4 Must Do’s Prior to Eval Period Visits & Summer Camps

Transcript →

• Always have your transcript on you. This is the single most important piece of paper or screenshot you can have on you. Ivy+ coaches need to see what kind of student you are over the long haul. Your transcript is a narrative of you as a student. The type of student you are outside of the classroom is infinitely more important to AO’s1 than what your tape looks like.

• AO’s are asking themselves: OK Johnny crushed freshmen year but then there was a massive dip in grades when he took AP courses, uh oh. Or, they’re wondering if there is an explanation for why your spring term sophomore year was so rough - family loss, health issue? There will be a spot on common app to explain this, but if you have major dips in grades, you’ll need an explanation.

• Don’t slow walk getting these to college coaches. The faster you get it to them the better. My advice is to fire it off in the very first DM you send. Just get it to them, get it out of the way. Slow walking a questionable transcript won’t improve your grades. If you’re not going to be an academic fit, it’s WAY better to know that now, in May, than it is to know that in August when you’ve already wasted the summer.

Senior Fall Classes →

• About 2/3 of recruits will come into the summer pre-read2 still needing to show they’re choosing rigorous courses for their senior Fall.

• Rigorous courses means Honors, AP’s or whatever the hardest version of a course is at your school.

• These courses are going to still matter quite a bit in your actual application process so be sure to have a screen shot of them on you.

Resume →

• Not always, but increasingly, coaches are asking players for working resumes. Why? The more information coaches have about you, the better they can go to bat for you during the pre-read and admissions process.

• If you worked a grueling 9 to 5 over the summer time bussing tables, they’d like to know that. It shows autonomy and maturity outside of a school context.

• If you lead a club or put together a really cool community service project that shows leadership above and beyond the classroom.

• Have a resume on you.

GPA Scales →

• Coaches think in 4.0 GPA scales, but HS’s have funky grading scales sometimes: 5.0 scales, 100 point scales, letter grades, pass/fails, 4.5 scales.

• Do your best on your own or with your guidance counselor to convert whatever you’ve got into a 4.0 scale and be sure you specify with coaches what your scale it.

• Don’t tell them you have a 4.0 and not tell them you have that on a 5.0 scale.

FBS/FCS

Right now all D1 coaches are allowed to be on the road recruiting players at their respective high schools. Unlike the Fall, however, coaches are allowed to watch players workout, attend practices and go to showcases.

For kids not geographically close to the Ivy+ schools3 this Eval Period is a great way to “steal” a camp from other players and get an early workout in front of coaches.

With gas prices +$4/gallon, registration fees, accommodations and food, even modestly far camps can run $100s of dollars. Before you go to camp, getting this extra Eval Period workout in may very well be the way you secured your offer or name at the top of the summer short list.

Be sure to walk away from these evals with a coach’s clear contact information and way to follow up. These workouts are a success when you use them to show up to summer camp being known and expected versus unknown and unexpected.

DII also falls into this.

NESCAC/DIII

The NESCAC and high academic DIII’s are not so strictly governed by NCAA bylaws re hosting camps, working players out and conducting visits.

Technically, they can more or less do these anytime they want. NESCACs will be able to have prospect camps in April and May to get the jump on Ivy/Patriot League schools who are constrained to being recruited just in June/July.

NESCACs as a league can only offer players starting after July 1st4 and, due to a new rule by the NCAA granting all players 5 years of eligibility instead of 4, it’s expected that more players are going to quickly commit sooner to smaller colleges rather than wait out FBS programs stalling for time to go shopping in the transfer portal before making a decision on who they’re taking in December.

It might be a boon for the Ivies who will probably get more bubble guys stuck waiting on FBS programs like Duke to commit, and likewise, for the NESCAC, they’re going to probably get more players to commit to them rather than wait for the Ivies to make a decision.

In Conclusion

May is never an easy month to manage, let alone with all these visits amidst potentially changing recruiting rules. But to summarize it all:

• Have your transcript

• Have your senior classes

• Have your resume

• Have an explanation for GPA scale

• Have an explanation for grade dips

• Have a copy of your test scores

• Be sure to walk away from visits to your school with coaches’ contact information

• Be prepared to move faster than usual this year with NESCACs especially. If you want a high academic school and you are wondering if the Ivies are coming, they aren’t. When there is real interest, you won’t have to wonder if you’re being recruited.

That’s all for now,

Coach Cahill

P.S. When you’re ready here’s are a few ways I can help:

• Get access to IvyCamps.co and see all Ivy+ college summer camp dates, registration links and reviews in one, single place - no more getting lost online.

• Pick up a copy of my High Academic Recruiting Playbook which tells you exactly how to get recruited to an Ivy+ college or university.

• Schedule a Discovery Call to see if we’re a fit to work together.

