Ivy vs DIII for football recruit - Opinions

Stumbled onto this site today and have been reading some great info on colleges as they pertain to football recruiting. Would love some perspective on my son’s particular situation.

He’s a junior football player with very good but not elite academics. He would be above 220 AI for Ivy’s but wouldn’t be in the mix academically without the football component. He has strong interest from multiple DIII schools and some Ivy leagues as well. Whether the Ivy league interest is genuine is harder to gauge as I believe he’s a borderline/bubble type player for that level.

Personally, I’m inclined to think DIII may be a better all around fit in terms of balance between athletics and academics. Not surprisingly, he’s intrigued by an Ivy league education and, at this point, I don’t want to discourage that.

That said, I would love to hear personally from either parents or players with their perspectives on Ivy league vs DIII football. Any info is much appreciated as we move through this confusing time!

Search for posts by @Ohiodad51. He is the resident expert in that area here. I think there are several threads that touch on this.

I have talked to coaches in the NESCAC and Ivy about a different sport. I don’t have specific information about football, but in general I think even though it is the Ivy League there is still a big difference on the time commitment between D1 and D3. Obviously athletically the standards are going to be lower for D3. There may be a few exceptions athletically, but those are few and far between, especially on the football field.

The academic standard for athletes is higher for NESCAC schools than Ivy. I am guessing that a 220 for football is going to be fine for almost any D3 though.

I am not sure I am an expert on anything, but I know a number of kids playing ball currently in all three divisions and played a bit myself back in the day.

There is unfortunately no easy answer for you or your son. On the practical tools/stuff, the equipment, training staff, facilities, gear, coaching etc will all be very much better in the Ivy than anywhere in D3. Ivy stadiums, even the crappy ones, are very nice. Lots of D3 stadiums are pretty much high school stadiums. Even at Brown and Cornell, which generally draw the fewest fans, attendance at Ivy games dwarfs everything in D3. Sometimes that matters to kids, sometimes it doesn’t.

@dadof4kids is right on that the time commitment, while still large in D3, is nothing at all like it is in D1 even the Ivy. Four of my son’s good friends from high school are playing D3 currently. One in the UAA, one in the Centennial and two in the OAC. I saw three over the Christmas break in fact, So I have a fair feel for what is required at a swath of D3 schools. The time commitment is nothing at all like what my son deals with in the Ivy. So if your son is debating how much time he wants to devote to his sport, D1, even the Ivy, is a tough nut.

The competitive level is also going to be much lower in D3. I know some here will say that in certain sports there is less of a difference between divisions. That is not true in football. Most if not all (non Pioneer) D1 schools would easily handle pretty much all of D2, and pretty much all of D2 would easily handle pretty much all of D3. This could be a negative or a positive.

On one hand, my son had to work his butt off just to get on the field as a rotational guy during his sophomore year. Three of his four high school teammates who play in D3 were day one starters as freshmen. The fourth transferred into Mount Union from a D1 school as a red shirt sophomore last season. He started playing immediately and was starting by the playoffs. On the other side of the coin, none of my son’s friends have developed the way he has. They all played together for four years of high school, and while the D3 guys were maybe a little smaller or slower than my son, they all fit together. Not so much anymore. All the time required in the Ivy, not to mention the competition he says every day, has made my son better.

So the choice is does your son want to go someplace where he is confident he can successfully play, without maybe putting in maximum effort, and is he willing to give up some of the ancillary things to get on the field? Or is he interested in being the best player he can be, and playing against the best competition, even if that means he might not see the field until he is an upperclassman if at all? That is really the question underlying all of this.

@Ohiodad51 I really appreciate the response and your perspective. Makes sense to me how you boiled it all down to some main questions. The challenge for my son is to try to answer those questions honestly. The landscape is much more confusing than I had anticipated!

We are starting to plan a trip back east this summer (we’re in CA) and the immediate next step is for us to figure out what summer camps he should attend. Between NE Elite, the Ivy’s and some of the DIII options it’s hard to know what is the right course of action. He’s in personal phone and email contact with quite a few good DIII coaches but the recent Ivy interest has him intrigued. Toughest thing for us to decipher (and seems very common given what I’m reading) is how legit the Ivy interest is. Our current thinking is to hit the Ivy camps who have show interest and sprinkle in one or two of his top DIII choices. I’m hearing there’s currency to going directly to the campus as opposed to one of the satellite camps but there’s probably differing opinions on that.

If you have any pearls of wisdom as it pertains to the summer camp conundrum, I’d love to hear it. In the meantime, I’ll keep searching the forums as I’m sure this has been discussed ad nauseum.

One last question, is there any published guide you know of that shows the average stats of what the Ivy’s are looking for by position in the 40, shuttle, vertical, etc.? It would be great to understand what those target “combine” numbers are to see where my son would fit in the mix. I’ve already done the research on the rosters for size of linebackers and, while he still needs to put on some weight/muscle, I don’t think that will be the limiting factor for him necessarily.

