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S2 Ep6 Jeff Howell Navigating the College Recruitment Process
87 Plays1 year ago
In this episode, we discuss the college recruitment process for student-athletes, including the different divisions of collegiate sports, the skills and experience that can be translated to different sports, the importance of social media presence, creating highlight reels, evaluating college athletic programs, and the importance of good grades and financial considerations. We will also learn about resources and support available for navigating the recruitment process.
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Dial It In Podcast is where we gathered our favorite people together to share their advice on how to drive revenue, through storytelling and without the boring sales jargon. Our primary focus is marketing and sales for manufacturing and B2B service businesses, but we’ll cover topics across the entire spectrum of business. This isn’t a deep, naval-gazing show… we like to have lively chats that are fun, and full of useful insights. Brought to you by BizzyWeb.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Dial It In' Podcast
00:00:05
Speaker
Welcome to Dial It In, a podcast where we talk with interesting people about the process improvements and tricks they use to grow their businesses. I'm Dave Meyer, president of BusyWeb, and every week, Trigby Olsen and I are bringing you interviews on how the best in their fields are dialing it in for their organizations.
A Light-hearted Christmas Song Discussion
00:00:24
Speaker
Dave, do you know who Andy Williams is?
00:00:27
Speaker
Like the old country singer? No. Yeah. But he, uh, he, uh, his most famous song is a Christmas song. That it's, it's the most wonderful time of the year. Oh yeah. Yeah. And as we're recording this, it's, it's September. The leaves are sawing. So the earth wind is going to start to fall here in Minnesota.
Family Dynamics in September
00:00:50
Speaker
The earth wind and fire jokes are right around the corner as we look 21st of September. And for me,
00:00:57
Speaker
it's the most wonderful time of the year because my my wife who's an educator and my son whose line are finally getting out of the house and getting away from me so
00:01:08
Speaker
I know that you are on the other side of the spectrum and that one of your kids is about to head to college and who's also a tremendous athlete. And so she's hoping to play collegiate sports.
Introduction of Jeff Howell and His Expertise
00:01:26
Speaker
So as my gift to you, as your benevolent podcast co-host, I found you helped in order to do that. So hot dog.
00:01:34
Speaker
Our guest today is Jeff Howell. Jeff is a couple of chapters ahead of you in the class where he had a kid who was recruited to play college sports and Jeff is a burgeoning expert in the experience and has since created a curriculum and a class that he sells on how to help parents navigate through the college recruitment process. So welcome Jeff.
00:02:01
Speaker
Hey, thanks guys. And it is nice to see both of you again. We were just talking beforehand that Dave and I have a history from way back when I lived in Minnesota and had my own web development business back in the early aughts. So Dave and I have been connected through that for many years. And so it's always good to see Dave again. Congratulations on having a senior. What school does she go to?
00:02:31
Speaker
Well, right now she's in Champlin Park High School in Minnesota. That makes sense. She's also looking to go to a Wisconsin school because she has a very particular set of, not necessarily skills like Liam Neeson, but a particular set of goals where she wants to be an interior designer and do sports coaching, so volleyball coaching.
00:02:58
Speaker
So she's going to play volleyball in Wisconsin. That would make it a D3 program because there are no D2 programs in Wisconsin. The only one is obviously UW-Madison.
00:03:13
Speaker
It looks like you've got a good, good selection of program. Let's break that down a little bit farther.
Understanding NCAA Divisions and Other Organizations
00:03:21
Speaker
So the point of our discussion today is hopefully to help not only promote your class, Jeff, but also helps help help parents. So what's the difference between a division one, a division two and a division three school?
00:03:35
Speaker
Yeah. Awesome. Great question. So the colleges and universities are broken up into, from the athletic side, there are really three different organizations that operate the athletic departments. So you've got the NCAA, which is, you know, everybody knows.
00:03:58
Speaker
You've got what are called the NAIA, which is another athletic organization that oversees university athletics. And unfortunately, and sadly overlooked, the NAIA level of competition actually is quite good. And then you've got JUCO, Junior College.
00:04:18
Speaker
Between those three, almost every collegiate sport falls under each one of those three banners. Now, there are some outliers, there are some NCCAA, which runs some of the Christian universities, there are some other independent
00:04:41
Speaker
athletic groups. Notre Dame is one of the most famous ones that maintain their own identity in most of the time. But although they play football in the NCAA basketball, they're playing. They used to play the Big East now. I think they're in the ACC. ACC, yeah. Everybody's in the ACC. Stanford's in the Atlantic Coast Conference now.
