As football recruiting evolves, high school coaches stay involved

A college basketball coach may never set foot on a recruit’s high school campus. A college softball coach may not even know the name of a recruit’s high school coach. A college soccer coach likely wouldn’t care if a recruit plays on the high school team.

In an era when club and travel teams are the primary way to recruit high school athletes in most sports, football remains an outlier.

Camps, clinics and passing tournaments have proliferated and technology has evolved, but high school football coaches are still invested in the recruiting process in some way.

They arrange campus visits, give advice to players and provide background on their character.

“I think high school coaches still do play a huge role,” said LaVergne High football coach Stanton Stevens, in his 17th season of coaching. “The tactics used in recruiting have changed a little bit, but overall I don’t think it has changed much at all in terms of high school coaches being involved. I always want to do whatever I can to help my players get recruited.”

The University of Tennessee recruited two of Stevens’ players for its 2017 class. Safety Maleik Gray and wide receiver Princeton Fant are expected to sign their national letters of intent with the Vols on Wednesday as part of National Signing Day.

Poll: Where will the Vols finish in the 2017 recruiting rankings?

In recruiting this year’s class, the Tennessee coaches met or contacted most of the high school coaches of UT's potential signees.

University School of Jackson coach Rusty Bradley had multiple encounters with the UT staff in its pursuit of five-star offensive tackle Trey Smith, who has already enrolled in classes at UT.

“They asked a lot of questions about how he is doing for me during his senior year and how he is playing and handling everything,” said Bradley, the former Christian Academy of Knoxville coach. “They would ask if I thought he was leaning one way or the other. There was a lot of interaction. If the school had not heard from Trey in a couple of days or weeks and reached out to him and hadn’t gotten a response, they would shoot me a text or call.”

The amount of influence a high school coach has on a player’s recruitment can vary by individual, says Tony Vance.

The Hattiesburg High (Miss.) coach helped UT wide receiver commit Jordan Murphy sort through his college options.

“It depends on the relationship with your player. How much you have been involved in that player’s life on and off the field and whether he looks to you as a father figure is important,” Vance said. “Jordan is like a son to me and I think the biggest part of that is him understanding that I wanted him to have an opportunity to be successful and these are the things that should be important to you in making your decision.”

In his 19th season as a high school coach, Vance has seen the impact technology has played in recruiting. He’s watched cell phones evolve from a convenient way to contact recruits into a dynamic tool to spread a program’s brand.

“It has changed a lot with social media – Twitter, Instagram, all those things. Those are all available to players now,” he said. “Not even so much the recruiting part, but just getting a player’s name out there. Back in the day, high school coaches would have to make players a highlight film and now with Hudl and all those different things, players can make their own.”

Although watching players put on the pads and tackle in high school games is extremely valuable, evaluation opportunities have extended beyond Friday night lights.

“You have The Opening that Nike puts on and so many different Rival camps and Nike camps and so many different showcases. Now we are starting to see 7-on-7 teams and different things popping up and taking the same route as AAU basketball,” said Bradley, in his 15th season at the high school level. “For the most part the recruiting is still through the high school coach, but I think there is so much now that takes place outside of playing high school football.”

Several 7-on-7 teams have started traveling nationally to play in tournaments and expose players to recruiters. Vance doesn't mind his players getting added exposure. He just wants them working with adults who care about them and not their own financial gain.

“That is a thing you really need to keep an eye on. You have to put players with guys you know you can trust,” Vance said. “I think the big part of me as a head football coach is to make sure to keep them away from guys who are out for themselves and keep them with guys you can trust have their best interest at heart.”

Bradley has noticed colleges now prefer a more hands-on appraisal of recruits in a controlled environment before making a scholarship offer.

“There are a lot of coaches that want to get the kid on campus to see him in a camp. There is a lot more emphasis on the performance in camp at schools as opposed to evaluating the kid on film,” Bradley said. “It’s become more of we like a kid so we have to get him to a camp before they make an offer now instead of just liking the kid and offering him. They want to get a kid in camp to confirm that.”

One trend Stevens finds disturbing is the proliferation of recruiting-based web sites that chronicle a recruit's every move.

“They harass the kids more than coaches to figure out where they are going,”  said Stevens, a former Austin-East and Oak Ridge coach. "There is no regulation for them, and if they think a kid is worthy of a story they just keep calling. A lot of them are terrible and try to ask the same question three or four different ways to try and trick the kid into revealing information they don’t want to say. It’s a huge problem because these are just high school kids.”

High school coaches realize certain aspects of recruiting are likely to change and evolve even more in the future. Football may become more like other sports and limit their role in the process.

Vance warns that may not be a change for the better.

“You have those certain colleges or universities that sometimes don’t go through the head coach and don’t want them as involved. But at the end of the day if things don’t work out with mom and dad, they come back to the high school football coach and want some answers,” Vance said. “If the high school coach wasn’t involved in the process, it’s hard to provide those answers.”