@zenator What did you mean by “disinterested evaluation”? Also what are the gps and test scores needed to have a realistic shot at some of the places I mentioned earlier? Like Lehigh, Fordham. Or Villanova, Dealware, James Madison. Or some D3. Thanks!
fbislife - Ohiodad15 has given you a lot of excellent advice so please follow it. I will throw in some comments.
My S recently completed a 4 year football career at one of the non-PL schools mentioned in your original post. He had an outstanding college experience, Academically and Athletically, much better than frankly he or we anticipated before going. We were hopeful, but very uncertain. At graduation last weekend he hugged his mom and thanked her for letting him attend a school so far away because it had been the “best four years of his life”.
Most important you should look at the school’s fit for you - how comfortable you feel in the environment, with future teammates and coaching staff, how stable the coaching staff is, etc. Young position coaches are going to come and go everywhere, but look at the HC, Coordinators, etc and look for stability. Each school in the Patriot, NEC or CAA can provide you with a challenging environment and degree path if you seek it. An NEC or CAA school may provide a student athlete an easier path if they just wanted to “get by”. Sure a degree from one or two of the PL schools might open some doors that a degree from an NEC/CAA will not, but the student behind that degree is what really matters.
Look at the average incoming GPAs and test schools at each school, you may be a little surprised that some NEC and CAA schools are higher than you thought. Also look for some historical info and see what the trend is. Are averages rising or falling? Is the school growing (FR class size or staying status quo) and which is preferable to you? How does the latest acceptance rate for each compare to 4-5 years ago? Most importantly, what career path do you want to pursue and make sure that school offers a program in it.
Now if you are looking for the most competitive football experience you should look CAA, NEC and Patriot in that order. The CAA has been on top for many years, the NEC has greatly improved recently and is on the way up, the Patriot has lost ground competitively in recent years but may see improvement now with athletic scholarships. Last year the NEC had a 5-2 record against the CAA. The Patriot has had one very good team in Fordham the last couple of years, but they did it with a LOT of transfers who are graduating and most expect them to fall back into the pack. The top academic Patriot schools (ie Colgate, Georgetown) have not been very competitive on the football field in recent years.
My son had a 3.6 HS gpa and similar test scores to you, he was offered admission at an Ivy and a couple of Patriot (before athletic scholarships) for football. The finances made these impossible but he ended up in an excellent football program and an academic environment that was challenging and productive. The social environment of the team and school also were a great fit. I would advise trying to see every school showing interest and reach out to those who haven’t. You will probably find one that really fits you well.
Thank you @lubbub for sharing your son’s story! I definitely agree with you that I should be looking for a good fit. At this point, I’m hoping I can generate interest from an array of places so I’ll have options in the fall! A few coaches from the CAA and NEC have contacted me, but my coach hasn’t been much because he’s not well connected so I’m just navigating this process to see what I can come up with
Thank you @Ohiodad51 for all of your excellent advice! I started sending out my letter just as you instructed. 2 places have already responded telling me that I should attend their camp. I know you advocate attending a school’s camp. Though I imagine the schools tell many folks to attend their particular camp, including those who they may not be seriously interested in?
Yes, schools want their camps full, and there are many stories here about guys being encouraged to attend camps even though it appeared later on in the process that the player was not an athletic match for that program. Personally, I felt that my son fit well athletically at each of the schools where he camped, but that may very well be because he decided not to camp at some of the “bigger” schools recruiting him. There is an old adage that runs “Play one level below where you think you can play and two below where your dad thinks you can play”. Often times kids or their parents reach for the “highest” level of competition that shows even minor interest, and then when the rubber meets the road at the camps, it becomes obvious that the athletic fit is just not there. Sometimes, this becomes magnified when a guy doesn’t play a very high level of competition in high school. That may be part of the problem some people have experienced at some of the camps. Certainly I saw many kids at camps last year that just did not appear to be able to compete at the college level. Quite honestly, there were several kids at each camp that likely wouldn’t have made the varsity squad at my kid’s high school You have to remember that high school football is variable. Playing 6A football in Texas, or Div 1 in Ohio, is just a different experience than playing Div IV in Rhode Island. A number of coaches recruiting my son told us that camps were crucial in their evaluation precisely for this reason. It is the only chance the coaches have to see how a kid from a small school in New York competes with kids from big programs in Florida or California. Maybe that is true, and maybe coaches encourage kids to attend because the camps are money makers for coaches. Either way, if you are trying to be efficient with your money and time this summer, and you are fortunate to get a number of camp invitations, a bit more winnowing of the field will put you in the best position to succeed.