00:05:03
Speaker
That's true. Yeah, actually there's three of them. There are Stanford, SMU and Dallas is now part of the Atlantic coast conference for the ACC. Yeah. Well, cause the PAC 12 just dissolved more or less. All right. So the, so when you've got the NCAA, you've got, you've got
Exploring D1, D2, and D3 Programs
00:05:20
Speaker
three different divisions. You've got D one D two and D three. Now a D one are going to be your main.
00:05:26
Speaker
The schools that you've heard of the most obviously, you know, University of Minnesota, Wisconsin, all the big 10 teams, ACC, SEC, PAC 10, Big East, Ivy League. So you've got all of these universities that you're familiar with. There's about 160 some odd.
00:05:46
Speaker
D1 programs. Now the D1 programs are broken up a bit further. You've got your FBS, which is a football bowl series, and then the FCS, which are what used to be the old D1A. So schools like NDSU would be an old D1A program, and they are in the FCS, which means they have their own playoff system. So the D1 is kind of split up, kind of down the middle.
00:06:14
Speaker
about 80 or 90 schools in FBS, where they play for bowl games. And then you've got the other one that has the more traditional playoff system. And then D2 are going to be schools. I guess in Michigan, you would look at Grand Valley, Ferris State, Saginaw Valley, Northwood. They're in the GLIAC division, which is the Great Lakes division. In Minnesota, you've got like Southwest Minnesota State would be a D2 program. UM Duluth, D2 program.
00:06:44
Speaker
So those are ones that are still very highly competitive. They're just sort of at a different level. They have their own playoff system. It kind of varies, but depending on the sport. Some colleges have D2 programs like Minnesota State, you mentioned. They have an incredible hockey team. So that's a Division I hockey team, but the school itself is not a Division I.
00:07:04
Speaker
That's correct. Yeah. I was just going to get into that with, with the different sports that, that also depends on, you know, what's, what, uh, what sport they play. So like, like St. Cloud state, for instance, would still be a D two, but their hockey program plays at a, at a higher level. And then you've got D three programs, which there's, there's a ton of those. Typically those are smaller private educate private, uh, schools. So good example would be like Concordia.
00:07:34
Speaker
Well, actually Concordia in St. Paul is an NAI school. What would be a couple of D3 programs? Augsburg? Yeah, most of the private schools in the cities are, so like Augsburg, McAllister, Hamlet.
00:07:51
Speaker
But I know that, well, St. Thomas, the big thing used to be Thomas was doing too well. And so the rest of the schools in that conference kicked them out and they went all the way up to D1. They went to D1. Yeah, they're in the pioneer league. In fact, Joe was, my son was recruited by St. Thomas. One of my good friends is actually best friends with Coach Glenn and we kind of made a connection that way. And it just didn't work out. Joe didn't want to go to St. Thomas, which I don't just find.
00:08:20
Speaker
So he ended up at a D3 program in Chicago.
Scholarship Differences Across Divisions
00:08:24
Speaker
One of the major differences between the different division levels, D1, D2, and D3, outside of competition and exposure is the ability to provide athletic scholarships. So obviously D1 programs
00:08:41
Speaker
can provide a full ride to any athlete that they want. D2 schools are typically limited to about 40 to 50% of the tuition as an athletic scholarship. And then the rest can be either made up through typical student loans, but also they can also provide academic scholarships to help fill the gaps. D3 programs are not able to provide
00:09:10
Speaker
scholarships, they are only able to provide academic scholarships, which this is how Joe is playing for Lake Forest as he's on an academic scholarship. NAIA schools are usually able to provide athletic scholarships, not always full rides, but that has been known to happen. And then JUCO, the kind of
00:09:37
Speaker
There's really no money there. We can do another two hours in the JUCO process. That's a whole, that's a whole different ballgame. And so obviously my experience is in college football, right? But what I found is that a lot of the, which I'm sure we'll get into a lot of the skills and experience that we acquired through this process of getting Joe to Lake Forest, a lot of those,
00:10:07
Speaker
things can be translated to other sports, right? With maybe the exception of baseball.
00:10:15
Speaker
just because you're dealing with just not only the school, but you have Major League Baseball sort of in that process too, because a lot of MLB... Major League Baseball has a considerable feeder system.
