College bound student athletes receive lots of communication from college football programs. These can include mailers, emails, social media messages, phone calls, in person visits, and invitations to camps. Students do not have time to visit every school that sends a message nor the money to attend more than a handful of camps. But, they do not want to miss out on a legitimate opportunity. Unfortunately some recruiting communication can be deceiving, and not a good indicator of a future offer. To an untrained eye, it is hard to distinguish between genuine interest and a generic reach-out.
To understand the dynamics of the recruiting communication you must first understand how coaches begin the recruiting process each year. You can read more about the first phase of the recruiting process in our guide by clicking HERE. College coaches create “recruiting boards” with the athletes they are interested in. The athletes on the board are ranked and the rankings determine how much time a program will spend on recruiting the athlete and how likely that athlete is to receive an offer/roster spot. You can read more about the recruiting boards in our article. It is important to know if and where you are on the board. Knowing where you stand with each school helps you make decisions on where to spend your time in the recruiting process. Here is how to tell where you are on the recruiting board.
Ask the coach that is recruiting you. If you don't know who that is, then they probably aren't recruiting you very hard
Ask your high school coach to reach out to the college coach to find out how serious they are about recruiting you
Think about how much time a coach had to spend communicating with you
If you are part of the Verified Watch List you can look at the Head Coach Top 10 List tab. If the school's name is on that list, that means that you are one of top10 players they are looking at on the Verified Watch List and on their recruiting board.