Earned Relevance

Football Recruiting & Social Media

Today, I watched my alma mater compete in the first round of the NCAA 1-AA Football playoffs against Appalachian State. As the game wound down, the ESPNU commentator made mention of “recruiting season” for both teams soon getting underway.  If student athletes and their parents have been waiting until the season to end to engage the college recruiting process, then the chances of the athletes getting legitimate “looks” from the schools of their choice are very slim.

The high school-college football recruiting process starts way before the regular season kicks-off, and parents and student athletes should proactively involve themselves in it if the hope is for the student athletes to be awarded college athletic scholarships.  Today, the barriers to entry in exposing an average to above average athlete to college scouts are lower than they were in years past.  With low-cost mobile video and audio, the internet, and multiple cable sports networks, student athletes have access to a number of platforms from which to choose to get themselves in front of college scouts.  It’s a long way from what my friends and our parents had available when we were scrapping to get a “look” from college scouts as standout high school athletes in the late 80’s and early 90’s.

Armed with nothing more than a video camera and a strong will, my father recorded all of my games, created a killer highlight video reel and shopped it to college recruiters far and wide. God bless him. He watched my entire high school football career through a three inch video lens-it was before LCD screens.  I remember feeling the pressure after my senior season ended in late November to find a school that would take me. We had to scurry to compile the highlight tapes, so that we could get the finished product in front of recruiters before they committed their scholarships to another kid who had half of my talent. Eventually, my footage landed in the hands of Coach Dave Calcutta at South Carolina State University, and the rest is history.

To me, the athletic recruiting process has always been rooted in PR. The athlete wants to position himself, and the college recruiter wants to up-sell their school. If earning a college athletic scholarship is the ultimate goal, I encourage all student athletes and their parents to get their heads in the recruiting game early and use the many media tools available today to create exposure for the student athlete.

Using social media, here is a very general sample of the advice I give on creating PR/Media strategies for student athletes who want to land a coveted athletic scholarship.

Identify Your Athletic Strengths

Know what are your competitive athletic advantages on the field. You have quick feet. Your arm is a canon. You have excellent recovery speed from the free safety position. You provide indispensable run support at the line of scrimmage. Whatever it is you do best, know it. Own it. Those skills will be featured in any video footage you capture.

Get Involved

Good for you, you know how good you are as an athlete. So what.. Every other kid in the country at your position can do the same things you can. What do you off the field in the community, for the volunteer organization, or the mission down the street? What kind of character do you have outside of the chalk lines? College recruiters and the administrators that they report to want to know what kind of value you would bring to the school at large and the surrounding community.  If two athletes were being vetted and only one athletic scholarship was available, the odds are that the nod will go to the kid with the most potential to make the greatest impact on the field, as well as the community.

Identify Schools That Fit You

Speaking strictly of the athletic side (and not the academic side), seek out schools that utilize the kind of athletic skills that you have. If you’re a lanky receiver who likes the long ball, you might want to stay away from the triple option offensive of the Naval Academy.  Let the majority of your college picks be ideal fits, with a few dream schools sprinkled on your list.

Your Campaign

The tactics used to promote your identified strengths and school/community involvement should create the fun parts of your campaign for a scholarship. The tools I’d use include a blog, Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Flickr, Google Reader, UStream and a rolodex of media contacts segmented by the local papers of the schools you identified on your “fit you” list.

Here’s the abbreviated version of how the media tools could be used during your season-long PR/Media campaign to get you on the radar of college scouts.

Pre-Season

Create a Facebook page where your peers, community, co-workers of your proud parents, and others can connect with you online. This is your “base camp” for your fans. The one place where you can access them to communicate using multiple channels. Odds are that if you are in high school you already have a Facebook page, only now it will be used as a focal point for your concentrated recruiting campaign.