Navigating the Recruitment Process
00:10:31
Speaker
Right, right. And so they don't always... If you've got a kid who is really good, they may forego.
00:10:38
Speaker
going to college and they may go straight to, you know, like a straight to minors to go play. So got it. Okay. So there are some standards in each recruitment process, but depending upon the school, depending upon the kid, it all varies. Yeah, it does. So what,
00:11:02
Speaker
How can a parent, when they're meeting somebody for the first time, what do they need to do to sort of prep the kids? Like, do you need to make your own highlight reel? Yeah, so here's kind of how the process, and I'll start from the beginning on this, because there are many, many, many things that happen, and that should happen prior to even getting in front of a coach. So the very first thing that you want to do, now,
00:11:29
Speaker
I'll preface this by saying that there are opportunities for a parent and a student athlete to utilize a service to go after and work this process for them. Places like NCSA or other independent individuals who are
00:11:49
Speaker
offering a service to navigate this process for them, to make the connections with the coach, to do the highlight reel sharing, to kind of do the process, right? There are services that do that. I take a different approach, and I empower the student athlete and the parent to navigate this process on their own.
00:12:11
Speaker
Now that isn't to say that I won't help guide. So I've got three different options to help parents out. I've got the online course that's sort of self paced that they can purchase and kind of navigate that course on themselves. They go into the site, they purchase the course, it's a two hour video and they can stop and start. They can go back to it anytime and sort of work through the process.
00:12:37
Speaker
on their own at a self-paced. I've got an in-person seminar that I offer to schools and other organizations where I come in and I do a few hour seminar where then the parents can ask questions or they can then go to the site and get the self-paced course themselves. Then I've got another option where I actually will help and assist a parent and their student athlete go through the process. I won't do it for them, but I'll help guide them. They'd want that extra
00:13:07
Speaker
handholding from me, I'll go through and I'll help them out and kind of go through the process with them just to help guide them. So the first thing you want to do is once you kind of realize and feel that, you know what,
00:13:22
Speaker
my student athlete or the student athlete feels, hey, I'm good enough to go play at post post high school. I've got the skill set, something I want to do. Doesn't matter exactly which level I play, what, what competition I play for, but I want to play sports post high school. And so once that decision is made, then it sort of goes to, well, where do I want to play? What, what, what programs are out there? What schools offer both the
00:13:52
Speaker
academics that I'm looking for, but also the opportunity to play.
00:13:57
Speaker
and there are a variety of factors. A lot of them personal. It could be the location, could be how well that school is academically. You could get down to looking at the records of whatever sports program you want to play for and if they suck, let's be honest, you may not want to go there. You may look at it and say, that isn't
Social Media's Role in Recruitment
00:14:21
Speaker
for me. But once you've identified a few schools, the first thing you want to do,
00:14:26
Speaker
is you go to that school's athletic website and you fill out the recruitment questionnaires. You go to whatever page. A lot of times they're going to be on that main page when they're starting to push recruiting. But more often than not, you've got to go to the actual individual sport, football, basketball, baseball, volleyball, fencing. And
00:14:50
Speaker
fill out a recruitment questionnaire and that will get your student athlete's name on their list. Most colleges will have a service that they use that will allow them to sort of grade the prospective athlete and then also catalog other information and talk about when were they recruited, how often have they been talked to, that kind of thing.
00:15:15
Speaker
One thing to note about that is D1, typically they have limitations on the amount of online connection that they can have. And a lot of those connections will start sort of in the September time. D2 and D3 typically don't have those same restrictions. Dang it. Yeah.
00:15:34
Speaker
So once, once you fill out that recruitment questionnaire, the next thing, the very next thing you need to do is get on Twitter or X, however you want to call it, or even threads. Cause that is still a thing to varying degrees. And you go find those coaches on Twitter and you follow them and you follow.
00:15:56
Speaker
their recruiters, and you follow every coach you can, you follow every coach that that works in the athletic department, no matter what sport it is, you follow. You know, if it's a football program, you follow the main schools football, Twitter account, you follow the baseball, you follow softball, you follow volleyball, you follow every one of those.
00:16:17
Speaker
for every school that you are considering or thinking about reaching out to. Once you've done the recruitment questionnaire, you follow them on Twitter. To clarify, Jeff, this should be done by the student. Dave, parent of high school students shouldn't be out following and spamming and connecting with, this should all be by the athletes because we're trying to put the connection between the athlete and the coaches of the recruiters.
