The Economy and College Recruiting Strategies

In light of the hardships faced in all facets of the American economy, even college football coaches are finding, says Dan Tudor of DoubleAZone.com, they're being forced to become more creative when it comes to recruiting student-athletes out of high school.

Tudor refers to the current economic decline's effect on the collegiate recruiting process as "penny-pinching prospecting," a circumstance in which athletic departments and coaching staffs alike are having to "focus on a different set of strategies when it comes to recruiting more intelligently during these turbulent economic times."

Tudor offers readers of his articles three main strategies which he feels coaches can use to enhance recruiting during such a period of economic downturn. Those include:

• Advising coaches to use a conversation about tuition costs, scholarship amounts, and other money-related issues as a lead-in to initial discussions with prospects and their families. Tudor maintains that it is "tough enough to sell your school at [a] time when you have no athletic money to give," but many coaches find they "compound the challenge by putting off the conversation" until the end of the recruiting process. Coaches should instead, he continues, learn upfront what concerns both the prospect and family members have when it comes to selection of a collegiate program and determine whether or not the university possesses the resources to make attending the school a reality.
• Rather than focusing on the use of recruiting materials which "list all of the wonderful aspects of your university and program," Tudor advises coaches to "create a new story" for prospects that is "totally and completely centered around them." Each recruit necessarily needs to be approached on an individual basis, with the coach making his conversations with a desired student-athlete "personal relevant to their goals, and something that sets [his] program apart" from other universities.
• Finally, Tudor expresses that coaches need to begin focusing as much energy and time on the parents of a prospective recruit as they do the prospect himself. "In times like these," he maintains, "parents are going to wield some heavy influence over the choices their sons and daughters make. Even when a full scholarship is being offered, parents are going to be a big influence in the final decision." He emphasizes this point by citing a study done recently by his organization, Selling for Coaches, which identified that the most important single factor in making a decision to commit or not commit to a collegiate football program for a student-athlete was a parent's appraisal of the program as a whole. "Prospects today," Tudor writes, "want and expect their parents to help them with their decision . . . [an] even more important [factor] during these uncertain economic times." Coaches must, consequently, begin to adjust their recruiting methods to include a singular message that applies to both prospect and parents. "In many cases," the author concludes, "this strategy will prove to be the most beneficial changes coaches make in 2009."