#15 Recruiting Corner: How to Find Scholarships, Multi-year Scholarships and Social Media in Recruiting
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Joshua: Hey guys, welcome back. You know what time it is. We’re back with another Recruiting Corner. Joshua Zimmerman, David Frank.
David: Hey guys, how’s it going? Just a quick reminder, subscribe to our YouTube channel, get this sent to you every week once we’ve got it. Let’s get right to it. Josh, what’s going on?
Joshua: It’s March Madness. Got my Florida gear on. So taking on Marquette tonight. What about you? How’s your bracket looking?
David: My bracket, it’s tough to . . .can you say your bracket is a bust already? I think it was bust before it even got started.
Joshua: I think most people’s brackets got busted as soon as Lehigh beat Duke.
David: Yeah.
Joshua: I don’t remember the other 15 seed that won, but it’s been a pretty ugly March Madness this year. But like I say, go Florida. I’m hoping that they do well tonight. All right. So we’re jumping right in. Today we have a lot of topics to cover. Definitely going to run through them, but we’re definitely going to cover Friendship Charter School.
David: Yep, Friendship Charter. We’ve got Dante Pool, the Murray State star.
Joshua: The Volleyball Coach is bringing us more great advice.
David: Texas opposing multi-year scholarships.
Joshua: Then we have some more on, guess what, social media.
David: And people are making laws to help student athletes ask questions.
Joshua: And then, of course, we’re going to cover – I know I’m a Florida fan but – my alma mater, FSU.
David: Right, and one last thing, guys, instead of the Question of the Week, this week we’re giving away a special offer at the end of the show, so stay tuned and you’ll get a great opportunity.
Joshua: Sweet. All right, guys. So first things first, we want to jump into Friendship Charter School. I’m not sure if you’ve ever heard of them. They are out of Washington, D.C., and someone told me that their head coach, Abdul Rahim, has some great luck with scholarships.
David: Yeah, this is a great article. We’re going to definitely link to it in the show notes, and I wrote a blog article that explains a little bit more about it. But I think the take home message is this little charter school in Washington, D.C. is getting 19 kids off of their football team scholarships to play college football.
Joshua: It’s amazing.
David: What this coach does is just exactly what every coach and every athlete should be doing to get themselves recruited. He talks about academics. He’s talking about character. He’s talking about promoting yourself. So definitely check out the blog, check out the article. There’s just too much good stuff to cover, but we wanted to point out that article today.
Joshua: Definitely, the interesting thing with that is he’s getting 19 players with scholarships this year. Usually, only 11 per side play, which means he probably has backups that are getting scholarships.
David: He does. He’s got non-starters getting scholarships to play college football. Really, really cool. Tons of great tips. Anyways, like you said, it will be linked to in the show notes.
All right, Dante Pool, he’s a Murray State basketball star. He took kind of a bend-around path to get to Murray State and to get into the NCAA. Why don’t you explain what that is?
Joshua: So definitely, so Dante Pool is actually Murray State’s number two scorer this year. He’s having a great March Madness. We definitely wanted to talk about him for the fact that he originally signed with Colorado State University. He came up half a credit short of your NCAA eligibility, and ended up not being able to fulfill his NLI with that school because of the fact he was ineligible. He went to prep school, ended up then after prep school signing with Murray State. The interesting thing here is, kids, make sure you know what your eligibility status is. As a freshman, start looking into the core classes and follow them. Get with your guidance counselor. It would be awful to be a senior, already signing a NLI, and finding out, guess what, it’s not going to happen.
David: Yeah, and Dante was . . . kudos to him for all the hard work. He had to go to a prep school and work back his eligibility and ended up getting the opportunity at Murray State. But more times than not, those eligibility kids don’t get the opportunity.
Joshua: I definitely agree. So next up, College Volleyball Coach brought us another great article. A parent wrote in about her daughter basically being toyed around with a D-1 coach and had some confusion over the language the coach was using.
David: Yes, it’s a really great article, and I think what I like most about it was this parent was a really, really informed parent. They used some sensibility to understand and break down the coach-speak. So their daughter was kind of a fringe D-1 player and was being strung along by this D-1 program. Ultimately, the parent said she asked the question because she wanted to confirm her own suspicions. She said, “Look, I don’t think this coach is that serious about us. He’s not really giving my daughter a direct answer on where he ranks her in his recruiting class. We don’t feel comfortable with going here. Are my suspicions right? Is this just a walk-on opportunity?” And the coach does a great job of explaining yes, you are right, if coaches aren’t giving you a direct response on where they rank you in their recruiting class, they’re not that serious about having you on their team. Then he goes into some of the pitfalls about walking on that I think is really useful as well.
Joshua: Guys, keep in mind, walking on is a great opportunity, but it also can create liabilities and make you expendable. So you have to know what you’re getting into and you have to do that by asking questions.
David: Yeah. All right. So the next article is by David Ubben, and he’s got an article . . . I was actually really surprised to read this, that the University of Texas, one of the biggest athletic programs out there, opposes multi-year scholarships. So what’s that all about?
Joshua: So what’s interesting with this article is, number one, Business of College Sports just came out and they ranked all the athletic departments. Texas, in revenue, was number one, making $150 million in overall revenue last year, which is interesting to see that Texas coach, Mack Brown, with all that money that Texas has, is still opposed to multi-year scholarships. But I like his ideology. He’s opposed to it because he says, “Guess what? If I’m telling a kid that he’s getting an automatic five-year scholarship, where’s his effort? Why would he try? What’s he supposed to do to continue to use that?” Right now, at least Mack Brown can hold it over his head and say, “Guess what? If you don’t try, you don’t have a scholarship next year.” He says he needs that continuous competitive advantage there, which the multi-year scholarship now takes away.