00:16:44
Speaker
That's correct. Now, one thing to note is obviously you can have the student's Twitter account on your own phone, right? So that's kind of what I did, right? So I helped Joe out with this process because obviously he's doing school and he's doing practice and he's doing homework and he's doing lots of other things that he should be doing and be responsible for. So he and I had a conversation and this is what you should do as a parent of a student athlete, have a clear line of communication with your athlete and say,
00:17:15
Speaker
Okay, let's get your Twitter account on multiple devices and let's talk about who's going to be responsible for what. We'd said, I have more time in my day to start doing some research and following all of these accounts. We talked about which schools, so I didn't just do it blindly, but we talked about what schools, which programs and whatever.
00:17:38
Speaker
I want to interrupt for a second because I think there's something really important that we probably clogged over S3 ads, which is, so yes, having the student do the following is important. But I think the 1A of this is very important, especially if you're going to get your parents involved is clean your socials before you turn them over to ads.
00:18:00
Speaker
because the next step is not only is dad going to be in there all up in your business, the coaches are going to be looking at you too, because now this is an open evaluative process that they're going to be looking at you. I think that was probably the next thing you were going to say, but I wanted to clear that up, because the last thing I want is my kid and my ex feed, let alone knowing what he's doing. Right. And I mean, yeah, that is something I do mention.
00:18:27
Speaker
in a blog post that I've got plus also in the course. You're not wrong about that. However, what I found is that most of the things that you may not want to be public aren't typically on Twitter. They're going to be in Instagram or something else. But you're right about that. Absolutely. Make sure that when as a student athlete, when you are
00:18:51
Speaker
starting to work this process and be serious about it, you want to be very careful about the things that you post. You want to be careful about what's publicly available to potential recruiters. If they see some stuff on Instagram that is questionable, then they're going to mark you for that. So don't worry about just your Twitter account, but you want to worry about your Facebook and your Instagram accounts as well. That's a really good point. I'm glad that you brought that up.
00:19:21
Speaker
So scroll through and make sure that you've called out anything that you said celebrating 420 or you know, any of those other things, right? Or political, anything political. Yeah, political or students related if you were burning a pile of books at the end of your school year in celebration, maybe not doing that and making sure that you're cultivating
00:19:45
Speaker
the way forward. Yeah. It seems like kids in particular that have been completely digitally native and completely mobile device native now, they just stream of consciousness. This is where they think this is where they, where they interact and they don't have a filter anymore. It just doesn't matter. And it's a big deal amongst folks that are making decisions about their futures.
00:20:08
Speaker
Right. I think I'll add to that instead of not just Instagram or Facebook because most teenagers aren't on Facebook anymore anyway. And Snapchat is sort of an outlier because most of that content is hidden publicly. Anyways, you can't
00:20:26
Speaker
have access to it. But obviously, you want to look through your TikTok accounts and Instagram. That's going to be where most everybody's hanging out these days anyway. And so definitely just be careful, right? Clean first. Clean first. So again, once you've kind of gone through your accounts, then you start following these athletic departments, programs, coaches,
00:20:54
Speaker
and you have that conversation with your student athlete and the parent about which programs you want to follow, that's when you start making those connections. Now, that's after you've done the recruitment questionnaires, you do the social media. And what I found is in addition to following the programs that you are interested in, you follow everybody. You go to the suggested follows that are in each of those individual coach profiles, and you follow them all.
00:21:23
Speaker
Now the reason why isn't necessarily because you may be interested in a program from North Dakota or California, but the more accounts you follow and the more active you are, just sort of as social media works, the more likely you might show up in a suggested follow for a coach or a recruiter because you're being more active.
00:21:50
Speaker
That's something kind of that annoyed Joe a little bit. I just was following all these people, these small schools in North Dakota, South Dakota, Louisiana, whatever. He doesn't want to go play for a school in Louisiana because it's too humid. He doesn't want to do that.
00:22:06
Speaker
What happened from there is that a couple of coaches from there were connected to some coaches in Arizona and the coaching staff at Lake Forest, where Joe ended up going to, they do a huge recruitment push in Arizona and they do a couple of camps during the summer in Arizona. And just through the magic of social media algorithms, Joe happened to pop up.
