(Yesterday we had Part 1 of this recruiting article where we addressed a couple of pertinent question about the business.  This Part 2 continues that and we’ll have Part 3 on Thursday to wrap up…)

3.  Is it only the players who have to be convinced to go to a certain school?

The answer to this is a resounding no!  Every Pitt player’s family, mostly parents, I have talked to said that the coaching staffs probably spent as much time selling their school to the family and recruit’s HS coach as they did with the recruits themselves.

After all that is why they do “in-home” visits.  On those trips the staff doesn’t necessarily need or want to talk to the recruit so much as have the family hear them talking to the recruit.  A good recruiter will have already had many, many conversations with the player before an at-home visit. Walking into the home itself is when showtime begins.

Here is an interesting website that covers recruiting from a family point of view.  Covering in-home visits the author, a past college football staff coach says this:

The home visit should be important to you and your family in the evaluation process.  It may be the first (and one of the few) times that your family (parents, guardians, etc) will have individual, personal, unlimited access to the coach.  It gives you and your family another time to ask very specific questions to the coaches regarding you, your athletic and academic career, and how their college could fit with you.  Now is the time to ask the “difficult” questions:

What happens if I get injured?

What are the time requirements of the football program?

What kind of academic help is available?

What is the graduation rate of the football student-athletes?

How good is the degree program in my field of interest?

What is the placement rate in my field of study post-graduation?

How good is the student support of the football program?

What type of offer, and when can I expect the offer to me made?

How quick will you want a commitment?

How many other athletes are you recruiting at my position?

What is your redshirt policy?

Is it possible to increase the scholarship amount while in your program?

Will I be able to keep my Pell Grant? (if you qualify for the grant)

Are you planning on staying at the college during my son’s entire career?

If the coach (or coaches) do not seem clear or straight forward in answering any of your questions… if they seem like they are dodging… that should throw up a red flag. 

I talked to one parent who said he and his son decided on attending Pitt instead of a different, ‘bigger”, program because when that school’s recruiter sat in their living room he talked for 30 minutes without mentioning academics once.

Bad move all around coach – in-home is where to talk to the parents and grandparents about the player’s future – in college, the NFL and in life itself.

One WPIAL HS coach told me that he could tell an insincere college staff coach a mile away because he couldn’t pronounce some of the Black players’ first names correctly – like they were too busy to get that one most important fact down.

Another college player’s mother told me that her son signed with a school (not Pitt) because, among other things, the recruiter asked her son what his mother’s favorite food was, then asked his wife to make that dish took it to the at-home visit.

On the flip side ESPN did a good piece on what a school’s coaching staff needs to do to make in-home visits successful.  One point to note is that staff coaches can visit a recruit’s home numerous times but a HC can make only one – that’s why the best HC are successful closers.

The best college recruiters use the home visit as an opportunity to set his institution and himself above the rest. It is also a chance to strengthen the relationship between the family and the college or university the young man may attend in the near future.

Be prepared

The good college recruiter goes into the home visit with his proverbial gun loaded. Through previous conversations between the coach and recruit, specific clues should have been picked up by the coach. If the college recruiter has been unassuming and a good listener throughout the recruiting process, he should know what concerns the player and his family might have about the specific institution and college football in general.

The good college recruiting coach must anticipate what questions will be asked of him once he enters the home. He should bring information and materials with him that might be of importance during the conversation, including information on graduation rates, academic support systems, depth charts, strength and conditioning programs and the community the college is located.

It’s truly the small stuff you have to sweat when trying to convince 17-18 year olds and their families to spend four years at your school.

4.  Who are the people the schools have to deal with on the recruiting trail?

Recruiting is much more of a business than it was years ago – I think that is pretty obvious.  I’m not sure that works out better or worse for the actual athletes, after all there has been scholarship limits in place for decades so there are a finite number of recruits each season.

But the work of recruiting by the school isn’t made any easier with the introduction of 4^th and sometimes 5^th parties involved these days.

By that I mean recruiting always had these people involved; 1) the player himself, 2) his  family, 3) the HS coach (for the most part) but now there are 4) a player’s ‘Mentor’ and even 5) ‘Interested Parties’ which can be friends (using that term loosely) or chosen representatives.

As long as there are no contracts signed, no money or financial considerations changing hands and, perhaps most importantly, that party isn’t a Booster or even a season ticket holder of the school pursuing the kid then they can be involved.

Note: About that last point – something I have seen way too often is Pitt fans reaching out on social media to prospective recruits and trying to convince them to go to Pitt.  If you want to do that then go ahead, but you can’t have donated any money to the University in any way or be a sports team season ticket holder (even BB, baseball, etc…)

If you have done those things, donated or hold season tickets, you are considered a ‘Booster’ and contact with recruits is strictly against NCAA rules and could be held against Pitt as a violation.

Again from the Athlon article;

There is a growing concern among college football coaches that their sport’s recruiting is becoming more and more akin to college basketball, where AAU coaches and self-serving family friends with the self-applied label of “mentor” suddenly find themselves with influence over a college recruit’s decision. 

There’s no AAU football, but there are traveling 7-on-7 tournament teams. And it’s those organizers and outside influences that concern coaches like Memphis’ Justin Fuente. 

Fuente encourages and expects parents and high school coaches to be involved in the recruiting process. As a man who spent several years in Texas, where high school football is part sport, part religion, Fuente is used to high school coaches having a say. He’s not, however, a fan of the grey area that handlers and mentors sometimes represent and exploit.  “It’s part of our charge as coaches to keep it within the family and high school coaches in football recruiting,” Fuente says. 

