Choosing your college
A guide for college football recruits and why it doesn’t exist
There are many ideas that excite me conceptually but don’t drive me to do anything to actually execute. Here’s one.
The world of college football is in shambles. A season totally fractured by the pandemic, with some conferences postponing the season while others forge ahead. A sport that is big business hiding behind a façade of amateurism while players demand a fair share of the pie. And then there are the health issues regarding concussions, CTE, and the ability to play this sport in a safe manner.
But let’s forget all that for a moment and look at college football recruiting. The best high school football players in the country are recruited before they even get to high school. Coaches fly around the country and try and convince young kids and their families to come to their college. There are boosters, under-the-table offers, and all sorts of sketchy dealings. There are recruiting ranking websites, highly produced highlight films, and more information than you can ever imagine on the top recruits.
Why is this?
In one of the least surprising findings, turns out the better the recruits your school gets, the more wins your team has. Shocker.
So while all this time and money goes into evaluating and recruiting the best high school football players, who looks out for them? I’m not talking about them getting paid to play college football – that’s a separate discussion. I’m talking about who is helping them choose the best school for them. Just like on the player side, there is a ton of information about college football programs. Their wins and losses. Their graduation rates. Their statistics. The earnings from graduates of the program. The number of draft picks.
The big difference?
While the data exists, there is no centralized place for recruits to get an unbiased view of these statistics. To compare schools on the data like coaches get to do for the players. The players and their families hear sales pitches from interested coaches and are left to themselves to try to figure out fact from fiction and make the best choice for their family. And for many families, it’s the most important choice they’ll ever make. It’s the difference between a professional career or ending up at a community college. It’s the difference between a degree and a middle-class job and a career coaching high school football.
My idea is simple: a college football website for top recruits. Here is some very basic information that could be enormously useful to a recruit, all of which is publicly available and just needs to be organized in one place:
Quality of education – to assess the quality of education you will be offered
Graduation rates for football players
Number of Academic Honor Roll student-athletes for football players
Median earnings after 10 years for graduates of the university
Quality of football program – to assess the quality of the football you will be playing
End of year ranking for the last three years
Recruiting national ranking for the last three years
Wins and losses
Coach’s tenure – age and how long has he been with the program
Prospects for recruit’s position – to assess your prospects for playing time within the program
Depth chart at recruit’s position (how many people at your position, what year)
Statistics for those at recruit’s position (playing time, performance)
Measurements for those at recruit’s position (height, weight, recruiting ranking)
Number of redshirts / grayshirts for last three years
Position coach’s tenure – age and how long has he been with the program
Prospects for NFL career – to assess your prospects of going to NFL after selecting this college
Overall number of NFL draft picks the last three years
Overall number of current NFL players from this college
At recruit’s position, number of NFL draft picks the last three years
At recruit’s position, number of current NFL players from this college
Intangibles
Weather during football season
Annual football program budget
Party school rankings
Stadium size
Again, this data exists and is available either at the university’s website or on some other public portal. But no recruit can reasonably expect to sift through dozens of websites and do an apples-to-apples comparison. It’s always shocking to see recruits select programs that are not the best fit for them and end up transferring or languishing. Think of kids selecting their college from an academic point of view. It may not be perfect, but there are several websites that provide detailed information on admission standards, costs, outcomes, and graduation rates to help kids and families make more informed decisions.
Why doesn’t this exist for recruits? Like in all things in America, money talks. And recruits and their families don’t have the money. This would be a website that would cater to ~4,000 families (the top 1,000 players of each high school class year), most of whom don’t have much of an ability to pay. So, it’s a niche service targeted at a poorer demographic, not exactly a recipe for success.
Still, would the world be a better place with this in it? Undoubtedly, but don’t hold your breath. In the meantime, at least there’s momentum behind players’ effort to get paid for their participation.