00:22:34
Speaker
in one of the wide receiver coaches' feed and happened to look at it, saw his highlight reel, and started to reach out to Joe. This was late in the process for us too. We already had a handful of schools that Joe had narrowed down to because
00:22:58
Speaker
He had received maybe, I don't know, a dozen offers. We've had maybe a dozen official visits, had offers in hand, official offers in hand.
00:23:08
Speaker
with the letter and with NAIA schools, we had some scholarship money. We had all that in hand. Then we did one last round of visits where we stopped in Lake Forest, we came up to see St. Thomas. We went to go see Southwest Minnesota State, went to McAllister,
00:23:30
Speaker
No, we skipped Macalester because after the visit in Lake Forest, Joe was like, this is the place for me to be. But he wanted to at least look at St. Thomas because they had put a lot of effort in talking to him. In any case, so we went through that whole process. But those extra kind of connections you make can sometimes
00:23:54
Speaker
make a huge difference where a coach or a recruiter finds you that you didn't actually initially reach out to. So that's kind of the beauty of doing this process is that one thing else to keep in mind is you may go after all the different schools and programs that you are interested in.
00:24:15
Speaker
But occasionally, and more often than not actually, from what I'm finding with some other parents I talk to, a program will pop up that you didn't intend to even look at. Like I didn't even know Lake Forest existed until this coach popped up and it ended up being the best fit.
00:24:36
Speaker
So you just have to be, you have to work that social media process as, as much and as hard as you can, because that's where the coaches live. The coaches live on Twitter or on social media. So once you've done all that, the recruitment questionnaire, following on social media, you follow that up with an email as old school and traditional as that might
Effective Communication with Recruiters
00:24:59
Speaker
be. I've got an email template that's on my website.
00:25:03
Speaker
that you can take that content, edit it for your own and personalize it. But you can use it as a Twitter DM. You could use it as a traditional email and just send that out. Having that extra point of connection is really important.
00:25:20
Speaker
and you just make a schedule and know that you're going to follow up with an initial email, follow up email. If you don't get any connection from there, you do another one. So that's kind of the next step of the process is you're making those other quote unquote offline connections with an email. And depending on where you are in that process,
00:25:43
Speaker
what grade your athlete is in, then you have the opportunity to then start looking at camps and showcases to go to during the following summer. So if you happen to be, say a sophomore or going into your sophomore year, you're in a great position because you have this sophomore year to start putting together your highlights and start putting together your video reel.
00:26:13
Speaker
then this coming summer in 24 at the time of this recording, then you are able to do your research and find out which camps are out there, which showcases are out there for you to attend. Most of the time you won't start seeing those until springtime because usually windows are scheduled. And so you can use
00:26:37
Speaker
a site like Riser, R-Y-Z-E-R, you'd be able to find basketball, football, baseball, and a volleyball camp. So you're typically on those. And you can find out where those are. And do as many as your time or budget allows, right? Because they're not free, but they get you in front of a ton.
00:26:59
Speaker
of extra coaches. Some of the bigger ones might have a dozen programs in attendance. So you go to a basketball camp that's hosted by the U of M and you might have a dozen other programs there helping out. So you go maybe with the intention of becoming a gopher, but then you've got
00:27:25
Speaker
a bunch of other scouts over there evaluating talent and deciding on who they're going to reach out to. I'd say, Hey, this kid's good. This kid's good. And you just want to get your skillset out there. You want to showcase what you can do no matter who it's in front of. But for me, I always looked for the camps that had the most amount of programs there. So you kind of maximize your exposure as much as you can.
00:27:54
Speaker
And the beauty of those is that then you'll get introduced to different coaches that you may not have seen online or via Twitter. Then you start connecting with those coaches. And then again, you know, the more, the more connections you
Creating Highlight Reels and Networking
00:28:10
Speaker
make, the better. Yeah, that's, uh, so it's, it's the art of networking and the art of connecting as a student, probably, you know, earlier than you thought you should have, you know, a sophomore year, most kids aren't, aren't thinking of college yet.
00:28:24
Speaker
And so, you know, making sure that you're already looking at that that early is really important for those student athletes. You kind of have to. Are there are there specific like real winning strategies or things that like does every highlight real need to include? I know this is all different by sports, but, you know, is
00:28:43
Speaker
Is there one thing that you need to include? Do you always have to have a good starting package? Hi, my name is XYZ. I'm interested in being a student athlete at your school or just generally, I'm a football star and I'm looking for the best possible fit for my skills. By the way, here's a 90 yard pass that I just made or whatever.