David: Yeah, I think he’s right. And the rule, I think, itself was made like a lot of other NCAA rules, hastily to make up for a couple abuses of the privileges, but I like Mack Brown’s point. I think scholarships need to be year-to-year.
Joshua: I definitely agree. So next up, we have a joint venture by Kevin DeShazo from Fieldhouse Media, along with Ronnie Ramos from SportsJournalism.org, that are talking about perceptions of how social media might be starting to swing.
David: Yeah, so if you guys aren’t picking up on it, we talk about social media every week because social media is becoming integrated with everything about recruiting. If it’s not current student athletes, it’s prospective student athletes. It’s junior high kids on Facebook and Twitter. Both of these guys cover it that there are just some really good best practices when using social media, and they talk about the double edged sword, the term you love to use, and I think it covers social media perfectly. There are so many benefits, so many good things that it does, but there are the pitfalls of social media. People like Fieldhouse Media and Kevin, they do an excellent job of telling you the good ways and the good uses of it. Those articles are really useful for you to read them over and just get an idea of best practices.
Joshua: Definitely, guys, and like he said, a double edged sword. What he means by that is that, you know you do have people that are out there using social media for its benefit and for everything that it’s positive for. But then you do have the knuckleheads that just refuse to learn how to properly use it, and unfortunately when you bring in sometimes uneducated, immature athletes, it happens. So definitely pay attention to that article link in the notes.
David: Next one coming from Dan Fitzgerald. It talks about a new law coming down in California and what was the other state?
Joshua: Connecticut.
David: So California and Connecticut passing a law that is going to that mandate schools make student athletes aware of certain things. Essentially, it’s a law about getting student athletes to ask certain questions about their scholarship rights. What is this?
Joshua: So basically, Dan Fitzgerald is a lawyer, a sports lawyer, but he also writes for Connecticut Sports Law, which is his blog. The interesting thing to me on this is that the law passed January 1, 2012, and it basically said through – it’s called the Student Athlete Right-to-Know Act – that the athletic departments have to post and disclose information that was either previously unknown or usually unasked about scholarship opportunities. It basically says that they have to disclose all the information about scholarship renewals, how those work, exactly how they work, transfer rules, to let you know how you can and can’t transfer, as well as what is covered and not covered, including medical expenses. So as a parent or an athlete, you need to know that you have to ask these questions. Don’t just sign a scholarship offer thinking it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread. You need to go in wide awake and with your eyes wide open, knowing that there are some things that might catch up in the end. I think it’s great that they are telling people that they need to ask these questions, but I also think it’s ironic that they have to pass a law so that people know that they need to ask questions.
David: Yeah, it’ll be interesting to see how this law actually gets mandated. It’ll probably end up as a page on the back of their website saying, “Hey, you didn’t read this page. You missed out.”
Joshua: I definitely agree, and it’s interesting only two states right now have it. So we’re waiting for the rest of the states to possibly jump on board. So next up, ESPN writer Mark Schlabach, you guys have seen him all over NFL Live and all that other stuff. He wrote an article on Florida State University’s offensive line and their international presence.
David: Right. So when you read this article, you get the impression that these football programs are going out and recruiting internationally and finding these recruits all over the world, when for me, I read this article and I read between the lines. It’s nothing like that at all. What’s happening is these kids who are maybe in their ninth or tenth year abroad in Europe or somewhere else, and they happen to be huge, 6’6″, 300 pounds, typically, they get asked to come over and play at huge high schools here in the U.S. and with a couple of years experience, end up playing at the major college level. I think the story itself is interesting. But if you’re a recruit and you read it, you’re going to think “Oh, they’re recruiting international student athletes,” and it’s not really that easy. They’re recruiting really, really big student athletes who are coming here and playing high school for one or two years. It just shows that’s what it takes to play for these types of programs. They’re not coming over to Germany and finding somebody and putting them on the line at FSU.
Joshua: Definitely. As a matter of fact, and the two that we’re talking about, Florida State right now has three international athletes. Their defensive end is from Germany, and they have two offensive tackles. One’s from, now, Switzerland, and then England. The guy from England is 6’6″, 350 pounds, and he actually used to play D-1 basketball at another school. So it’s just interesting to see where that size goes into.
David: All right, guys, so something different. Typically at this point, we talk about the Question of the Week. We wanted to let some of our viewers who might not know that we get a lot of great questions from users on our College Coaches Database. This database lets you search for schools, say your favorites, and get the contact information for coaches.
Joshua: It’s a great tool.
David: Yeah. A lot of these kids are moving forward in the recruiting process, and so what we want to do is make sure that you guys take the time and subscribe and get this link and the opportunity . . .
Joshua: The link is here.
David: . . . to join this College Coaches Database. It’s completely free. It’s free because of our relationship with our sponsors, and we want more people using this tool to get in recruiting.
Joshua: Definitely, guys. Definitely ask us questions. Once you get on the database, you’re going to notice that you have access to every college coach in the country, and you’re going to want to know how to get a hold of them. Well, don’t just start blasting out emails. Consult us. Ask us how you should be approaching this. Let us hook you up with resume templates and some ideas to help you really get a great start to your recruiting.
David: Right on. Okay. So what are you doing this weekend?
Joshua: I am packing. Guys, you guys don’t know this yet, but we are actually moving offices from Monterey, California to San Francisco, up about two hours. We’re excited, so we get the fun of packing all of our items and making a big more.
David: Yeah, we talked about a lot of cool things on the weekend – golf tournaments, skydiving. It’s boring this weekend. We’re packing.
Joshua: Guys, thanks so much for tuning in. Again, subscribe to the database please. Also, if you want to check out, all the episodes are on YouTube. Subscribe to that as well. @JZimmy67, @Athnet, @DavidRFrank, have a great one.
David: Thanks, guys.