what exactly they should be doing at this point in the recruiting process.  If you have logged extensive varsity playing time and have stats, then you can take one of two options.

The first is to wait and let the recruiting process come to you.  The problem with that is you may be waiting a long time before the schools you are very interested evaluate you, if they do at all.  The second option is start the recruiting process yourself and give yourself a head start in the eyes of college coaches.  You can take whatever way you feel more comfortable with but taking the second is something that I would strongly recommend.

I do have to say that if you saw very little playing time as a junior, it is going to be tough to really get much response from college coaches.  Unless you are a 6-foot-7, 285 pound lineman or can run a 4.5 40-yard dash, it is going to be tough.  There are exceptions but in most situations, you were likely not playing for a reason (an injury is a different story by the way).

If you played a great deal, have good stats and/or earned postseason honors, now is a great time to get the recruiting process started.  I am not promising a scholarship by any means but this is your best chance to eventually get evaluated by college coaches.  There may be a reason why no schools have sent mail or really you could be a diamond in the rough.  It really depends on a case by case basis.

If I had a son in this situation where there was no current attention from college coaches, I would follow the five steps to a scholarship (Click here for the link to the separate articles.  The reason to follow these steps is that they will put your and your skills into the best situation possible to get evaluated by college coaches.  Taking these steps is a much better move than randomly sending out your highlight video (if you haven’t read the articles on this before, just don’t do it).

Going back to the five steps to a scholarship offer, the first step of putting together a recruiting profile is rather simple.  It needs to break down your size, stats, accomplishments, academics, and contact information.  Feel free to add anything else of interest that could help draw the interest of college coaches.

One you finish the recruiting profile, the next step is for families to break down what specific schools are going to be a good fit for the athlete.  Try to use the entire family when putting together information as opinions of others should be valued.  In the end realize that the final decision is that of the athlete, not the mom or dad.

After you have found a good number of schools that fit academically, athletically, and socially, now is the time find a coach at the school to contact.  In most situations, search for the email address of the recruiting coordinator.  Once you have found it, send an email to him about your interest in the school and make sure to attach the recruiting profile.

The fourth step can come at two different times.  You can either make the highlight video (see www.highlight-videos.com for a professional and inexpensive video) before you get interest from coaches and try to post it on a variety of websites (Youtube others).  Having this video available early may help you draw interest of coaches, especially if you can email them the link.  The other option is to wait and make sure there is recruiting attention before making the video.  Either works but if you are for sure going to make the video, you might as well do it early.

Following the fifth step would be to create a website.  The reason is rather obvious.  If you send a recruiting profile to a coach, you can tell them to make sure to check out johndoe.com.  This is a great way to give them easy access to your video and it allows them to find out more information about you quickly.

There is no doubt in my mind that taking these steps will be a huge advantage for you in the recruiting process.  You can tailor your search how you want it but this gives your skills on the football field the best chance to be evaluated by college coaches.

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The impact of student loans on the athletic recruiting process

I have talked a great deal about how student loans can be used to help pay for college.  These are used when you need help paying for tuition or other things involving college.  I used student loans myself in order to have a chance to play athletics at the Division III level.  While I think student loans are great, the one thing as a 17 or 18-year old is that you don’t realize how much you will be paying back in the long run.

For this example, let’s say that you believe in the statement, “if you are good enough, college coaches will find you.”  I have said before that the college coaches finding you will be those at the Division III level.  While these schools can help with tuition, it is likely going to be expensive if it is a private Division III school.  So you end up being recruited by five Division III schools.  Because you have not read this site before and educated yourself about the recruiting process, you pick one school that is more expensive than others.

This one school normally costs $30,000 per year (that is the cost of some these days).  With grants and scholarships, they are able to get the total cost of your tuition with room and board down to only $12,500 per year.  That seems like a lot because they are helping you pay for $17,500 of the overall costs per year.  Over the course of your four years in school, that equals out to $70,000.

But you may not be realizing what the costs you will be paying for your own education.  If you are paying $12,500 and using student loans to do it, that adds up to $50,000 over the course of your four years.  That could obviously be more if you come back for a fifth year.  And with student loans, you will be paying every single penny back over a long period of time.

When I went away to college, for whatever reason, I assumed that I was only taking out $4,000 per year in student loans.  It took me at least a year to realize that figure was much closer to $10,000 every year for school.  I just didn’t really think about it at the time.  I was just happy to get a chance to continue playing basketball and getting a strong education at the same time.

Most teenagers don’t realize the overall costs associated with school.  They hope either that their parents can pay for them or that they will get student loans.  In the majority of situations, most families don’t have an extra $50,000 sitting around so you may need to cross the off your list.  What that leaves is $50,000 in student loan debt.