00:29:11
Speaker
None of that. You don't do any of that. No. Okay. If you want to put one together and pin it to your profile, go ahead and do that. Right. Sure. But it isn't going, it may help, but that isn't what coaches are looking for. Coaches have a very limited amount of time that they can evaluate talent because they're looking at multiple, multiple athletes. So here's what, what I've heard and what I've encouraged parents and their athletes to do.
00:29:41
Speaker
Don't embellish your video. All you do is you, now, most of the time, if you're a part of a program that that's worth a darn, you're going to have, you're going to have video and they're all going to be on something called huddle. So you can have your huddle highlights and your coaches are going to break those highlights down for you. So all you need to do then is go to huddle and pick whichever highlights that you're a part of that you want to showcase. So then what you do is you,
00:30:11
Speaker
This is for football, basketball, baseball, whatever it might be. Whatever play that you want to highlight. You highlight yourself first.
00:30:19
Speaker
You put an arrow, put a circle, whatever. And then let the play run, and then stop it, and then go to the next play, do the same thing, highlight yourself, let the play run, and so on. Do that for maybe a 90 second to 100, 90 second to two minute reel. Having a handful of your best plays for that group of games that you're sharing.
00:30:46
Speaker
And the reason why, you don't wanna have all those extra embellishments because the coaches don't care. They just wanna see what you can do, okay? And so having the graphics and the video and the music is great, it's fun. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with that. And you certainly should do one just to have a sort of like a introduction. But if you're sharing stuff with coaches, they don't wanna see that, they don't care. So you put your highlight reels together, you share,
00:31:12
Speaker
via Twitter, you share via DM, you share those via email. Now, if you're a sophomore now, you're going to have a handful of those. Great. Use them, have them on huddle and start sharing them. But what I found and what I think is going to be the most important is your junior year. Your junior year is where everything is going to happen. Everything's going to open up and everything's going to change. So your junior year is kind of where you want to perform at your best.
00:31:41
Speaker
Senior year, you still have opportunities for that, but your ability to get in front of at a higher level, say D1, is a little bit more diminished because by the time you're a senior, most D1 programs already have their rosters full. Right, they're committed.
00:31:58
Speaker
Right. So your junior year is kind of... Which is an astonishing thing to think about. As kids are going into their senior years, most Division I schools have already picked their eyes. Most of the time, yeah. Now you do have chances to get in to some D1 programs, especially the FCS ones.
00:32:18
Speaker
But obviously, D2, D3, you've got more time. One thing to note about commitments is you've got the early signing day, which always happens in December. That is an outlier. Those are going to be your five-star athletes. Those are going to be the ones that have been recruited since they've been eighth graders in school. They're just out of your mind, fantastic athletes. Those are the ones that always go to Alabama, Auburn, Clemson, SEC schools.
00:32:47
Speaker
But if you're still like a three-star recruit and you're feeling discouraged that maybe you're not getting as much exposure like around December, you don't have that quote unquote great signing day, you still have time. I mean, signing day opens February 1st, right? And there's always this pressure of, and I'm talking specifically football here. There's always that like, oh, I've got to have a decision by February 1st. That's not true. You have until actually the middle of April to fully commit.
00:33:18
Speaker
Obviously, you don't want to wait that long. The phantom pressures that you feel about having to be signed by a certain date, depending on the program that you're a part of, you've got plenty of time. But for the highlight reels, definitely you want to put as many of those as you can as long as you've got a lot of
00:33:38
Speaker
a lot of film to put together. And if you're a starter on a program, basketball, baseball, whatever, I mean, you're going to have that film and you're going to have your choice of great highlights to put together. So you definitely want to have
00:33:54
Speaker
kind of your reels put together as quickly as you can. Okay. Like one of the things that my daughter, when she was in club, they warned her and guarded her against, you know, the, some of the services that I think you mentioned before the submission services, like we'll put together a reel for you for only three grand or whatever. And that, you know, if you have a good club that you're a part of, right? For the most part, they'll help you on some of this as well. Correct?
00:34:22
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, if you're a part of any program, again, that's worth anything, they're going to have a huddle account for whatever sport. And I know it's a little bit different. Baseball, it's not quite huddle. I can't remember what they call it. But so there are services that most programs will use.
