#6 Recruiting Corner: Landon Collins, Gunner Kiel, Recruiting Mom’s
On this weeks recruiting corner we cover some of the biggest news in the world of college recruiting. Athnet VP David Frank makes his first appearance on the Recruiting Corner and joins your usual host Joshua Zimmerman.
Our topics include:
• The NCAA is pushing for $2,000 increase on top of full-ride scholarships. The Universities voted almost unanimously to block this legislation so the NCAA agreed to push this topic back to April and take more time coming up with better solution.
• The NCAA will be voting on allowing schools to offer multi-year scholarships in February.
• We cover the topic of mom’s impact in the recruiting process. Specifically, Landon Collins committing to Alabama instead of in-state LSU against his mothers wishes. On the other side of the coin Gunner Kiel the #1 QG recruit de-committed from LSU and signed to play at Notre Dame because his mom wanted to play closer to home.
• Our #1 twitter question comes from @BIgSapp_Does_It who asked “I am a junior in high school and want to get recruited… How do I get started”
We give the your recruiting take away for you on all of these big stories, answer the #1 twitter question and let you know who the office is cheering for in the NFC Championship this weekend!
Video Transcript:
Joshua: Welcome back to another round of The Recruiting Corner. I’m Joshua Zimmerman, your host. I want to welcome to the panel David Frank, Vice President of Athnet, also going to be our recruiting expert. How are you guys doing?
David: Hey, guys. Josh, awesome. Glad to be here on The Recruiting Corner.
Joshua: Welcome, welcome.
David: I’m excited to get this thing going. Also, first time getting on video for the company so everybody take it easy. Don’t judge me too harshly.
Joshua: We’ll take it lightly on you today.
David: Awesome. All right, guys, we’re going to cover a couple of things happening in the NCAA. The NCAA has just wrapped up a Board of Directors meeting again just this past weekend and lots of big news coming out of there. President Mark Emmert is making some moves in the NCAA and pushing hard for some reform.
One of the biggest pieces of legislation going is the $2000 on top of the cost of full-ride scholarships. This is some really controversial legislation. The schools aren’t happy about it and they’re letting the NCAA know. What they’ve decided is to push this for vote until April. They’ll decide about it in April. But I wanted to get your feelings on what the impacts are of this $2000 increase on scholarships and how does it matter to your normal college recruit?
Joshua: I’m not sure what the NCAA is doing right now. Everyone knows that athletic departments, for the most, part run in deficits, and unfortunately if you increase money they’ve got to take it from somewhere else. This means that your lower-tier sports are going to suffer.
You’re going to start seeing a lot of sports disappear from schools that just can’t afford it so that they can pay to recruit in that $2000 mark. You’re going to see your top sports, your top athletes, get the money and you’re going to see a lot of your smaller sports lose money. It’s really unfortunate because there are a lot of opportunities out there that are going to go to waste.
David: I agree. I applaud the NCAA for trying to make changes but they’re going to have to think through this one a little bit better.
Next up: More scholarship news from the NCAA. They are going to vote in February for multi-year scholarships. That means athletes will be able to sign their scholarships for three, four, five years, or their entire time of eligibility. This is big news, but again, it might be impacting the big money sports but not necessarily your equivalency sports. Josh, explain how these how these multi-year scholarships are going to impact recruits.
Joshua: I think you just made a great point in the fact that it is going to affect your top sports and your top athletes. If you’re a star football player, you’re going to come in and they’re going to want to ink you to a deal because most of the time you’re already getting a full-ride scholarship anyway. They’re going to just go ahead and say, “Here’s five years.”
It’s not going to impact your lower-tier sports so much simply because you may not be getting a full ride anyway. You may be only getting a partial scholarship, and for you guys it may not be worth it to sign a multi-year scholarship at that point. Think about if you come in and you’re only going to get $500 your first year. Well, it’s only $500, but maybe you played really hard, you worked really hard, and a full scholarship or a much bigger percentage scholarship opens up the next year. If you signed that four-year $500 deal, you really hurt yourself. I don’t think the lower-tier sports are going to get impacted that much, but I do see your football players, your basketball players and such inking to those deals quite often.