If you owed that much and had to pay it off in ten years (we are assuming 120 monthly payments and an interest rate of 5.0%), your monthly payment would be $530.33.  Because of interest, you would end up paying the student loan company $63,639.60 over the course of those ten years.  Athletes out there need to read these numbers again and really start thinking about them.  If you are paying the monthly payment off, that is $6,363.96 each year.  So if you hope to earn $40,000 in your first job out of college, you might as well take over the $6,363.96 you will be paying in student loan payments each and every year from age 23 to 33.

I really wish that I read an article like this before I made a college decision.  I am writing this both to scare you as well as inform you.  The numbers are scary and they should be scary.  Even if you have not worked a job in your life, that is a lot of money that you will be paying off.

So if this athlete could rewind the clock and re-do the situation, what could be done?  The first thing to do is follow The Five Steps to a Scholarship Offer.  You need to get your information out in front of as many college coaches as possible to be evaluated.  Make a strong recruiting profile and market yourself.

You may not have a full scholarship but the marketing process may have helped you garner some interest from Division II and NAIA schools as well as the Division III programs already talked about.  Your ability is good enough to get a partial scholarship at a Division II school and a full ride at an NAIA program.  However, your heart is still set on the Division III school with strong academics and a winning soccer team.  What you need to do is now shop your packages to the certain schools.  Talk to them about how the Division II school can offer me this and the NAIA school can give me this.  That should help a great deal with your overall recruiting package.

In the end, this shopping helps you lower your tuition by $7,500 per year at the Division III program (the cost per year is now at $5,000).  You will now leave college with $20,000 in debt overall.  While that is still a lot, here is what he payment look like (with a 5.0% interest rate over ten years).  It will only be $212.13 per month, which is $2545.56 per year and $25,455.6 over the course of the loan.  Your marketing plan has now saved you $38,184.00 over your previous tuition numbers.  Not a bad area to sink some time into is it?

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Pesto & Parm Pasta e Fagioli

This Pesto and Vegan Parmesan Pasta e Fagioli soup is the perfect quick and easy meal to warm you up this January. Serve in a big soup bowl with a hearty chunk of warm sourdough bread and dinner (or lunch) is served! White beans and tender pasta mingles with potatoes, red onion, garlic, olive oil, pesto and vegan Parmesan. This soothing soup can be made in under 30 minutes...Read more »

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The importance of focusing on yourself (or your child) during the athletic recruiting process

While there may be a 1-on-1 aspect of just about every sport out there, the best 1-on-1 players are not necessarily the ones that will end up with scholarship offers from college programs.  And for a lot of families (especially parents), it is difficult for them realize that there is more to the athletic recruiting process than just that.  Many parents and sometimes coaches feel that because their son or daughter had a good game against an athlete with college scholarship offers, these scholarships will be coming to them as well.

Again, it just doesn’t work that way.  There is so much involved in the college recruiting process that simply having one good game against a top tier athlete is not going to put you on par with the schools that are recruiting him or her.  You may be an excellent high school player who has already peaked out.  At the next level, potential is vital so that comes into play as well.

What you need to worry about during the recruiting process is yourself (or your child).  I am going to stress that time and time again.  Let’s say that the athlete your son’s team is facing on Friday has Division I offers from all over the country.  He has spent his summer attending camps and select combines in order to draw attention from college coaches.  It has paid off as he now basically can pick what school he wants to go to.

Going into the game, he has been limited with an injury so he isn’t 100%.  This athlete has already impressed college coaches enough previously that the regular season doesn’t matter all that much in terms of the recruiting process.  Say this athlete and your son both play running back.  In the end, the highly recruited athlete rushes for 154 yards and your son rushes for 186 yards.  Some families will feel that since their son out performed this highly sought after recruit, they should be getting scholarship offers.

The athletic recruiting process has never worked that way and never will.  Yes, sometimes college coaches do find tape of athletes they like when looking at another player but that rarely happens.  What you need to do as a family is focus on what you can do to help yourself throughout the entire recruiting process, not just the night your son out played a big named athlete.  And with defenses differing in this game, factors like that may be a reason why your son outperformed the other player.

Maybe this top ranked athlete followed The Five Steps to a Scholarship since he was a sophomore to help himself garner college interest.  And it has paid off with the recruiting process.  You on the other hand are now a senior and have not even put together a recruiting profile.  The schools you want to attend will not likely find you unless you put an effort forward, like this other athlete did.  He did not take anything for granted and wanted attention from the schools he has dreamt of playing for.  Now he will be getting that chance in college.