And I know you directed the question to @zenator, but I believe this is what he meant when he referred to a “disinterested evaluation”. It is very, very difficult to take a sober look at your self, or your son, and try and project at what level the player can be successful athletically. This is where a solid high school coach can be a big help. In my son’s program, they have a dedicated recruiting coach that talks with the kids after the sophomore and junior season to give them advice on schools, things to work on, etc. I am also a fan of the SPARQ or Under Armour combines which provide raw, unbiased athletic testing. I believe most of those camps are done in this cycle however so I don’t think that is an option for you. It sounds like you do not have a coach who is very experienced with college recruiting, or I would guess, a lot of recent alums who have gone on to play in college. In that circumstance, I would suggest talking to some of the other coaches in the high school program. Some of them surely will have played college ball and coached guys who went on to compete successfully at that level. Talk to them. See what they tell you.
If you feel like you are on your own in this, than take a good look at the rosters of the schools which invited you to camp. Check the measurables and compare them to your actual measurables. Are you close? If you are a 5’10" receiver, and all the guys on the roster are 6’1" and above, you are maybe not a fit. You may be able to find some hudl tape on the younger guys on the roster at your position from when they were in high school. Watch it, and try and be honest about how you stack up. If you are lucky, some of the rosters will have players from your conference or general area, and that should make it easier to compare yourself to where they were in high school.
If you are really scrapinig the bottom of the barrel, you can pm your stats, hudl link and the schools talking to you and I will try and give you a guesstimate of whether you may be a fit. My kid was recruited by a lot of the CAA and Patriot League (I played there before it was called the Patriot League) and I know a couple kids playing in the NEC, so I have some familiarity with the athletic level. .But I do not know how much that would help to be honest.
@Ohiodad51 Thank you very much for all of that clarification! and advice I will PM you some of my information if that’s ok. I really appreciate your offer
No problem. Just trying to pay it forward when I can.
fb - schools are really using their camps more and more to evaluate talent. They show up at Spring practices, talk to coaches, watch some practice and tape, but they still struggle to effectively evaluate talent until you line up against another talented kid. So they want to see you in camp competing against other recruits. It also shows you have a genuine interest in their school, not just an “I’ll keep you on my list”. In hindsight this was probably the biggest mistake my son made in recruiting, not attending all the camps that he was invited to based on Spring football evaluations.
The SEC schools have adopted the camp model for recruits they are “offering” a scholarship. They come in and say we are making you an offer, but it is contingent on you attending our camp and showing us there in competition that you are capable of playing at their level. Only after attending camp and performing well do most of these scholarship “offers” become “committable”.
Also Ohiodad’s advise about the “bigger” schools is so on point. I also have a daughter running D1 Track and between her and my son I have seen dozens of former teammates and competitors reach for the biggest and most prominent (athletically) school’s offer, even if it was a fraction of a smaller school’s offer that was a better fit. Then they sit, don’t play, and often are looking to transfer after a year or two. If these kids and their parents had been more objective they should have signed with a smaller school and had a very successful and rewarding playing career competing for conference championships.
Thanks @lubbub for your perspective on the camps. My concern when I posted was that I’ve read around the forums here that some of the school camps encourage students to go just to generate revenue for their own program even if they’ll also be going to a bigger camp like NE Elite and that they’re usually interested in only a small handful of the students there to begin with.
I’m a little late into the process—I just started sending my highlights tape to coaches only this week. In sending them out, so far a few of the Patriot schools responded right away with just come to our camps, one of the schools a little more of an enthusiastic email.
I didn’t know how to interpret their camp invitations as “maybe we’re interested, it’s too early to say until we meet you, but we’ll know for sure when you come to the camp and if it looks like a good fit then we’ll talk further afterwards” or “we tell everybody who contacts us to come to our camp, wondering who actually will take us up on the offer, and we’re not actually that interested in you in particular as you didn’t grab my attention too much to want to have much of a talk until then”
I hope I don’t sound like too much of a conspiracy theorist or too pessimistic!! I know I need to start mapping out a camp schedule soon between the big camps and the small camps
fbislife: This serves to supplement Ohiodad’s response regarding a “disinterested evaluation.” For the reasons stated by Ohiodad, it really helps to be evaluated as a junior by someone who is a former of current college coach with recruiting experience. We are lucky because my son’s HS head coach formerly had that experience at the D1, D1AA and D3 levels. Apparently, projecting how 17 year old will likely develop over the next several years is a combination of art and science.