It might help if you name some of the Division III schools that your son is considering as well as his career goals & intended major.

One real advantage for well rounded athletes is that it is possible to be a three sport athlete in Division III.

In terms of the DIII schools, there are quite a few in play to varying degrees. In no particular order; Williams, Middlebury, Amherst, WashU, Carnegie Mellon, Pomona, Claremont.

As for intended major and career goals, I would say those are not as clear yet. Not a STEM kid, more in the history/psychology/political science realm at this point. But he is engaged academically and is interested in getting a good education first and foremost. While he loves football, the end game more academic than athletic.

Great schools–although I am not familiar with Claremont. If he is not STEM oriented, then is CMU a viable option ?

Williams, Amherst & Pomona !!! Of course, Middlebury & WashUStL also offer tremendous educational options & value.

Have you visited any of these schools ?

We are slated to visit as many as we can at some point through this spring and summer. Claremont is in southern California and has a great reputation. You’re right about CMU; not likely to be a good fit academically…but mostly was just listing out the schools he’s in contact with from a football perspective.

I don’t know of any published guides. I know they are all way faster than I was, lol. Plus a lot of that stuff is going to depend on what the defensive scheme asks a particular guy to do - Mikes are not Stacks are not Wills, etc. I know for my son, there was great variability in the skills sought by different offenses, which we kind of gleaned from watching what film was available. I think you were wise to look at the rosters for physical stats. Another thing you can do is pull up some hudl tape on the recent recruits. That should give you some idea of the speed/quickness of kids coming in, especially if you can find some recruits who played against teams your son is familiar with. We were fortunate in that my son played a lot of games against teams that sent kids to the Ivy/Patriot/Service Academy world, and I know I watched a lot of hudl tape on kids from the previous one or two recruiting classes when my son was going through the process. If you have a good understanding of the game, you can get a bit of a sense for what particular schools are looking for.

As far as camps, I personally lean away from camps like NE Elite, particularly for a kid who is already on the D3 radar. I think the primary purpose of the big aggregator camps is to get noticed, and to get some sense as to what the appropriate level may be. Not sure that is the best use of time for kids going into senior year who are already talking to coaches. Especially if you have to travel a fair distance to it. That said, I know there are several people here who have found NE Elite to be worthwhile, but for my money and recognizing that there are finite camps your son can do before his performance will suffer, I think the individual school camps are the way to go. Fewer kids so more reps, running the school’s drills so a better chance to highlight traits important at the school, with the position coach doing the hands on stuff. I just think it gives the coach a much better read on a kid (and as importantly, the player/parent on the coach)

I don’t know how long you plan on being out east, but I would urge you not to overload on camps. When I did the circuit with my son, we did three camps in six days on one trip (with a recovery day between each camp) and then a separate trip to another. I saw a lot of kids who were on the same circuit as my son who tried to do camps back to back, and it was obvious their performance suffered after three or four camps without enough rest. I remember one kid who I felt terrible for. I met his dad the morning of the Princeton camp, which was the first camp for both our kids. They were coming from Texas and did five camps in six days. The kid looked great at Princeton, and gave my son some trouble in pass pro (my son is still half convinced that he only got an offer at Princeton because he accidentally/on purpose tripped that kid to keep from getting beat while Coach Surace was watching). At the end of the week at the Dartmouth camp, my son tossed him around like a rag doll. The kid just had no gas left in the tank. You need to remember that each camp is an audition, and do what you can to make sure your son is at his best that day.

Making some Ivy camps and D3 camps might be tough on one trip, since if I remember correctly the NESCAC camps (which is where I assume you are pointing on the east coast for D3) were all quite a bit later in the summer after the Ivy camps. So scheduling might be an issue. If it is, and you and your son think the Ivy is a legitimate target, then I would focus on the Ivy camps where your son is getting consistent, personal interest by the late spring/early summer. See who comes out to see him at school during the contact days this semester, who is sending him personal e mails, who invites him to junior days, etc. To give you an idea, when my son picked his camps, the criteria we used was that he would only camp at a school that he had visited either on a junior day or a separate visit, and the coach had been in to see him once during the contact period during junior spring, and he was getting at least weekly personal contact (mostly personal e mails at that time). Then in late May we plotted out the best week to hit his chosen schools. To be honest, this was probably overly cautious of a criteria, because one school that just barely made his cut turned out to be where he has spent the last three years. So much depends on the personality of the recruiting coach, the calendar, the high school, etc, etc. The point I think is to pick the schools which stand out from the herd.

Then I would get in touch with the D3 recruiting/position coach at the schools he is interested in at that level, and find out if and when they will be at that particular camp. Basically, I am not sure it does a lot of good for the Williams quarterback coach to be at Harvard’s camp when your son is there as a linebacker. I would rather schedule it so the LB coach or DC will be there, if possible. Make sense?