• Give my podcast, The High Academic Recruiting Show a listen. This week we discuss the NCAA’s new 5-For-5 Eligibility Rule Changes and what they might mean for you.

The problem with transferring is multifaceted:

• Coaches and programs cannot be held accountable for failing to deliver on verbal promises since there are no legally binding contracts between players and programs.

• Most people think they are getting into a better situation but there are 4 possible outcomes when you transfer - most of the time isn’t going work how you think it is:

  • A better situation (98% of people think this but only 2% find it)

  • The same situation (a lateral horizontal jump)

  • A worse situation (happens more than you think)

  • No situation, out of college football (sad but true)

• Academic credits can be lost (although the amount may vary from private to private, or public to private transferring) costing you more time and money.

• You won’t know how a transfer pans out until you’ve imploded your current situation: “Hey, I’d like to go see other people, but if I don’t find anything better, then I’d love to go back out with you” is usually not the way to keep a foot in the door at your old school.

In general, I find as college football becomes increasingly commodified and transactional, so are student-athletes becoming increasingly transient and transactional in how they treat/view their college experiences.

At what point does an employer say wow 3-4 schools for just a bachelor’s degree?

While college football is a lot of fun, and it can be leveraged to get admitted to a college that, but for football, you might not have normally gotten into, it shouldn’t be blindly pursued at the expense of setting yourself up for the next 4-5 decades professionally.

What’s your take?

Brendan Cahill

P.S. I have a list of 1,6000+ high academic families, players and college coaches who read my newsletter weekly, if you have a product or event you might like to market to them I’m taking on 1-2 advertisement slots starting in the new years. Shoot me an email here brendan@coachcahill.com

P.P.S. If you ever might like working together on your high academic recruiting, please set up your discovery call here: Discovery Call

College feels overwhelming because it’s abstract. For years, we tell high‑achieving students to prepare for a place they’ve never lived, with people they’ve never met, doing work they’ve never done. No wonder “college” becomes a source of stress instead of a plan.

Here’s the fix: make college concrete.

I don’t mean another recruiting camp. Camps can help with exposure, but they rarely show the daily reality of being a student or a teammate. The fastest way to lower anxiety and build readiness is simple: spend real time on a real campus doing real life.

What “real” looks like

• Sleep in a dorm. Set your own wake‑up. Do the laundry.

• Find your classes without a tour guide. Get lost. Get un‑lost.

• Eat with new people. Make new friends.

• Sit in on a class if possible. Notice the pace, the note‑taking, the questions.

Residential, multi‑day programs are perfect for this. A week on campus builds the muscles that matter most: agency, time management, communication. These aren’t abstract “skills.” They’re practiced behaviors that get less scary every time you do them.

If you’re also considering a high‑school transfer, use the same approach. Ask to shadow a student for a day. Don’t just read the course catalog—watch a history discussion, see how math class starts, and experience the hallway and walk ways between periods.

The point isn’t to chase a perfect school. It’s to build confidence and competence so any good‑fit college becomes a place you can actually live and learn. When college is concrete, it stops being a vague fear and starts being a specific experience.

Make college concrete, and the stress drops. The readiness rises. And the decision gets clearer—not because you guessed better, but because you practiced what most of your non-athletic downtime would actually be like. You practice at your position, why not practice at being a college student too?

Brendan

PS If you’d like to work together, schedule a discovery call with me today here.

Book Discovery Call Now

You don’t need to be a “pro” to decide to be a pro where you’re currently at.

• Pro’s play hurt.

• Pro’s study when they’d rather not.

• Pro’s go to extra help with a teacher they don’t like.

Pro’s realize help isn’t on the way, and it’s up to them to get what they want.

Pro’s do the thing they don’t want to do, but most need to, even if it looks ugly.

• “Oh that teacher just doesn’t like me”

• “My chem teacher didn’t give me the points back on my test I wanted”

• “I should be starting over that kid. Coach just doesn’t want to give me a chance”

All these excuses place blame on someone or something else.

That’s what amateurs do.

Amateurs see a problem coming down the pipeline and choose not to act - they don’t schedule extra help, they don’t do extra film, they think someone else - mom, dad, advisor - is going to swoop in to save the day.

And, unfortunately, we too often oblige this delusional thinking as coaches, teachers and adults in kids’ lives.

You might never get an A in your chem class, but being proactive, getting extra help and developing a functional relationship with your professor will get you a lot closer to that A than not.

You might not win the starting position, but sulking, pouting on the sidelines and avoiding extra coaching or film work with your position coach is a sure way to stay unhappy.

You might not have gotten the offer to the school you desired, but did you truly take your lifting, academics and nutrition seriously enough to get offered in the first place?

Pro or amateur, the choice is yours.

