The Life of a Recruit

In a typical season, they can expect thousands of pieces of mail, hundreds of media guides, countless phone calls and enough advice to make an 18-year-old's head spin. Being a top high school player ensures the nation's best recruiters will be in touch. ESPN.com takes you inside the recruiting process with a look at what happens on a recruiting visit. Also, ESPN.com recruiting analyst Tom Lemming breaks down the best recruiters in the country and lists the head coaches who are the best at closing the deal.

Shut up and listen.

Don't lie. Ever.

Stay informed.

Practice relentlessness. Daily.

Get used to baby-sitting.

So are the aforementioned suggestions five tips to better living? Well, only if you earn a living as a college football recruiter.

The first day recruits can sign letters of intent is Wednesday. Most good recruiters by now have followed the first four steps in their quest to obtain verbal commitments from the recruits their staff targeted long ago.

Nonetheless, even the most successful schmoozer understands he cannot relax until he has the letter of intent – signed, of course – in his hand.

"When a kid does commit early, it's basically making sure you baby-sit him all the way to the finish line, when he signs on the dotted line," said Georgia Tech's Bill O'Brien, in his eighth year on the recruiting trail. "Because a verbal commitment is non-binding, most coaches don't respect the fact that the prospect has committed to your school. They're going to keep calling. To most coaches, an early commitment just means 'I know where that guy is leaning.'

"They're going to go after him just as hard as they were before."

According to several recruiters, though, it doesn't matter how hard you pursue a recruit if you don't keep your mouth shut and ears open. Recruits like to be seen and heard.

Shut Up and Listen
"I think the best recruiter is a recruiter that listens to the prospect," said O'Brien, who learned his craft from Georgia Tech coach George O'Leary. "He just doesn't talk over and over and over again and not let the kid say anything. I think you need to listen and understand.

"Because a lot of times if coaches listen to what the kid is saying, you'll find out a lot more about his interest level in your school. It sounds simple. But I think if you ask around you'd find some assistant coaches that don't listen as much as they should."

Don't Lie – Ever
At times it appeared as if every coach in America was pursuing Kevin Jones, the gifted tailback from Cardinal O'Hara in Pennsylvania. Jones, who felt a strong allegiance to Penn State, eventually committed to Virginia Tech.

Nothing against Penn State and the rest of the suitors, but Jones apparently was won over by the frankness of the Virginia Tech staff.

"I know he was impressed with the genuineness of the coaches," Cardinal O'Hara coach George Stratts said. "He trusted them. And he felt very comfortable with them."

Truthfulness and trust have always been vital ingredients in the recruiting process. However, they have become even more important with the explosion of the Internet and recruiting publications.

"You're in the information age," Georgia assistant Rodney Garner. "There is so much at their fingertips. The only negative part about it is that some of the things available to them, it is not accurate information. Especially when they get into these chat rooms.

"People are posting different things and there is no accountability for it to have any validity at all."

	“	You better make sure you cover all your bases. You have to be persistent. You have to work diligently. And always look for the winning edge. What may turn this guy on may not turn that guy on. ”
		— Georgia's Rodney Garner

For example, say you're recruiting a hotshot quarterback and you tell him you're going to sign two quarterbacks. Then he gets home, jumps on the Internet and reads otherwise. You've got a problem.

"(Recruits) understand the numbers that are involved with the number of scholarships," O'Brien said. "They understand that schools only have a limited number of spots. They know what their peers are thinking out there and where they're looking.

"If you tell a kid you're only recruiting two quarterbacks and then he reads that night on the Internet there are three or four quarterbacks looking at Georgia Tech, that prospect wonders what's going on there.

"That's why you have to be at all times honest and up front with these guys."

Stay Informed
Recruiting magazines. Recruiting web sites. Recruiting chat rooms.

Recruiting news and recruiting experts are everywhere.

A coach who doesn't read and study as much as he can is a coach who won't last long as a recruiter.

O'Brien, Garner and their colleagues all have stories about reading daily updates about recruits who seem to shift their leader board daily.

"The job has changed because of the different sources of information with the Internet and recruiting magazines and there are direct quotes from prospects," O'Brien said. "You need to make sure you know what somebody is saying because as anyone knows, a 17- or 18-year-old kid changes his mind from day to day. It's just the normal thought process for a kid."

Garner, who admits he has been recruiting "for 11 long years," added: "You have to spend a great deal of damage control putting fires out that you wouldn't have had to do in the past. Now as the recruiting season comes to a close it seems like rumors are popping up everywhere. As soon as you disprove this one then there is another one."

Practice Relentlessness Daily
NCAA rules limit the amount of contact recruiters can have with prospects. That means you have to take advantage of every opportunity to remind your top prospects that they are the most important people in your life.

Get to know them. Get to know their parents. Get to know their siblings.

"You better make sure you cover all your bases," Garner said. "You have to be persistent. You have to work diligently. And always look for the winning edge. What may turn this guy on may not turn that guy on."

And once you get a commitment:

Get Used to Baby-Sitting
"You're trying to appease everybody," Garner said. "Everybody gets their feelings hurt if they hear you called this recruit and you didn't call that recruit. It's tough.

"It's all about marketing today, too. It is strange but before they ever get on your campus they are wanting you to explain to them how you're going to market them. Every year it is getting worse."

These guys do have funny stories to share as well, though.

O'Brien has heard O'Leary tell stories from when he was an assistant on constantly on the recruiting trail.

"The most hilarious stories are when the rules weren't as strict," O'Brien said. "On signing day there would be five cars parked outside of a kid's house, with coaches in them. The kid would come out of the house and point to that one car and say, 'That's the one I'm going to.'

"Those other four assistants would drive off and head to the next house."

More recently, O'Brien edged a rival recruiter (and friend) for an important prospect.

The rival recruiter hoped to convince the Georgia Tech recruit to change his mind. To that end, he went to the player's school and waited outside of the classroom. He waited and waited and waited.

"The kid was taking a test," O'Brien said, laughing. "There was a door in the back of the classroom and when the bell rang the kid ran out the door. He didn't want to see the coach."

Funny thing is that you can follow the five tips to better recruiting, do everything absolutely flawlessly and still fail to get the job done. Sometimes the decision of an 18-year-old high school senior hinges on something out of your control.

Such as location.

Wisconsin assistant Kevin Cosgrove was able to go into St. Louis and land two key players – cornerback Jamar Fletcher and defensive tackle Wendell Bryant. Fletcher won the Thorpe Award as a junior this season and is expected to be a first-round draft pick in April. Bryant has decided to return for his senior season and could be one of the top defensive linemen in the nation in 2001.

Both Fletcher and Bryant were impressed with Cosgrove's work, with Wisconsin coach Barry Alvarez and the academic reputation of Wisconsin. However, they were equally impressed by Madison's reputation as a safe city.

"I feel safer with him up there," said Karen Wells, the mother of Bryant. "Madison is a small town and there isn't a whole lot of stuff going on."

Fletcher needed only a few days to fall in love with both the UW campus and the city of Madison when he moved there in 1997. Bryant was smitten the next year.

"I told him that it was much different than St. Louis," Fletcher said. "People are nice, friendly. It's a great place to raise your children.

"I came here and couldn't believe that people leave their doors unlocked."

Nor could Bryant.

"In St. Louis, you leave the doors unlocked and your crib would be gone," he said. "They would steal your whole house."

Funny, people keeping their houses wide open helped lock up a recruit. It's a strange business, this recruiting. And the good recruiters know the best they can do is follow the guidelines and let an 18-year old decide their future.

Jeff Potrykus covers the Big Ten for the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.