If you have been a faithful reader of this site, you may be getting sick of me talking about the importance of the spring evaluation period for football recruits. It finally gives those junior athletes a chance to get a real feel for the amount of recruiting attention you are getting. And unless you had scholarship offers before the spring, it is a difficult challenge to really tell.
So with this period about to end, coaches won’t be able to call prospective athletes again until September. If you are a football player who received two calls from your top five schools, what exactly should you be thinking about these other three schools? Is it worth still pursuing them and going to their camps? Before making any final decisions, let me stress that you should wait until the complete end of the month to make 100% sure these programs won’t be calling.
I have broken down previously the levels of interest from college coaches and mentioned that the phone calls ranks right below official visit, verbal offer, and written scholarship. Right before that, there is Junior Day invite, hand written letters, school visits, emails, form letters, questionnaires, and the dreaded camp invite. In looking at that list, there is a huge jump from the first areas that I talked about to the second areas.
College coaches can easily go through the motions with 500 recruits who they write hand written letters to (that is what GAs are for), invite to Junior Days, and quickly respond to emails. It is spending the ten to fifteen minutes on a phone call that show they are truly interested in you as a player and a prospect.
Going back to the original question, no, just because you didn’t get a call doesn’t mean there is a 100% chance that this school will not offering you a scholarship. But if you are on their radar where they have sent letters and invited you to Junior Days, that is when you should worry. It shows that you are not a high enough priority on their recruiting database to call. That is when it may be time for you to start thinking that the ship has sailed for this certain program.
Obviously you could walk-on to that school or attend a Junior College for two years, improve, and eventually earn a scholarship. If you have sent your highlight film and done a good job marketing yourself to them, then I would honestly move on. I don’t care if it is your dream school. The recruiting process is a business and State University is not in the business of taking players on scholarship that are not good enough. And unfortunately, as hard as it is to swallow, you may not be good enough.
So on June 1st or whenever you get time shortly thereafter, take an opportunity to reevaluate your recruiting logs of what schools have been showing you attention (you have been tracking it, right?). Figure out which ones have called, stopped by the high school, and are showing you a great deal of interest. Could some of these eventually offer? Were the calls something that you got a good feeling about? If you are happy with the schools recruiting you at this point, then continue preparing for the upcoming camps and your senior year. It would be nice to get your ducks in a row for your senior highlight video so keep that in mind as well.
If you are disappointed by the lack of calls and visits to the high school, you need to take control of the process and open things up a little bit. Go back through The Five Steps to a Scholarship Offer. First off, update your recruiting profile both in the file and anywhere online. Then have a few people take a look at it and critique it. This should help you so don’t get mad about feedback.
Your next step is the most important. You need to widen your school search. If you were only focused on I-A (BCS) schools, then widen it to I-AA and II schools. Look in areas that may be a bit further away from home. There is no surefire way to find the perfect school. That is why you need to put more time and effort in, especially right now, to figure out some programs that could be good fits.
I can imagine it sucks not getting calls from the schools that you wanted to hear from. When I was in high school, I received very little calls and had no idea what the spring evaluation period was. But all is not lost. Your dream school may not be a realistic option for a scholarship so widen your recruiting base and start marketing yourself again. There is no reason to get down because you still have EIGHT months until Signing day. Things could be much worse.
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