BC

But, the X, TikTok and Instagram algorithms don’t care about reality. They want one thing - engagement.

So, when there is a commitment or an offer from a big time FBS college program, the social algorithms go into overdrive pushing it out to timelines and “For You” feeds across the demographics most likely stop and scroll on it.

Less than 2% of HSFB players will end up at one of these big time schools, but 98% of their social media feeds will be consumed by content about those painfully few offers.

This creates the false expectation that you’re missing out, somehow.

Hard Work Gets You Closer, But It Doesn’t Get You There Entirely

Football, as a sport, also has in it a deeply embedded belief that if one works hard enough, they can overcome an obstacle in their way.

Think about the movie Rudy - a walk on at Notre Dame gets his brains bashed in for 4 years to play a few minutes of garbage time at the end of his senior game.

But, some obstacles are not things that hard work alone will overcome.

You can’t become genetically taller, or faster, or stronger.

Hard work will certainly get you a lot closer to your maximum ceiling of potential - whatever that may be - but it won’t make you an FBS level player if you’re a 5’8 175lb punter.

On Competition

The thing about these sought after FBS programs is that everyone is your competition.

Every kid in America has heard of Ohio State, Michigan or Stanford - certainly every kicker has.

But, take, say, Williams College or Wesleyan University - two of the best Ivy-League-like degrees you could get with DIII football.

Maybe just 8 kickers have ever heard of them, 5 might actually have the ability to get admitted to them, 3 might be offerable, and 1 might actually commit there.

8 billion competitors vs. 8 competitors are much better odds when looking at a school.

On Potential

Well meaning K-12 education also fosters a sense that a child’s potential is unlimited and malleable.

With the right support and belief, any child can do anything.

Again, “work hard” and you can be DI too.

But, while the human mind and spirit may have unlimited potential, the human body doesn’t.

So many recruits sit on great offers to great, but smaller DIII/DII colleges for too long waiting on a magical DI offer that never arrives only to see their smaller school offers fade.

You are not “settling” for less than you deserve when you get an offer to a school that respects your physical reality as an athlete.

The human mind is unlimited, the human body, less so.

On Expectations

The sport of football is vastly different from the activity of recruiting for football.

Football the sport rewards:

• Humility

• Hard work

• Toughness

• Quiet focus

• Being a great teammate

• Being where your feet are

Football the recruiting activity rewards:

• Selling yourself

• Constant posting on X

• Constantly reaching out to coaches

• Constantly rounding up on talent level

• Never being fully focused on where you are

How can do diametrically opposed value systems coexist in the same sports space is beyond me.

On Vagueness

Most recruits do not know what they want.

At best, most have some vague idea of what success looks like - “I want to go D1”

But, what does that mean?

Most kids can find the starter at the college they want to play for on Hudl and find their HS tape.

If they really want to know if they’re being realistic, they’d have to ask themselves, “Do I look anything like this?”

If a recruit was serious about going DI they’d have a specific plan, specific measureables and specific timelines.

But, the more specific your goals are, the more likely it is you’ll need to face reality to get them.

Vague recruiting goals are safe harbors for delusional thinking.

BC

If you’d like to work together, shoot me a DM @brendancahill_

• Be a great player - Are you making plays, starting and contributing - even if it is on special teams?

• Be a great student - Admissibility is the best kind of ability for many high academic colleges. Are you handling your business in the classroom?

• Be a great teammate - Are you the first to jump in on scout team? Are you the first into the team lift and last one leaving cleaning up? Coaches will ask your HS Head Coach what you were like. You want a good recommendation.

If you want to get better at recruiting, stop worrying about it. Be the best player, student and teammate you can be, right now, where you are.

BC

P.S. Ready to work together? Set up a no commitment discovery call today https://calendly.com/brendancahill_/new-client-call

Steals and Levels

Schools offer players when they think they are getting a steal - they think they are stealing a player from potentially a higher division level.

Remember: everyone recruits up a level:

• FBS Power 4 recruit near-NFL talent.

• FBS Group of 5 recruit Power 4 FBS talent.

• FCS recruits FBS talent.

• DII recruits FCS talent.

• DIII recruit DII talent.

Overestimation vs. Reality

The overwhelming rule of thumb is for families to sometimes overestimate their projections.

High school coaches are optimists. College coaches are cynics.

You can’t bank on a growth spurt that hasn’t happened yet. Unfortunately, recruiting rewards early bloomers.

Whatever you are right now, that is who the college coaches are assessing because that’s reality, for now.

Even “raw” players who lack experience still can end up at an FBS Power 4 program because they have the measurables coaches want there.

Communication Dynamics

While there is always some start up effort to get the recruiting flywheel spinning, after a certain amount of networking, if the ratio of player:coach communication doesn’t level out to around 50:50 you probably are not on the top of the recruiting board.

