ODDS N ENDS
After two football recruits were denied admission to Clemson for academic reasons, the schools president created a task force to examine the schools admission process for athletes. Among the task force members are Assistant football coach Dabo Swinney, and assistant basketball coach Ron Bradley. Only one other coach was appointed to the task force, baseball coach Jack Leggitt. The fact that two of three coaches on the panel have the most to win or loose when it comes to admissions for recruited athletes, is in itself humorous…

And what arrived in my varsityedge.com email box a few weeks ago. An email from a Division 1 swimming coach from a Big State University asking me the following…” We are looking for bright, enthusiastic competitors who love to work hard and work toward their goals. If you have anyone who might be interested, male or female, please let me know.” So not every college is dripping (really, no pun intended) with hundreds of recruits and coaches often will employ any means necessary to find recruits.

Ryan Leaf, former NFL quarterback can add men's head golf coach to his resume as he takes over as head coach at West Texas A&M a D2 school.

NEWS ON INDIVIDUAL COLLEGES

Starting in 2007-08, the University of South Dakota will make it’s debut as a Division 1 program making the jump from Division 2 for it’s exploratory year in 07-08. The first official D1 season will begin in 08-09

The Uni-versity of New Orleans released a strategic plan February 7 that calls for the addition of men’s and women’s soccer, men’s swimming and diving, and softball within the next five years. The institution suspended nine of its 15 intercollegiate sports after Hurricane Katrina. The strategic plan offers two options, including one that would add the three programs and restore men’s and women’s tennis, women’s golf, and women’s cross country. A second, less expensive option would restore the tennis programs, women’s golf, women’s track and field, and men’s and women’s cross country. Officials hope to generate enough funding to choose the first option

Kutztown University of Pennsylvania will add women’s lacrosse and women’s bowling beginning with the 2007-08 school year, bringing the number of varsity sports at Kutztown to 23

Principia College is putting the finishing touches on a 15 million dollar athletic center.

Riverland Community College will field a softball team for the first time in three seasons this spring.

The College of St. Scholastica (D3) has named its first football coach in its 95-year history. Greg Carlson, former head coach at Wabash College in Indiana and currently a defensive line and linebackers coach for the Los Angeles Avengers of the Arena Football League, will lead St. Scholastica’s new varsity football program. St. Scholastica will field a team in the fall of 2008.

BEING RECRUITED FOR THE IVY LEAGUE

Some sports have a higher priority. Yes the football team and basketball team seeking a top recruit might get a little extra when it comes time to recruit a top player that the coach really wants.

Coaches are recruiting players from all over the country. Ivy league coaches will go to the 4 corners of the earth to find players that can gain acceptance to their school and have an impact on their athletic program. So not only are you competing with recruits in your own backyard, you are competing against recruits in Canada, England and every other country in the world.

Despite your academic talent and/or record in high school, there is a significant chance you do not get accepted simply because there are too many people applying to these colleges. Harvard, Yale and Princeton traditionally receive about 20,000 applications a year. Most of those applications come from talented well-qualified students many of whom will be rejected simply because there is not room to accept all 20,000 applicants. There was a rumor a few years ago that Yale rejected over 100 applicants that scored a perfect score (1600) on the SAT.

Since there is no national letter of intent at the Ivy League, college coaches will push early admissions as a way to secure your services and will also push you for verbal decisions. They may offer you a spot on their team but that offer might last a week or might last till you walk out of the coach’s office where another player may be sitting in the waiting room.

Using the AI, athletic index, makes recruiting a bit easier because coaches know where certain recruits fall. The short version of the AI is that it is a ranking system that combines SAT 1 SAT 2 and class rank to give you a score. This AI is then compared to the mean AI’s of non-athletes so the school has an idea of whom it is recruiting and the AI cannot deviate more than a set amount from the student-body. Ivy Football uses 4 bands for the AI to recruit and are allowed to recruit a certain number of players in each band. Since some schools are more competitive, teams have different AI bands, so Harvards lowest AI band is higher than say Dartmouth’s lowest AI band.

Ivy coaches do not make admission decisions, admissions make admission decisions. Despite what the coach tells you, they may have little impact you your application when it comes time for admissions to review your application.

