I have been researching this topic for over 3 years and the one thing I have concluded is that there is no right answer, but I will tell you what I have come across and given your situation, you can make your own decision.
First there are really 3 types of recruiting services.
(1) Online services that promote student-athletes via the Internet with a profile (like a resume) to college coaches that can access the site.
(2) Marketing services that send out vast quantities of mail and email to many, many colleges hoping a few colleges take interest in a particular athlete
(3) The third type of service is kind of a hybrid service that combines marketing assistance and consultation. Many of the bigger companies that charge more money provide you more mailings and less assistance, and they don’t have the time or desire to really work one on one with a family. In this case, there are some smaller recruiting services that work with less clients and try to educate families on the process and assist with marketing rather than blanketing the country with emails and letters to every college coach in America and I have spoken to some recruiting services that will mail your information to USC if you are a 160 pound defensive end in high school.
Ok, so lets talk about the 3 services in depth.
(1) Online services seemed like a really good idea when they were conceived and took off when the Internet got cooking. Unfortunately the demand is totally driven by the people who run these services, rather than the college coaches. Type in recruiting services into any search engine and you will get a dizzying array of online services that claim to be the best. In reality, college coaches are not going online to search for athletes. I found websites that listed schools that used their service then contacted coaches at those schools and they said they didn’t use them. In the past 2 years I have probably asked 50 coaches about online services and never once has any coach told me they use an online service to search for athletes. In most cases coaches have a good idea who they would like to recruit and they would be hard pressed to sit down at a computer for 2 hours and look for athletes whom they have never heard of and never seen play, who simply posted a resume about themselves hoping any coach recruits them. The second problem is that statistics do not really get you recruited, but talent, athletic skill and desire. These 3 traits are nearly impossible to display on an online resume and most statistics are very intangible. It has gotten so bad that last fall Dateline did a big story on an online recruiting service who was blatantly lying about the schools and coaches that used their service. Turns out that their system was generating false inquiries and that the majority of the schools listed on the site had never even heard of the site. The other problem is that there are hundreds of these services throughout the country and college coaches simply cannot use them all or even decide which one to use. They have so many letters, phone calls and recruits that they already have to deal with that it simply isn’t a useful way to recruit.
(2) There are some marketing services that charge anywhere from $1,000 to $2,500 to create and mail out packages to many schools. Last year I read an article on a swimmer who got a partial scholarship to Penn. State after a $2,500 package arrived on the coaches desk. When asked about the recruiting service and the swimmer, the coach responded like “The kid’s an academic achiever with a great personality and athletic potential, the way it was conveyed to me couldn’t have mattered less.” Basically what the coach said was that he didn’t need the fancy package that costs a lot of money, he simply needed to know the grades and swim times of this swimmer, her desire to compete and then he simply could have made a decision as to whether she was qualified to swim at Penn state and qualified to be accepted at Penn state. His next step would have been to inviter her for a visit. This could have been accomplished possibly in one long distance phone call or simply filling out a recruit info form on the teams website.
Coaches care less about how this information arrives, as he articulates, and more about what your information contains. If you do not have the size, skill or desire to compete in college, you can spend a million dollars and send all the packages you want, and the result will be nothing at all!
Coaches don’t recruit student-athletes that are not capable of getting accepted at their school academically or capable of performing at their school athletically and they don’t recruit players because they received a PR package in the mail with all sorts of stuff. It was her skill that got her recruited and you cannot buy skill. In reality, all you often need to do is take a proactive role in your recruiting process and start writing letters and making phone calls to college coaches.
In many cases, the coaches I spoke to said they received sometimes 20 packages a week like this and many went unopened. Part of the problem is the distrust over services like this and many coaches do not like parents investing money in promotion and do not like recruiting companies trying to do the job they were hired to do which is recruit (especially at the high D1 level). One NCAA liaison at a D1 school said they get a big packet of athlete resumes from companies and she thinks it’s humorous that the company expects coaches to pass this around, which they don’t. These services will often take anyone with a checkbook or credit card too.
(3) Consultants – I have spoken to several recruiting consultants and while I don’t always agree with parents spending a lot of money on recruiting assistance and promotion, I recognize the valuable role these people can play. The college recruiting process is a difficult thing to tackle and unless you have gone through it once already with another child, it is a completely foreign process. Many families simply do not know how to rate their talent, how to evaluate schools, or how to contact coaches. I don’t buy the “we don’t have time to research colleges so we hired a service.” When someone tells me they don’t have time to research schools, what they are telling me is that they don’t care what school they go to as long as they can play sports. These people don’t always get very far in life and what college you attend is an extremely important decision that requires your complete attention. Consultants can provide that extra assistance you need and while they cannot always help you select the right school, they can ask the right questions that help you target schools that are a good fit with your athletic and academic skill and college desires (major, size, distance and so forth). There are thousands of kids who think they can play high level college ball and don’t because they didn’t target the right schools and didn’t do a unbiased evaluation of their skills. There are also many high school coaches who don’t know the recruiting process from the back of their elbow and kids need help. While you probably won’t get a scholarship by using a recruiting service or that much money, you may find a good program to play at and finding a school you enjoy being at for 4 years is in itself a very valuable thing when you think about all the students that transfer or drop out of college because they were unhappy. Most of these services will prep you for contacting coaches on your own and will not be sending out mass marketing packages to schools, so your message will hopefully be a little more personal and have a better chance at being looked at.
Why these companies thrive still?
Despite the negative aspects of many recruiting services, we live in a frenzied world of camps, showcases, travel teams, private instruction, specialization and rising tuition costs. After parents invest thousands of dollars in all these things, they want some sort of return on their “investment” via an athletic scholarship. Since so little practical information exists on the college recruiting process, they often turn to these services to give themselves the best chance for a scholarship. In reality, only 50% of NCAA athletes receive some athletic scholarship money and some can be a few hundred dollars. The rest play for the love of the game.
Having gone through the process myself, I tell people that it is possible to it on your own, provided you have a basic understanding of the recruiting process and what is required of you. Unfortunately most people do not have even a basic understanding of what they need to do. In many cases, the only people telling them what to do are recruiting services who want a $1,000 from them. So depending on who you are and what you want, there can be no right answer for using a service, especially if it helps you get into a college program that you enjoy. I will never recommend the first 2 services I have outlined above as there is too much negativity towards those services from college coaches. They don’t like them and they don’t recommend them. I would recommend a consultant if you are totally lost and need help, but you have to have the grades and skill to get in and play in college.
You might consider a consultant if………….
- If you can afford it.
- If you live in an area where there is very little exposure to college coaches.
- If someone else has determined whether or not you can already play at the college level and that someone is qualified to make that determination.
- If your high school coach is willing and able to endorse you for the college level and you have spoken to him before you give any money to a recruiting service.
- If your parents have little knowledge of the college recruiting process
- If it comes with personal consultation and guidance and you can pick up the phone any time and receive as much assistance as you need at any time.
- The service doesn't send out mass marketing packages to colleges. These get thrown out faster than they are sent. Also ask how information is sent, by you, by email, in a bulk package that promotes hundreds of athletes at the same time?
- If the service works with a select number of student-athletes each year.
- If you are afraid to pick up the phone and call coaches on your own. If you can’t do this, you are in trouble.
- If you think they can help you with something that you cannot do on your own.
- If your high school coach can't tell the difference between Michael Jordan and Michael Jackson when it comes to athletic skill.
- If you cannot afford travel teams or athletic showcases.
- I'm not a fan of franchises, but if you find a franchise recruiting service, ask the other questions that relate above.
Dave Galehouse
Director –
http://www.varsityedge.com