Sorting Schools: Cold, Warm, Hot

I’ve always found it helpful to sort recruiting interest by the following buckets:

• Cold Schools: These are schools that maybe started out interested, but then ghosted you or you simply cannot get any reply from no matter what you try. Often, these are the bigger DI programs every kid thinks they’re initially going to.

• Warm Schools: These are schools that have indirect, intermittent and inconsistent communication with you via DM/text. You feel like you are the one doing all the recruiting and chasing the coaches. You don’t feel pursued - you’re the pursuer. Schools here often stay in touch just enough so that you can have tabs kept on you but not so seriously that coaches lead you on. You’re the. back up option here.

• Hot Schools: These are schools that have direct, consistent and meaningful communication with you in real-time either over the phone, FaceTime or in person. You feel like they are the ones doing the recruiting. They are chasing you this time.

Hotter schools for newer recruits tend to be smaller colleges where there is less of a barrier to entry to talk to decision makers through and, there is a lower barrier to entry physically to be a recruit for.

Advice for Families

I usually advise most families the following:

• Cut the cold schools - you only have so much sanity and time to spread and right now, these are not good investments of time.

• Try the warm schools one more time, but don’t get your hopes up too high yet.

• Triple down your efforts on the hot schools.

It is easier to turn a school interested in you a 7 out of 10 to a 9 out of 10 than it is to take a school at a 0 out of 10 to a 4 out of 10.

Finding the Fit

Moreover, “finding a fit” comes down to really getting clear on what success looks like for everyone: mom, dad, player, high school coach.

Mom and dad may be totally level headed and realistic about what’s possible while the player may be stuck on the DI program that DM’d that one time.

It is so easy to get caught up in the recruiting gravity well and let its currents dictate your actions.

The best thing you can do to reclaim some sense of control is revisit that question: What does a successful, probable outcome look like for us at the end of all this?

Key Action Items

• Categorize Your Schools: Review your current recruiting contacts and sort them into Cold, Warm, and Hot buckets based on communication levels.

• Cut the Cold Ones: Immediately stop investing time in schools that have ghosted or gone silent—redirect that energy elsewhere.

• Test the Warm Schools: Reach out one final time to warm prospects with a targeted message, but set a deadline for response before moving on.

• Focus on Hot Schools: Double or triple your engagement with hot schools through follow-ups, visits, or sharing updates to elevate their interest.

• Define Success as a Family: Schedule a discussion with parents, the player, and coaches to outline realistic goals and what a "win" looks like in recruiting.

• Track Communication Ratios: Monitor your interactions weekly; aim for balanced 50:50 player-coach outreach to gauge true contention.

That’s all for now,

BC

P.S. If you're finding this recruiting process overwhelming—especially when balancing high-level academics with athletics at top-tier colleges and universities—and want hands-on help, I only work with 4-5 families at a time in my individual recruiting advising and mentoring. This keeps things focused and effective. I'm anticipating one opening at the end of the month—if you think it might be a fit for your family, email me here or reach out here to schedule your discovery call today.

We love the story of Rudy because it's not true.

Not the facts—those check out. But the story we tell ourselves about what it means.

Rudy spent four years getting beaten up by bigger, faster, stronger players. Four years of coaches who didn't know his name. Four years of doubt, from himself and everyone around him.

Then he got five minutes of garbage time.

Hollywood wants us to believe those five minutes made it all worthwhile. That suffering is noble if it has a happy ending.

But here's what we don't talk about: Most stories don't have Hollywood endings.

High school football is about potential. College football is about production.

High school coaches see a kid and think, "What could he become?" College coaches see the same kid and ask, "What has he done lately?"

The shift is brutal. And we're not preparing kids for it.

The problem isn't that college football is cutthroat. The problem is that we pretend it isn't.

We sell kids on the dream of playing for State U when they should be looking for a place where they'll be known, coached, and valued.

We optimize for the bumper sticker instead of the experience.

The measurables don't lie. Height, weight, speed, strength—these determine which schools will recruit you. But families still chase the Rudy myth, believing heart can overcome physics.

It rarely can.

Academic recruiting is equally unforgiving. The difference between a 3.4 and 3.9 GPA? Usually fifteen minutes of daily focus. The SAT score either gets you in or it doesn't.

Binary outcomes in a world that taught kids everything is possible.

Here's what nobody tells recruiting families:

You're not preparing for high school football anymore. You're entering a marketplace where your value is determined by what you produce, not who you are.

The coaches don't have time to explain this. They're too busy finding your replacement.

The onus is on you to understand the game has changed.

The real choice isn't between giving up and chasing the dream.

It's between chasing the right dream and chasing someone else's story.

Find the level where your kid will be known. Where they'll be coached. Where they'll contribute.

