With less than two weeks remaining before national signing day for high school football players, most of the area’s top talent has avoided the tired tradition of squeezing last-minute drama out of their announcements.
In fact, all but two of this year’s Times Free Press Dynamite Dozen — the area’s top 12 prospects — have committed to college programs and have no plans to take any further visits before signing day.
But there are numerous others still shopping or hoping for offers to come through, and three area coaches who have experienced the whirling changes in recruiting firsthand — Red Bank’s Tim Daniels, Rhea County’s Jason Fitzgerald and East Hamilton’s Ted Gatewood — agree the one piece of advice for every prospect is to take away the emotion and treat it as a business decision.
“The recruiters treat it that way, so the kids and parents better do the same thing,” Fitzgerald said. “College programs are always looking for the next big thing, so a kid can be replaced really fast. From start to finish, the recruiting process is a good introduction to real life.
“I tell every kid who has played for me or ever asked my advice to make sure they don’t go to any school for the coach. Most colleges are a revolving door now for coaches. You’re going to be really lucky if you have the same head coach for five years, and you almost certainly won’t keep the same position coach. You better go somewhere that when football is over, you can see yourself being happy and getting a college education.”
Both Fitzgerald and Daniels learned that lesson as players. Fitzgerald tore his ACL in the third practice of his freshman season at Auburn, and Daniels was diagnosed with cancer after his second season at Tennessee. While neither was able to fulfill the promise with which his career began, each stayed on campus to earn a degree.
All three coaches went through the recruiting process as players more than 20 years ago and have since served as advisers to the kids who play for them. They agree that among the most notable of the vast differences from then to now is how early both college scouts and recruiting analysts begin gauging talent.
“There are freshmen and even middle school kids that ask me what they need to do to get noticed by college coaches,” said Gatewood, who returned to coaching after a couple of years of working as a trainer at Velocity Sports. “There are so many variables. The first thing is they have to have the God-given talent and the size that colleges are looking for. You can outwork the next guy, but if you don’t have the size and the ability it’s not going to help a lot.
“After that, what younger kids need to understand is that there are hundreds of kids with great size and ability, so if you had better not neglect your grades until their junior or senior year.
“The biggest difference for me is the amount of attention these kids get from such an early age. When I was being recruited, there were senior camps and junior camps to help get you noticed, but now if a kid isn’t on the recruiting radar by his sophomore year, he’s got a lot of ground to make up.
“But no matter how much it changes, one thing will stay the same. If a kid can play, college coaches will find him.”
Contact Stephen Hargis at shargis@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6293.