00:34:46
Speaker
and they'll hold those highlights for you. Coaches can split them up or you can split them up, whatever. So you don't need to go to a service and spend three grand on getting a video put together because while it's great and while the production value is huge,
00:35:04
Speaker
It's your skills that really are going to tell the story. Right. So there's no substitute for good networking and great highlights and your highlight reel or your huddle or whatever the tool that you use in your
00:35:22
Speaker
high school sports career is really the equivalent of your resume. And so if you have that dialed in and completely ready, and if you're thoughtful about where you're going and what you're going to do, you probably have the best chance possible.
00:35:37
Speaker
Yeah. I want to redirect a little because I want to throw Dave under the bus a little. Dave is a smart guy, brilliant guy, but he doesn't necessarily know a lot about sports other than he is aware that there are sports colleagues. For parents who don't
00:36:06
Speaker
have a career in sports or have played sports themselves, what are some things that they need to look at in helping their kids evaluate a program?
Evaluating College Sports Programs
00:36:18
Speaker
Well, there are a couple of things that you can use. When you get to the athletic website of the school that you're looking at, the first thing I always look at is the record of the previous season. If they have more losses than wins that
00:36:38
Speaker
maybe not the program that you might want to be a part of, right? If it isn't that important to you, sure. If you care more about location of the institution and the type of academics they provide, it's totally up to you. But if you're serious about playing at a competitive level, always look at their record. The next thing to look at to evaluate a program is to look at how long the coaches have been there.
00:37:06
Speaker
So if you've got a coaching staff that's brand new and the previous couple of years records aren't that great, you know why. So the coach was fired because they were not that great. And so now you have a new staff that's coming in that is not only trying to evaluate navigating a new program at a new school,
00:37:29
Speaker
They're also doing the recruiting, trying to get kids in that, um, to fill their programs and fill their roster. So that's a lot that you're asking, you're asking a staff to do quite a bit at that point. And so do you really want to be a part of that program? If I'm not going to be able to put as a hundred percent attention to getting that program to, to be as good as it needs to be. Um,
00:37:57
Speaker
And then just sort of check out the other athletic departments, right? Look at the other sports that, you know, maybe, you know, if you're going to play basketball, you know, check out volleyball, check out football, check out any of the other sports that are there and kind of look at the same thing. You know, look at records, look at staff longevity, how long has the athletic director been there, that kind of stuff.
00:38:22
Speaker
And that'll give you a really good picture of the athletic health of that institution and whether or not that's a school that might be worth your time. Now, you might be one of those entrepreneur type kids and say, hey, I'm going to go help build this program. Great. Go after it. I'm sure they would love to have you. For us, that literally wasn't
00:38:47
Speaker
that wasn't viable for us. That's not something that we wanted to go after. We wanted an established program that had a history of success. Cool. And there's so much that goes into this too, right? I mean, as you're looking at the overall, there's a balance between academics and scholarship. And I think it might be also important to kind of level set with your student that you might not
00:39:16
Speaker
gets A, the money that you're hoping for. If you try to go D1, it's competitive. It's almost like pro sports at this point with some of these programs, right? So you have to be realistic in what you're gonna do. So maybe keeping D1 and D2 in the hopper in your consideration process is gonna be important. But even then, just because you're a star athlete at your high school,
00:39:44
Speaker
that doesn't necessarily mean you're going to be a star athlete even at a college that you're accepted at and that you might even get a program for. And I bring this up because we have friends of ours. Their daughter was an absolute rock star volleyball player. She got recruited and got a significant scholarship at a Midwest school. And she's going to be a senior. She has not played more than one set of volleyball
00:40:13
Speaker
in her entire college career. And I'm talking that's one set is, you know, up to, up to 25 points, one. So she's played about a half hour out of her entire college career. And she's, she's just, she's on the bench. She's watching. She's incredibly useful to the team, but she's six one. She's a rock star. She was a crusher her, her school.
00:40:38
Speaker
was her school won state the year that she was a senior in volleyball. So it doesn't necessarily mean when you go up to some of these incredibly competitive programs, there might be a different role for you. So being realistic about what you're looking at is important. Yeah, you got to be honest with yourself.
00:40:58
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, that's part of sports on the whole is that the higher level you get, the more fierce the competition gets. Yeah. I mean, honesty with yourself is a vital component to this whole process. You know, you can say, no, you see, Joe came out of eight man football. Okay. Rural Michigan, eight man football.
Setting Realistic Recruitment Expectations
00:41:20
Speaker
And.
00:41:22
Speaker
There are a lot of kids who, they see that and they play in that environment and they're like, well, forget it. I can't play at college, right? Because who wants a kid who only plays eight man football?