That's not settling.

That's strategy.

Brendan

P.S. When you’re ready, I am running a LIVE recruiting workshop with 10 spots open later this months. We’ll cover everything you need to get recruited to a school of choice, with Q and A and resources provided. RSVP here

P.P.S. Need recruiting help, fast? Schedule a recruiting strategy call with me here.

Well-meaning, but misguided coaches, private trainers, and family members can inadvertently nudge you into the college recruiting gravity well before you’ve had a chance to think critically and clearly about exactly what you want.

It’s easy to get enamored with the visits, coaches telling you all about your potential and the offers. But few players and parents are thinking very far downstream. Getting an offer to be on a team is very different than month 4-5 of being actually a part of said team.

Here is exactly what to do to avoid getting too far down the wrong recruiting road…

Read more

“No” means your dream school isn’t going to happen.

“No” means your kid’s happiness and security via a college degree is in limbo.

“No” means a recruit might bad mouth you on X, or worse, their dad’s burner X account might.

You are only going to hear three things in recruiting:

Read more

Illusory recruiting is something that feels nice, but ultimately doesn't materialize into serious college interest. Getting more likes. Getting more reposts. Getting more followers (who aren't coaches). Getting more "stars". These are all nice things. Perhaps it's better to have these things happening than nothing at all. But, real, substantive recruiting isn't this. It isn't digital. It's analog.

Yes, getting a coach from your target school to follow you back is an accomplishment. Yes, getting a coach from your target school to reply to a DM or email you sent them is also an accomplishment. But, ultimately, unless they are willing to get off X or email and have a conversation in real-time, whether on the phone or in person, it's still pseudo-recruiting.

Read more

The players with the best measurables have the best choices. Period.

The better your grades are, the more schools can admit you, thus the more schools that can offer you, potentially.

The taller, bigger, faster, stronger you are, the more schools that will offer you.

No one ever gets yelled at when the 6’5, 240 lbs defensive end didn’t pan out because he has the measurables that were safe to hide behind.

And, if your recruit doesn’t pan out, well, you can always just go pluck an already developed player out of the transfer portal that a smaller staff already invested a lot of time and mentoring into developing for you.

It’s not fair, but it is reality - at least for now.

The recruits who have the hardest time finding teams are the ones who fall into the murky valley of “meh.”

Their grades are not so good that they can afford to ignore their athletic performance, but their athletic performance isn’t good enough that they can afford to lose focus on their grades.

And so, they are just smart enough to get the higher academic schools talking to them, but are also maybe just physically talented enough to get the bigger schools talking to them. Ultimately, however, they are not enough of either - academics or athletics - to force either end of the spectrum to pull the trigger on an offer.

I think the hardest thing to do in recruiting or the college search is to not only plant a flag in the ground as a player and parent(s) saying: THIS is exactly what we are after, but also be realistic about where their grades and measurables can get them access to.

You could look at it another way.

• The lower your grades are, the better measurables you’d better have.

• The worse your measurables are, the better your grades better be.

• The tension between measurables and grades is inversely proportional in most cases.

Emotionally, this is an excruciating conversation to have with yourself, your child, or your player. The pressure to fulfill the potential of your child as an American sports parent is immense. But potential as a person is not to be conflated with potential as a sports player.

The families who cannot be honest with themselves about where their measurables get them access to are usually in for a long, challenging recruiting process.

It’s doubly challenging for coaches of players to be blunt with families about their child’s potential as a player too. HS coaches are paid to be optimists. College coaches are paid to be pessimists. HS coaches round up on talent. College coaches round down on talent. HS football and college football are the same sport, but played on different planets. Coaches mostly are torn between fostering their players’ dreams, but at the same time, not wanting them to lose touch with reality.

Recruiting is just hard no matter how you look at it.

That’s all for now,

BC

What if it's not about playing at the biggest school possible? What if it's instead about playing for a school where you can have the biggest impact?

You could be a four-year practice player and professional portal dipper, or you could go somewhere and be a four-year impact player.

The market for elite FBS talent is changing.

There has been a cascade effect from reduced roster sizes, transfer portal accessibility, and increasingly talented players:

• NFL-caliber talent now starts for FBS schools

• FBS-caliber talent now starts for FCS schools

• FCS-caliber talent now starts for D2/D3 schools

The market for top FBS players is small and only getting smaller.

But the market where your talent intersects with your ability to make an impact remains untapped.

The real win isn't in playing D1 football. The real win is in finding the place where you can matter.

Brendan

PS When you’re ready, let’s talk. I’m solely focusing on high academic, scholar athletes college placement with The Recruiting Group.

If you/your child have 3.6+ GPA, 1300+ SAT, are driven to leverage your athletics into placement at a top 25-type colleges and universities, please schedule a discovery call.

