Recruiting. From my own experience, if you ask a college coach if they love their jobs, all of them would say yes. If you ask them if there was one piece of their job they could get rid of or at least alter…it’s recruiting. Next to game planning and arranging for travel, I assume this is the biggest part of the job and probably one of the most important. In today’s climate of ‘win now’ you have to get the right players in the right positions on your team. You don’t want a pain in the ass where they won’t go to class, constantly late or have a problem with drinking too much. This biggest pain in the ass a coach can have on their team, is a cancerous distraction. That’s why a coach needs to be particular with the type of player they recruit. I think most people would agree.

But what goes into it? I mean these coaches travel across the country, look at hundreds of hours of video, field hundreds of emails and videos from parents that think their son/daughter is an all star. Of those hundreds of hours of observation and contact with various players from all over, a coach has to select 5…10 maybe on a good year. I see recruits come and go through the training room all the time. Seems like everyday a new lax recruit is coming through. Lately basketball has been parading kids of all ages through the training room and other facilities. I think we even has a high school sophomore the other day..good kid..big kid..but don’t you think it’s a little early to be deciding what college to go to? How is a kid going to know what he wants to study at the age of 16? I know, I know..these kids don’t come here to study..they come here to play ball and make it to the NBA. And this kid might be the next superstar..odds are he isn’t. It is strange to see how different coaches go through the recruiting process. One coach harps on developing good young adults that handle themselves in a professional manner. Another coach goes for the caring side meaning they try to show how well their child will be cared for and watched out for at my school. Yet another coach is just happy to get kids in and hope that they can play. While yet still another offered to jump directly into the cold tub if this kid committed to my school on the spot..”here take my phone…if you commit now, I will jump in this pool, clothes and all’. To say the least, I was shocked. I was egging the kid on to commit to get the coach to jump and then back out later if they didn’t want to come. It is only a verbal..you can back out of those, but the memory of the coach jumping in would have lasted a lifetime. The kid, to his/her credit, played it cool. I guess this player was use to people wanting them badly…still very strange to me.

Every year it’s the same thing…there are two seasons. The regular season where you play your games, and then the recruiting season where the future college players play their games. They shop around from school to school, looking at facilities, hearing what coaches have to say, being told they this program they are visiting today is the best place for them, how this school has a better department for a major than that school..so on and on. Then they commit and sign that letter of intent…great. Congrats..you picked a school and a sport and it’s off to school you go only to realize all that ass kissing to get you to come has stopped and the coach is wondering why the hell they wasted money on you. Haha..its always great to see the freshman light bulb go off when they realize everyone is as good or better than they are.

But it is what it is..a necessary evil. All college programs have to do it to stay afloat. Just a strange process.