 “Are we going the direction of AAU with these handlers?” Nittany Lions assistant coach Bob Shoop says. “It’s just another piece and another angle. It’s become challenging.”

Let’s hope not – college basketball is about as corrupt as it gets.  I had more than one conversation with Sonny Vaccaro when I was a kid where I had to jump in a hot shower directly afterward. (I was a pretty good BB player then.)

5.  When is “your” recruit no longer a “prospective” recruit?

This question is perhaps the most important issue in college recruiting today.  In the olden days, and this will sound corny unfortunately, a verbal agreement between two parties meant something – that a deal was made and would be honored, usually with a handshake.

Call me old-fashioned but when I say I am going to do something I try my best to do so.  I actually believe that given the choice most young men will try to do the same thing.

However, recruiting real-life rears its ugly head here and we see some of the adults in the game are hell-bent on making that recruit go back on his word.

While we haven’t gotten to the point of these kids offering their services to the highest bidder, at least not out in public, (hidden back room deals we know exist in some places), a ‘verbal commitment” is worth the paper it’s printed on… which is non-existent.

Both recruits and colleges shop themselves around until the morning of the day a recruit signs a Letter of Intent to accept an athletic scholarship to that school.  All along the way other competing schools are negatively recruiting and, hard to believe but true, make up negative stories and rumors about their rival’s programs.

LOI Day is always in the first week of February and college staffs take nothing for granted until that fax – or now an emailed signed .pdf form – gets into their hands.  Nor should they let their guard down because all’s fair in love and recruiting until the iron door closes.

Pitt has experienced this first hand both ways of late.  QBs Alex Hornibrook and Wade Freebeck – both highly rated 4* players – chose to go elsewhere when presented with better offers years ago. Sad!

Then again, we just stole a Temple recruit in QB Kenny Pickett, who had ‘committed’ to Temple and now is destined (maybe, who knows?) to play for us.  Happy! 

From another article about this switching to and from.  From :

While most college basketball programs abide by the unwritten rules of recruiting, including backing off once a player commits elsewhere, college football coaches usually intensify their efforts when a target is “off the market.” With more and more top players committing to multiple schools during the recruiting process, it’s easy to understand why coaches don’t give up.

The majority of college football coaches will continue recruiting a player after he commits elsewhere, but each coach apparently draws a line of when to cut off contact.

“We will meet as a staff when someone commits and we’ll say ‘Give him a week or two after he commits to a school to let all the hype and craziness settle down,’ and then call them,” says Mississippi State head coach Dan Mullen. “If they don’t want us to recruit them anymore, then we won’t.

“Do we recruit guys committed elsewhere? Yes. But not guys who don’t want to be at our school. I don’t want a guy who doesn’t want to be here, or be here for the wrong reasons.”

Mullen and his staff have successfully flipped committed recruits from other schools; they’ve also seen Mississippi State commits flip to other programs.

Mullen’s approach is a popular one among coaches. Recruits can make emotional decisions during visits whether it’s the high of a great visit or pressure from a coach to make a decision before leaving campus. It’s not uncommon for these 16 and 17-year old young men to question their decision not long after making it. The contact itself from other schools can put doubt into a recruit’s head.

I’ll be honest here – I have to laugh my ass off when I read Pitt fans saying that our staff should pull a recruit’s offer if he takes visits to other schools.  First off, Pitt is in no way, shape or form a good enough or big enough program to cut loose kids who we actually want and need to have play for us.  Sorry, we just aren’t at this point, and may not be for some time.

Second, the recruit doesn’t go into indentured servitude just because he says “Hey, your school looks cool – think I’ll go there”. That laissez farie decision making by the recruit happens more than you think and with it comes an attitude that he can always change his mind later, which of course he can.

Look – if a school wants that player strongly enough they will let him do whatever it takes to get that signature on the dotted line in February.  If that means indulging his visits to other schools – as Narduzzi is doing now – then so be it.

We saw this happen with TE Mike Cruz when he decommitted from Wannstedt’s program and started looking around while pretty much insulting Pitt when he did it.  Then voila’! and Dave Wannstedt welcomes him back with open arms.  Why would Wanny do that you ask?  Because we needed a TE, that’s why silly.

Now – if they are a 3* star recruits doing this then they have to realize it’s a roll of the dice.  Not to say all 3* recruits are a dime a dozen… but in truth mostly they are.

Sometimes the reverse happens and the schools pulls the rug out from under the recruit.  This happened to class of 2017 RB Todd Sibley at the hands of his beloved Ohio State University:

OSU accepted Sibley’s verbal then they purposely recruit over him without letting him know – which means they got a kid at the same position they consider a better player. Then they asked the kid to take a greyshirt (no scholarship until January of the following year after the season is over) when a scholarship will open up for him… because OSU has a ton of players who quit going to school the second the last game’s whistle blows.

Plus Ohio State is actively recruiting other running backs in addition to Sibley, who has been committed to the Buckeyes since April 2015. If Sibley were to grayshirt, he wouldn’t count against Ohio State’s scholarship number in 2017, but he also would have to take a year off from football.

That’s not Sibley’s plan.

“It was a bit of a surprise,” Sibley said. “I’ve been committed for over a year now, so it hit me as a surprise. Everything happens for a reason, so I just kinda took it and did what I could.”

Ohio State is hardly the first college program to ask a recruit to grayshirt. It happens often, and all over the place. But that doesn’t mean Sibley or any other player in this situation has to comply with the request.

So Sibley in some ways is back at the beginning, still committed to Ohio State but looking for other options if grayshirting is truly the only way he can play in Columbus.

Michigan State is on that list, as are Penn State, Indiana, Pitt, Missouri and Virginia — in no particular order.