We only work with a limited roster of less than 10 families at a given time.

Schedule Today

Recruiting’s not only hard, but it also requires learning how to sell oneself in a sport that holds humility as one of its core leadership tenets.

Selling yourself is one of the most useful skills you can takeaway from recruiting.

It’s the first time in a young person’s life when they’ll need to learn how to “talk to big people” and ask them for something they want with real risk in them saying ‘no’

For most of a kid’s life it is the adult’s job - the parent, teacher or coach - to go to them, give them the benefit of the doubt, and give them opportunities by virtue of them being themselves.

It’s not a zero sum world, nor should we want K-12 education to be one.

But, recruiting - especially as it is in 2025 - is zero sum, is definitely a business and has real stakes for college coaches. Real like needing to tell your wife you got fired, need to sell the house and move across the country for a new job, real, if they get it wrong on too many recruits.

There is a top 2% of freak recruits whose frames will get them recruited to Ohio State even if they do everything else wrong. I love this line by a friend who runs their own recruiting consultancy for WR’s in North Carolina:

I don’t care if you’re from Mars, if you can play football, coaches will find every excuse to play you.

For the other 98% of mere mortals reading this, you need to learn the skill of sales.

Sales is a tortured word in 2025. We all think of the pushy car salesman who won’t take no for an answer.

But, sales when done well, can actually be an enjoyable, or at least not awful, experience for everyone involved.

The purpose of selling isn’t to make the sale. It is to decide on whether or not the sale should take place in the first place.

When you speak with college coaches you are not trying to get them to offer you, you are trying to determine if there is a fit academically, athletically and personally between both sides. If there isn’t a fit, there’s no sale, but more importantly, there’s no hard feelings.

A great salesman won’t have their day ruined because you didn’t buy the Cadillac - it’s a car, not them. But, a great recruit may still have a bad day if a coach says there is no fit because they count who they are as an athlete with who they are as a person.

It’s very difficult to ask a young person to bifurcate their play from their personality, but to finish recruiting with some semblance of sanity, you need to learn how to do this.

You are not your performance. You are also not what a college coach assumes about you who says no. You are you.

Blair Enns, author of a great book Win Without Pitching recommends never expressing desire that exceeds the level of desire you are receiving back from someone you are trying to do a deal with. Recruits can get overeager, too fast. You should match the energy level, nearly, of the coaches recruiting you. Exceed it, and you risk turning them off from neediness. But, be too cold, and you risk losing momentum as well. It’s a delicate balance.

You probably don’t need to follow up 12 hours after you sent an unread DM, maybe wait 72 hours for that!

Moreover, it’s also worth noting that you’re going to hear two things a lot:

1. No

and/or

2. Nothing

The mathematics of recruiting (which are highly anecdotal to my own experiences) tells me that usually 1 out of every 20 coaches will reply to you with genuine interest, and 1 out of every 20 genuine replies will lead somewhere towards a tangible offer. That means - again very bad math here - you’re looking at 40+ outreaches before you might see any possible tangible movement in the right direction.

If a coach says no, be thankful. A no is at least something you can act on. You now can follow up:

I really appreciate the honesty, not every coach is honest. Was there something specific in my tape or academics or that I did that might have been the reason why you are going in another direction? I’d like to improve however I could, this is all business and totally not personal. Thank you!

Yet, most coaches won’t say no outright for a few reasons. First, they don’t want the drama of dealing with an immature high school recruit flipping out or their parent impersonating them on their X account flipping out - these are both still high school kids and parents who don’t understand how the game of recruiting is played. Second, there is a whacky scenario in recruiting where your 5th option becomes your only option. Coaches will want at least good enough communication lines with their backup options that they can reignite in a hurry if needed.

At a fundamental level, to get good at selling yourself, you need to see yourself as doing something noble and helpful.

If you truly believe you are going to help a program win more games and score more points, then you have an ethical duty to communicate your value to college coaches who need you to keep their paychecks secure.

Mastering this skill is about more than just recruiting—it's about building confidence, resilience, and communication skills that will serve you well in every aspect of life. Remember, advocating for yourself today lays the groundwork for a brighter future beyond athletics.

You are not bothering coaches when you DM them. They are mostly big boys and girls who are not going to lose sleep over another DM from a hopeful recruit.

Key Takeaways:

• Selling Yourself: Recruiting teaches young athletes the invaluable skill of self-promotion and professional communication.

• Rejection is Part of the Process: Expect to hear “no” or nothing at all more often than not. Use these moments to grow and improve.

• Sales Mindset: Focus on whether there’s a true fit between you and the program, rather than forcing a result.

• Resilience Matters: Remember that you are not your performance or a single coach’s opinion. Rejections are part of the path.