David: I think another important factor is it doesn’t mean you can ignore having the conversation about, “What happens if I get injured? What are the academic expectations?” Those are really important because the majority of you won’t be signing multi-year scholarships. You’ll be signing the one-year commitments and you need to know what happens when you get injured.
All right. Enough of the NCAA and scholarships. This one is about moms and their impact in recruiting. There are two big stories going on this week. One, Landon Collins in last week’s Under Armor football game committed to Alabama instead of in-state LSU. If you’ve seen the YouTube video, and we’ll link to it in the show notes, his mom was less than happy. So here he is this guy going against his mom, committing out-of-state. The other side of the coin, Gunner Kiel, big number one quarterback prospect, had committed to LSU, de-committed from LSU, and is going back home to Notre Dame because his mom wanted him closer to home. What’s going on? What’s your take?
Joshua: We all have moms and they all have opinions, and a lot of times those opinions might not match up. Case in point: Landon Collins down at Louisiana, number one prospect. He really wanted to go to Alabama, committed to Alabama on national television. His mom obviously threw a bit of a fit. It was quite embarrassing for him because this is something he’s worked so hard for.
Gunner Kiel, number one player, Mr. Football in Indiana, Gatorade 2011 football player. Like David said, he originally committed to Indiana, de-committed, committed to LSU, de-committed, and that’s because his mom, the day before he’s supposed to report, decided that she did not want him going that far away. Instead, she wanted him only 173 miles away which is about a three-hour drive.
It’s tough. As an athlete, you need to be honest with your parents about what you want out of college. They also should be honest with you about what they want out of college. They need to tell you, “Hey, we’d like you to stay home because we’d like to be close to you.” Then you have to respect that, especially if they’re going to be paying for some of your education. Granted, these are football players, they’re getting full-ride scholarships. But again, not all of you are going to go that route.
It’s also really important that the coaches understand that they should be recruiting the entire family, not just the athlete. Urban Meyer, one of the best recruiters in the country, is a huge proponent of recruiting families. He recruits parents, he recruits siblings, and he recruits the athletes. So it’s a whole family dynamic there. He gets everyone involved in the decision-making.
Just make sure you’re talking to your parents about what your thoughts are on your recruiting process at all points and times.
David: Exactly. I think you’ve just got to make sure to have the conversation before you commit to a school and have to de-commit. Nobody likes that process. It’s messy and it drops your value as a recruit. Engage with your family early in the recruiting process and avoids these types of situations.
Joshua: Yes, sir.
David: All right. Awesome Twitter question coming from BigSapDoesIt. He asks, “If you’re a junior in high school and you’re trying to get coaches to notice you, where do you start?”
Joshua: BigSapDoesIt, basically what you need to do is start now. It’s all about making sure that the coaches know who you are. You can’t sit back and hope that they’re going to find out who you are because you’re a great athlete or any other reasons. You have to go out and find the coach’s contact information. If you want, use our coaches contact database. Email us and we’ll give you contact information.
We want to make sure that you understand that it’s all about what you can do, not what coaches are going to do for you. You have to go out and find the school, find the coach’s contact information, call them, email them, pester them, tell them that you want an opportunity to get to know them. Not to get a scholarship, to get to know them. They know why you’re contacting them.
David: That’s true. It’s really easy to start. Find the email, find the phone, and contact the coach.
All right. That’s pretty much going to wrap it up, guys. Big weekend here on the west coast. 49ers fans, lots of them in the office, taking on the Giants for the NFC Championship. What are you going to be doing this weekend?
Joshua: I’m pretty sure I’m going to be doing just about the same thing that everybody in the Bay Area is going to be doing, and that’s watching the 49ers play the Giants, hoping for a bit of a win on this side so everyone can maybe celebrate a Super Bowl trip.
David: Agreed. Same thing. I’ll be at home watching the game and Alex Smith, one more week. That’s all I need out of him.
Joshua: He’s had one heck of a season.
Guys, thanks so much for tuning in and listening. If you want to contact us, you can. You know our Facebook tag is just Athnet. Twitter tag is @Athnet. If you want to talk to David and I personally, these are our personal Twitter tags: @JZimmy67 and @DavidRFrank.
Thanks so much. Have a great weekend.
Bellevue College Sports Recruiting.