A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing...

Recently, I've set up a google web search that allows me to daily collect the news articles and blogs that are written about college athletic recruiting. In the summaries, I noticed some local newspapers who publicize a seminar being held at the local high school. Headlines say "Former Notre Dame asst coach to speak at high school", or "Former Division II College Head Coach to speak on NCAA recruiting at local high school". Wow, a celebrity visiting our home town school? And for free? Buried in the short announcement was a mention that the former coach was now representing XYZ Scouting service.

While I knew there were a few companies who did seminars for high schools on college athletic recruiting, I was troubled by the number of high school administrators who did not realize their own complicity in steering their students towards the recruiters. I can imagine the phone call:

Hello? This is George so and so, former asst at Michigan. I'll be in your area next month and would love to come by and speak to your varsity athletes about the college recruitment process. You know, I recruited several All Americans when I was at Michigan...maybe the next one's at your school! Charge? No charge! I'm doing it for the kids!


High School budgets are tight, and little money is often made available for activities coordinators to bring in college experts --most struggle to pay the daily bills, and to keep the games moving. Most of these well intended folks realize that they don't have the expertise to guide their students, so they want to bring someone in to provide this information. A good idea, right? It is...except when the "expert" you bring in has another agenda.

Companies who are willing to provide one of these "scouts" (former college coaches) to speak do so for one reason--the high school is providing access to a potentially lucrative database --the parents and student athletes who attend. Once the seminar is done, names and email addresses are collected by the presenter and sent back to corporate headquarters. They are placed on a mailing list that markets recruiting services, video services, scholarship locator services to the student athlete, etc. Cost? Anywhere from $600-$1,000 per person, provided almost exclusively to that company.

Assuming that 100 families attend the seminar and only 10% sign on to the follow up marketing pitch...at an average of $750 per service, the company made $7500 for presenting that "free" seminar. Worse, the families who are then marketed to believe their school's athletic program has blessed this company's approach because the speaker was brought in by them.

What's the moral of this story? Be careful of those who offer you something for nothing--someone usually pays for it anyway...and it shouldn't be your student athletes!