Launch a blog where you and your parents can chronicle your workouts, thoughts, fears, anxieties, and expectations leading up to football season. This will help you to build up the buzz in the community about your plans to help lead your team and school that year. Pitch the local print or online media about picking up your blog for their high school sports section. Local journalists love a local community story and hosting your weekly blog would help them fill space. Link your blog to Facebook so that it updates automatically with each blog post. Remember that not everyone follows blogs and not everyone follows Facebook. Linking them together helps you to share information across different platforms.

Capture video of you practicing your position drills on the field to showcase your athletic strengths. Create short clips to provide recruiters (and your new fans) just a glimpse of what makes you a special athlete. Also, capture video of you in the community performing your service to the community. Upload the video to Youtube. Blog about your workout video. Share your practice and community videos on Facebook. Take photos of the workouts and community service and post them as well on Facebook and Flickr.

Set-up feeds in Google Reader of news stories about the schools you’ve identified on your “fit me” list. Familiarize yourself with what’s going on with those athletic programs and schools, so that you can speak and blog intelligently about them.

As you build up a body of work online in pre-season, begin to pitch yourself and your online presence to local journalists in the markets of the schools you would like to attend. Send a note like, “Hello, I’m JOE SMITH, a senior tailback at ZYX school in YOUR STATE and I’m a big fan of DESIRED SCHOOL. I have a similar running style to SCHOOL’S PLAYER and will be looking to get on DESIRED SCHOOL’S radar this year during recruiting season. Here’s a link to online video footage of me and several online features of my background.  Check me out this year if you can remember;  you may be covering me next year.”  A bit brash, I know, but at this point you need to make folks aware of you.

Regular Season Game Plan

As the regular season gets underway, it’s much of the same with you blogging and sharing online through Facebook and Twitter. At this juncture, you should be capturing video footage of you at team practice to share online. Your practice footage should demonstrate to college scouts and the media that you are a committed team player and that you give 100% to game preparation.  College scouts want to see intangibles like how you prepare, which gives them a sense of the kind of team leader you would be.

Assuming you’ve developed some kind of interaction with local journalists and a few near the schools on your “fit me” list, it is ideal for your parents to use Twitter during your games to send real-time updates to journalists -and other followers of yours. “..Coach Jim, Joey just scored a 99 yard touchdown in overtime. Game over!”  Your Twitter updates will be linked to your Facebook page so others can get the updates sooner than the masses, too.

After the game, you should blog about your soreness and the highs and lows of the game. Post any news mentions of your team or you to your Facebook page. Twitter those mentions to the media contacts and college scouts that you’ve collected along the way.

After the Regular Season Ends, Recruiting Season Begins

So, for 10 games during the regular season -possibly more if your team earned a playoff spot-you’ve been creating a body of work that tracked your athletic prowess and community involvement. It’s now time to compile the best of your on-the-field highlights, SAT test scores, and personal information into a 5-7 minute video highlight reel.  Send a copy of that reel to all of the recruiters and journalists around the country that you’ve contacted during the year. Post the reel on Youtube and your Facebook page. Blog about it. Twitter the link to your followers. Continue to update your blog about the recruiting process, including updates about your parents’ involvement in the process. Be aggressive and proactive about calling the recruiters to schedule campus visits until you land the opportunity for you.

Signing Day

Set up a Ustream.com account which will allow you to stream live video over the internet. Post a “Countdown to Signing Day” note on your Facebook page and let everyone know that on National Signing Day you will be streaming live footage of you signing your college letter-of-intent to play football.  Blog about the anticipation and excitement that builds up to that day signing day, which normally is the first week of February.
Signing day is here! Twitter your decision of which school you chose just moments before you announce it to the public.

Post pictures from signing day on Flickr. Post video from signing day on Youtube. Link both to your Facebook page.

After you sign your letter of intent and the parties end, post a thank-you note for everyone who followed you and supported you through your recruiting experience.

Basketball season is coming……

Note: Certain NCAA rules limit the time period when college recruiters are able to engage high school student athletes.