• Effective Communication: Match the energy of the coaches recruiting you, follow up thoughtfully, and avoid appearing too needy or disengaged.

• Numbers Game: Understand that successful recruiting takes persistence—expect to send dozens of messages before gaining traction.

• Noble Duty: If you believe you can contribute to a program, see it as an ethical responsibility to communicate your value.

That’s all for now,

Brendan

P.S. This was a more philosophical article, but if you’d like more tactical specific help with talking to coaches, you might want to check out my book here, Exactly What To Say To Coaches.

P.P.S. When you’re ready, let’s set up a free discovery call. I only take on one new family a month to work with.

I just really loved the program, I worked hard, believed in myself and my hard work is what I credit with my success.

Maybe they don’t exactly say this, but generally the fallacy of recruiting is:

Hard Work = Success

But, this is overly simplistic and leaves a lot out of the recruiting discussion.

That’s what we’ll discuss today:

Genetics

The player’s frame recruits itself.

There is no question that size, weight, height, speed and strength are the starting block of all D1, but especially FBS P4 recruiting.

If you don’t have the measurables, you won’t get your film looked at, no matter how good your film is - maybe with 1-2 freak exceptions a year.

Yes, hard work can max out what a player’s frame and genetics are capable, but a 1000lbs squat still won’t make you 6’5.

Key Points:

• Frame and measurables start the conversation the bigger the school you’re looking at.

• Hard work can maximize one’s athletic potential, but it does not, itself, increase your ceiling.

Network

While it is possible to be a freak on an island - the best player in an otherwise football backwater who gets noticed despite poor competition - it is a lot easier to “cut the line” and get noticed when you play for a legendary, well-known HS head coach or have a private trainer with a large network or you crushed a few regional camps.

Behind a lot of recruits who get to that FBS P4 level - after they hit the measurables and game tape - is a head coach who relentlessly advocates for them with their college coach network.

At many schools player placement is the de facto full time gig of the head coach.

The same is true in the weird, but sometimes just as valuable private trainer world. Dive deep enough into the weeds of OL, DL, 7 on 7, QBs + WRs or kickers and you’ll find some personalities that belong more on Tiger Kings or Narcos than a football field.

But, you’ll also find some private coaches with exhaustive networks of college coaches they advocate with their players for.

Key Points:

• Play for a well-known HS program.

• Play for a Head Coach who is a relentless advocate for player placement.

• Train with a private coach with a vast network of college coaches.

Academics

The better your grades are, the more admissible you are.

Yes, college football has changed at the D1 level, by and large, but the higher academic schools are the ones that HS players should be vying for.

They still have academic moats around them that a great GPA can overcome out of HS - even over a more physically talented portal player.

• Take rigorous courses - AP, Honors. You don’t need a 4.0 or A+ in every course, but you should be able to post a B/B+ in the super hard ones. Strength of class schedule beats a very high GPA with a weak course schedule.

• Test optional also isn’t quite optional. It’s significantly easier to get recruited when you simply have the ACT/SAT score coaches want to see on your X profile vs. haggling with admissions over what each course means.

Timing, Chance, Luck

If we’re really honest with ourselves, it is hard to know what was the thing that got a player over the hump to get an offer.

• Was it measurables alone?

• Was it game tape alone?

• Did coaches not want you but their star LT just left so now they need a body?

• Was it your HS coach alone?

• Was it your private coach?

• Was it your ranking?

• Was it your GPA?

• Was it your financial aid number (for higher academics)?

Where responsibility for success between one facet of recruiting ends and another begins is incredibly difficult to tell.

That’s why it is better to think of recruiting in this way:

You are stacking the deck so high by lifting, studying, playing well, networking with coaches, attending camps, playing for a great team, that it would be unreasonable for a college coach to not offer you.

Timing, chance and luck always play a role in recruiting, but how big of one is largely unknowable - even in retrospect and definitely in the moment.

Summing it all up:

I am not against hard work - I am a big fan actually.

But, hard work alone does not - and cannot- always account for recruiting success.

There are deeper things at play beneath the surface - some more controllable than others like your grades versus your 40 time.

The better you’re aware of these the better you can plan your recruiting strategy.

That’s all for now.

Brendan

P.S. When you’re ready, here are 3 ways I can help you

1. Book a free consultation on your recruiting strategy.

2. Book an X Profile Breakdown to get more coaches to follow you on X.

3. Buy a copy of my ebook: Exactly What To Say To Coaches.

Read time: 2 minutes

Junior days do 3 essential things:

• Turn college from a concept into something concrete.

  • Boots are on the ground.

  • You are meeting coaches live.

  • You are getting as real of a feel for a place as you can.

  • The relationship with coaches shifts from digital on X to analog and in person.

• Generate buzz in your own recruiting and garners other teams’ interest.