I feel strongly that the most vital performance of an athlete in just about any sport is either in AAU, club, or during the summer football camps.  College programs will offer athletes based on their recruiting highlight tape but prefer to get a chance to see them first hand and work with them.  The best time to peak is during the summer (and also the time to avoid any type of injury).

Obviously the more wins that your teams is able to secure, the more success the team will have, and thus the more individual honors you will get.  But your focus should be on your own recruiting process and not how you outplayed this major recruit.  It could be a story to tell your kids twenty years from now but if you are playing college athletics, it shouldn’t matter much.  It is something that is great to do but will have no factor on the recruiting process.  Worry about yourself (and your kid) and it will make the athletic recruiting process for any sport much easier.

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2019. Three Things...

Happy 2019 everyone. Today I want to share three things I learned + explored the past year. Things that helped me grow and helped me find some #happy. I hope these three things can speak to you as we adventure forward into a new year...Read more »

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I’m a junior with no football recruiting interest. What do I do?

Like a few of the other series of articles that I have started, I plan to break down what I would recommend to high school athletes in different situations. This will cover football and basketball as well as the year the athlete is and the recruiting interest they have been receiving. This should help those athletes and parents that are confused about the recruiting process and what they are doing.

Now that Signing Day is in the past, if you are a sought after junior by colleges, you should be receiving some sort of attention from schools at the next level. There are always athletes who say that the coaches are so busy with Signing Day that they can’t focus on the next class. That however is an excuse. Coaches are always looking ahead and many are offering scholarships to the elite players in the the junior class.

According to NCAA rules, until the first day of school your junior year, you cannot receive any football recruiting information that is not just a plain questionnaire or a camp invite. These coaches also cannot talk to you. That is part of the reason there is a perception that coaches don’t focus on the juniors. But once September 1st hits, coaches will flood the top junior prospects with mail.

If you have not received anything or much on the recruiting front, it is still a very good time to start contacting college coaches. You may be forced to sell yourself to these coaches but if your goals is to play college football at a high level, then you have no choice.

As talked about in the five steps to a scholarship, even before you start contacting college coaches the first thing you should do is build a recruiting profile. This word document basically highlights what you have accomplished over your high school career. If you haven’t really accomplished anything, don’t expect to garner much interest because of that. Click here to see the full article about building an athletic profile.

The next step for you is to talk to your high school coach and anyone not related to you. What you want to talk to them about is what level that they feel you can realistically play at in college. It would be great if your coach knows how good you are but not all do. Try to find someone who is old enough to know.

I recently received an email telling me that there was a 6-foot-1, 195 pound tight end who was a surefire Division I prospect. Even though that is the size of many wide receivers, I heard many times that he was a Division I football player. When I questioned the person’s ability, he claimed he knew exactly what it took to play Division I football. Let me tell you that sometimes I don’t have a clue why one athlete is Division I vs. another who isn’t.

Once you find out what level they feel you can play (And you have to be comfortable with this), start searching the Internet. I know everyone wants to play for USC or LSU, but chances are strong that you will be wasting your time contacting them. What you need to do is go through the list and compare them to what you are looking for in a school. Think about location, your future major, the level of athletics, and anything else that could factor in on where you go.

After you have a long list of schools, now it is time to use their website again and contact their coaching staff. It will be similar for those who send out resumes for a job. You need to introduce yourself to the coaching staff, tell them why you are contacting them, mention why you like their school, and include your athletic profile.

The reason the lists needs to be long is because you want to keep your options open. If you begin by focusing just on five dream schools, it is going to be an uphill climb to keep all five of them interested. Never say never but the more options you have, the better chances you have at getting a scholarship down the road.

Not everyone of these schools is going to start recruiting you either. I would expect many to send you a camp invite (Click here for an older article on that). What you are looking for is more information about the school and for them to start showing you real interest. If you really feel you can play at that level, then it may be smart to go to camps. But as mentioned in that article, camps are big for college coaches to make money. Some are for recruiting but the majority just end up paying the college coaches.

Another important step you can take is look for a Nike Camp, Rivals or a Under Armour camp.  As I have mentioned before, be wary of those camps that charge money for you to test out. Like the college camps, these are making money for the person running it. If you perform well at the camp, expect your numbers and ability to get mentioned to college coaches. This is an easy and free way to help your stock in the eyes of coaches at the next level.

You could also contact coaches that you are interested in visiting their campus. They may not pull out the red carpet for you but you could at least introduce yourself and meet them face to face.

The biggest obstacle you face right now is getting your name out there. By contacting coaches and being able to provide them with stats, information from your coach, and video will help things. Also talk more to your college coaches about if he has any connection with coaches at the next level. You might as well use as many people are you can to help you with this difficult process.

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