On the other hand, if it really looks like he is a D3 kid with maybe an outside shot at an Ivy, then I would probably set the schedule using similar criteria for his chosen D3 schools, and see if there was maybe a way to tack an Ivy camp or 2 on to the trip.

Hope that helps, and any other questions, sing out.

@Ohiodad51 Again, thx for the thoughtful response. Incredibly helpful. Going to send you a direct message.

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That list is a little misleading as it combines the New England and West Coast Elite Clinics and most of the kids are from east coast high schools. It would be interesting to know which kids went to which clinics.

Here’s our experience from a different sport.

If you are really good at your sport, the Ivies are easier to get into than the top D3 academic schools. The academic index allows them to bend their admissions standards further than places like Amherst, William and Pomona can do.

The Ivies are better at sports than D3 schools, but because they are DI and take sports very seriously, it impacts the academic experience more than it does at the D3 schools. The athletics time commitment for practices and workouts is higher, the athletes are discouraged from taking heavy courseloads, and god forbid if you want to take a class that has a lab that cuts into practice time.

I prefer the D3 route - student first, athlete second. And if you are being recruited by places like Amherst and Williams, you will get an academic experience that is every bit as valuable and marketable as an Ivy degree.

I might also suggest that your son look into the University of Chicago. It’s D3, and if this recent Sports Illustrated article is accurate, they they have achieved a pretty good academic/athletic balance there. (the uchicago stuff starts about halfway into the article)

https://www.si.com/nfl/2017/10/25/football-america-chicago-bears-maroons

I agree that the commitment in the Ivy is greater than D3. But I have not heard of coaches discouraging heavy courseloads in the ivy, and every ivy my son visited had a mechanism for ensuring there was no conflict with labs and practice time. My son has had some occasions where labs conflict with “unofficial” practice tubes like lifts and what not. But afaik, there are generally several oppportunities to make those up

@shmedly13 you are exactly where I was a year ago (Son was a linebacker contemplating Ivy & D3 with AI > 220) and you are very smart to reach out to this forum, which I did not do until later in the recruiting process. My son has similar academic interests compared to yours and received offers from most of the D3 schools you mentioned. Ultimately he selected Williams and is very excited.

I agree with @Ohiodad51 on the advice re camps - consider 2 trips and taking at least a a day break between camps. We did not attend any D3 camps and I think that was the right strategy. My son attended 6 Ivy camps, which was too much, but there were plenty of D3 coaches at the Ivy camps, from Pomona to Bowdoin. We had been forewarned to only go to 4-5 camps, but we pushed it nonetheless. I saw my son’s 40 time progressively increase over the summer. The camps can be exhausting for the kids.

What Ivy camps are you considering? We thought Princeton, Dartmouth, and Yale were worthwhile, while Harvard, Penn and especially Columbia were disappointing. Columbia for some reason did not integrate the D3 coaches into drills, so the Columbia position coach was running the drills and trying to evaluate the players at the same time - virtually impossible. Harvard had 2X the number of prospects compared to any of the other camps, probably because - simply put - they are Harvard.

I recommend Dartmouth in part because at the end of the camp, the guys who are their serious recruits will be called up to Buddy Teevens’ office, which serves as a good litmus test of where you stand. My son was among about 20% of the players who were called up to the office and told that they were serious recruits.

I also would say that I would not spend time going to a junior day if you have already visited the school and talked to the coaches. It is MUCH more valuable to attend the camp than the junior day and I really don’t think attending a junior day has much sway with the coaches.

If you are taking a trip to the East Coast soon, with some planning you can visit 2-3 schools a day, including meetings with coaches. For example something like Johns Hopkins and Penn, then Princeton and Columbia, then Yale and Brown, then Amherst-Williams, Middlebury-Dartmouth, etc. Having personalized meetings with the recruiters IMO is much more valuable than a junior day. Hope this helps.

May be helpful to look over recent recruiting classes at each of the eight Ivy League schools.

A recent recruiting class among the Ivies was ranked as follows:

  1. Princeton ( signed a 4 star prospect ! )
  2. Yale
  3. Harvard
  4. Penn
  5. Columbia
  6. Dartmouth College
  7. Brown
  8. Cornell

Once you get beyond the top three or four ranked Ivies, the recruits signed looks a bit pathetic for Division 1.

Another thing to consider is how much your top band status will help. Since Yale, Dartmouth, and Columbia had good seasons last year, their allocation of top band players will go up(could be 10 or more in 4th band), which can give you you an edge. On the flip side, Brown and Princeton, for example may not have as many band restrictions.

@HPTD12 Going to send you a personal message. Have some follow up questions. Thx for the response!

I would be happy to answer some of your questions. Just went through this process with my son last year. Send via personal message if you like.