  • Documenting your visit to X

  • Tagging coaches who hosted you on X

  • Tagging 247 Sports or fan accounts with large followings to juice your retweets.

  • Get FOMO working in your favor instead of against it.

• Get you ‘top of mind’ to be evaluated during schools’ summer recruiting camps.

  • Almost no one gets offered sight unseen except for the top 10% of recruits during a junior day.

  • You will need to perform and show out live during summer camps.

  • Junior days help ensure you show up known, liked and with a few coaches on staff already hoping you’re the guy.

Conversely, junior days can’t do these 3 things (but everyone falsely assumes they can):

• Junior days do not fix your measureables:

  • They won’t make you taller, stronger or faster.

  • They won’t improve your GPA or that math class.

  • They won’t make your SAT/ACT scores higher or transcript more rigorous.

• Junior days aren’t offers aka Likes Ain’t Offers:

  • It is possible to “win” junior day season, and attend every school’s junior day only to bomb during summer camp season.

  • Just because a coach follows you back, and hosts you for a visit, it doesn’t mean you’re exceptionally special. They host 100s of players and their parents - maybe even 1000s a year.

  • You still need to work your tail off and hit the nail on the head during summer camps.

• Junior days won’t make you happy:

  • While you can go to 30 junior days, you don’t need to. You’re not a failure as a parent if your kid doesn’t attend 47 junior days.

  • You need to decide what “enough” is for you and your family - enough financially, emotionally, academically, athletically. And that is really hard.

  • They are A tool but they are not THE end all, be all tool.

Summing it all up:

• Junior Day Benefits: Provide a concrete college experience, generate buzz, and increase visibility for summer camps.

• Junior Day Limitations: Cannot improve physical attributes, guarantee offers, or guarantee happiness.

• Junior Day Importance: Essential for building relationships with coaches and getting noticed, but performance at summer camps is crucial.

That’s all for now,

Brendan

• You might be a guy for us!

• We really like your film! Send more!

• We need to see how a few other things play out before we can make a call but we’re always open to you!

• Insert random fire emojis and fist bump emojis on X DM’s.

Recruiting shows us starkly that two people can hear the same thing and come to totally different conclusions.

If you have to wonder what a coach meant by what they said, they didn’t really mean it.

If they are not the one reaching out to, engaging and doing the bulk of the recruiting then you are actually the one who is recruiting them. Sometimes successful recruiting outcomes start like this, but most of the time, the level of engagement and initiation you receive from a coach is correlated loosely to your ultimate outcome.

If you feel like you’re pulling teeth just to get a DM reply, then you’re not being recruited by that coach. You are probably Plan G, not Plan A.

A fundamental truth of recruiting is this: it incentivizes coaches to keep maximum options open for as long as possible which is usually achieved through ambiguity.

This puts the onus on families and players to be the deciders for when to move on from a coach that isn’t proving fruitful. This is also agonizing for families because for many anything short of an offer from Stanford or FBS D1 feels like failure in the On3Recruiting ecosystem we find ourselves in.

They feel like they’re limiting their potential, or their kid’s potential.

College coaches aren’t evil. They’re, most of the time, just trying to make sense of an ever-changing recruiting landscape just like you are you, reading this. Most empathize with the plight of kids they never reply to in their DMs - they just don’t have the ability to reply to everyone, and most don’t want the drama of telling a kid Hey sorry Johnny, you are not a D1 talent you need to be D3 in your goals.

If you move on, know that you are not limiting your potential if the school you are moving on from was never a realistic goal - be it academically, athletically or personally - to begin with.

It’s not settling it’s accepting reality.

Key Takeaways

• Follow coaches’ behaviors, not always their words.

• Are you doing the recruiting or is the coach doing the recruiting? Who is the initiator? Who ever is the more proactive party is the one doing the work.

• Recruiting incentivizes maximum ambiguity for long periods of time, you will need to decide when to move on as most coaches don’t have the time, or stomach for potential drama to tell every kid that.

Brendan

PS When you’re ready, schedule a free consultation call with me here calendly.com/brendancahill

You may need to hop in at Right Guard when you’ve only been a Left Tackle.

Maybe you need to switch over to OLB instead of your usual Safety spot because you’re a better tackler than the back up.

Or, maybe you need to accept that you’re the stud WR and you are needed to draw double coverage sometimes to open up the 2nd and 3rd WR’s.

No football season escapes injuries - almost nothing goes according exactly to plan.

The coaches that really know what they are doing - there’s more than you think - when they speak with your high school coach, they’ll know the story about the position switch or change in production.

The best answer your HS coach can give?

Man, so-and-so is just such a great team player, doing what we needed him to in a tight spot. He really owned it.

Brendan

PS Need help with your recruiting? Feel free to schedule a call here Calendly.com/brendancahill