00:41:36
Speaker
Well, you don't want to discount yourself. Football is still football. The skills are still the skills. No matter if you play 8-man or traditional 11-man, it doesn't matter. You're still able to play. If you have the skills and you're able to show that you can do great things on the field, yeah. But you also have to be realistic. Most of the time, you're not going to be able to get the attention of Nick Saban.
00:42:03
Speaker
If you're playing eight man football in the upper upper peninsula of Michigan. Right. I mean, let's just be honest. That doesn't mean that you're not good. Legendary college football coach. Right. For Dave. Yeah. Thanks. Well, that's just for Dave, for other people who are listening. So, but if you think you can play, do your research and figure it out and see if you can. Right. That just means you might, you might go to a lower level school.
00:42:31
Speaker
And if you're thinking about going, if you're thinking about D three, then then you gotta have good grades because D three schools are mostly, yeah, because D three schools are private. They're going to be 20, 30, 40, 50, $60,000 a year, right? That's a, that's a pretty big college bill. So, you know, maximize your ability to, to get some of that academic money. If you've got a 3.5 or higher, then you've got the opportunity to get some of that money.
00:43:01
Speaker
I should throw in there that just because it's an academic scholarship, there's lots more money than you would expect out there. We mentioned St. Thomas before. I'm a Tommy and college has tripled since I went to school, the tuition. It's like 60 something a year now.
00:43:23
Speaker
there's a lot of financial aid out there for anyone that's serious. So if you're a great student and a great athlete, there's definitely options out there for you. So again, don't get discouraged just because you may have gotten a C in one class or because you're on an eight man football team. I mean, there's definitely options out there. The key is hustle and the key is showing your
00:43:49
Speaker
goals and in not being afraid to kind of make your own luck, at least in my opinion. No, you're not wrong about that. That's 100% the mindset that needs to go into this process. Trusting yourself, not belittling your skillset, but saying, okay, I can do this.
00:44:12
Speaker
Hey, mom and dad, what do you think? Let's try and go after this and getting your parents on board and then coming to my site and learning how to empower yourself to navigate this process, right?
Resources and Motivation in Recruitment Process
00:44:24
Speaker
Well, and that's a perfect, that's a perfect segue, Jeff, because I want to make sure that everyone gets to your site because this is, as we've been going through, you know, you've got lots of easy questions and answers and,
00:44:38
Speaker
you know, tools. And I know you have some really great resources. Tell us how to find you. And there are easy questions with their right answers. That's true. And it's a lot of family talk and it's a, it's a great guide to helping navigate what is a, it's, it's, it's a whole secondary recruitment beyond just the college you want to be and the team you want to play. Right.
00:45:02
Speaker
So yeah, T-plug Jeff, where can people find this? Jeffhowell.me and everything you need is going to be there. All of my personal socials are going to be there. The college recruiting socials are going to be up in the top menu. There is a immense amount of content on the site, especially on the blog.
00:45:26
Speaker
I've gotten probably three months worth of content there and I've got more scheduled. There's ways to contact me. My email's all over there. There's ways to buy the course. There's ways to talk to your athletic director about having me come in and do a seminar. By the way, the course is not expensive at all. It's very reasonable and I think definitely worth the money.
00:45:51
Speaker
It's the price of a couple of Amazon. Yeah, and the reason why I do put a money on it is really, I could have done it for free, but I found that if you are actively trying to do something to better yourself and to put yourself in a position of
00:46:09
Speaker
of getting recruited, you've got to have a little bit of skin in the game, right? So if it was free, you'd kind of go through it and like, eh, I don't really want to do it, or you just don't have the same motivation. But if you plunk down some money, now you've got that little extra motivation to be successful at this process because you paid for it, right?
00:46:28
Speaker
And so that's kind of like the, that's kind of my thought process, but I did try to make it affordable, right? Because. Well, it's not, I guess what I'm trying to say is, you know, in terms of helping out with a cheap plug, it's something that's worthy of the investment and it's not a big investment and the value that you're going to get out of it. I appreciate that. And yeah, thank you. I mean, it's, that's kind of what my thought process was too.
00:46:52
Speaker
Perfect.
Conclusion and Thanks to Jeff Howell
00:46:54
Speaker
Jeff, thank you so much for joining us and good luck to Lake Forest this football season. Yeah, man. Go, go, Foresters.