College football - Guidance on where to focus

My family is new to the sports recruiting area and looking for some guidance. My son is a sophomore and completed his first full year as a varsity football starter both ways. His team went to the state finals and he received several 2nd and 3rd team conference honors. He is a 4.0+ student in honors and AP classes. He has a strong desire to play football in college. We simply just dont know how good he is and what level we should be focusing. We have created a highlight video for this year and it is available online with his profile.

He has been getting indirect contact from schools like northwestern, UNC, Boston College. By indirect contact I mean schools have reached out to his coaches for info or to the school for transcripts. I understand they cant contact him directly. He also has received several mailed camp invites and requests to fill out questionnaires from other schools with smaller football programs like D1 FCS (like Delaware) D2-3 and a couple Ivys (may be a stretch with his PSATs) . Oddly only one of these smaller schools have made indirect contact.

We are looking at camps this summer… how do we know where to focus? Simply put we have always viewed football as way to get into a better school he would not normally qualify on grades alone. We never thought D1 big conference football was an option. I see so much discussion about aiming for the right level so you dont set yourself up for disappointment. I know he had a good year as a sophomore but I dont think you can say someone is D1 material after just one season. Should we take the interest from the bigger D1 schools as a serious indication of his talent or is this interest par for the course ie nothing special?

I might be able to give you some more specific ideas if you can provide some information like what position your son plays, the level of competition and his raw measurables like height, weight, 40 time, etc. Generally, if your son’s program tends to produce a fair number of recruits, then the high school coach is going to be the best source of information on a realistic level for your son. Also, did your son compete against any D1 players this year? If so, how did he do? How many seniors on his team are going D1,2 or 3 this year? Is he athletically competitive with them? If you do not have many local recruits to compare against, or other recruits on his team, then I would probably take him to one of the big general camps like rivals elite or under armour this year to see how he does. Failing that, a good general big school camp will give you a good cross section of talent to compare him against. It is a daunting process, but there are a lot of resources out there if you pay attention that will help you along.