Your finances matter. Ivy schools claim they are need-blind but admissions and financial aid play a song and dance game with every applicant. Here is an interesting article on college admissions and finances. READ

Earl Decision matters. Harvard and Princeton recently dropped early decision but other Ivy schools still use it and some schools fill up to half their admission slots during the Early Decision application process. For the Dartmouth and Brown class of 2011, 120 early admits were recruited athletes at each University.

THE OTHER LETTER OF INTENT

Many of you have heard of the National Letter of Intent, a legal document you sign with a university that signifies the awarding of athletic scholarship money and ends your recruiting process. All NCAA D1 schools and some NCAA D2 schools are members of the NLI. But there are also institutional letter of intents offered at schools that do not subscribe to the NLI…

From NCAA.ORG - An institution (including those institutions that do not subscribe to the National Letter of Intent program) may permit a prospective student-athlete to sign an institutional or conference letter of intent during the early signing period of the National Letter of Intent in those sports that have early signing periods; however, at the end of the early signing period, an institution may not permit a prospect to sign an institutional or conference letter of intent until the regular signing period of the National Letter of Intent in the applicable sport.

PARENT EMAIL

I Just received your book in the weekend mail. Thanks very much for the quick delivery. In Chapter 5 (Athletic Recruiting), page 170, you touch on an area that is of particular concern to my 17 year old son.

With that section in mind, I was wondering if I could solicit your opinion regarding an unexpected problem that has surfaced in the past week or so. My son, is a senior at *******, in New York. He's a good football player, voted All-County by the coaches in his conference. He was recently invited to play in the Boomer Esiason/Outback Challenge Bowl (aka, Empire Challenge) where the best players from Long Island face the best of New York City, scheduled for June 28th. He is also a good student, 1250 on his SAT's and a B+ average.

A few months back, he was introduced to a visiting athletic recruiter from Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. They were interested in him for their Division 3 football program, and because of F&M's academic reputation, he responded in kind. He was invited down to tour the campus and meet with the other coaches (he did). They asked about his grades and SAT scores....no problem. They asked if he wanted to play for them....he said yes. They told his HS coach that they were putting an aid package together that would bring the annual cost down to the level of a typical state school. They encouraged him to file all paperwork ASAP.

And then, when that much-anticipated letter with the Franklin & Marshall return address arrived in the mail, he opened it only to find he was rejected by the admissions office. Needless to say, he's heartbroken. We called the college but had no luck in getting any info. His HS football coach, angry at how he had been, in effect, led down a dead-end street, put a call into the F&M football coach. Again, no luck. The problem here is that he invested himself in what he thought was an invitation to attend and play football at Franklin & Marshall....to the exclusion of all else. One could argue that he placed too many eggs in one basket.....on the other hand, and this is the one I choose to believe, you could say he was simply responding to an attractive invitation that he assumed to be sincere. I'm not saying he is without any other options. He has applied to *********, but without the football component. He was offered something from *********** (also D3)....but because he had invested himself early with F & M, he turned them down, and did not pursue any other football opportunities. I guess my questions are those of the naive. Is this turn-of-events common in its occurrence? Is there any, more powerful recourse, we could apply in asking Franklin & Marshall to deliver on expectations of their creation? Any other suggestions?

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To answer your question of is this turn of events common. The answer is often yes it is. Coaches like to pretend they are admissions directors but in reality they are not. While coaches lwork with admissions and at some schools work very closely with admissions, at the end of the day, admissions makes admission decisions and it is never a perfect system. But you always have coaches who assume a recruit is a sure thing and in this process nothing is guaranteed.

I’ve been looking at the admissions statistics for the school, 45% acceptance rate isn't that high but isn’t that low either. The average SAT scores are 631 Verbal and 642 math, and I imagine you are close to that. They also accept 39% of their students from New York and New Jersey. I never say admissions is guaranteed but it looks like you fit the type of students the school looks for and had the backing of the coach. One thing that surprised me is that the school puts over 1,200 kids on the waiting list, which seems high for a school this small. What’s more surprising is that about a 1,000 kids accepted a place on the waiting list, which means a lot of students probably want to go to this school.

Some schools could honestly care less about whom a college coach wants to recruit and athletics often has very little influence. That could have been the case here, or as a long shot, it’s possible the coach was not pushing as hard for you as he was for other recruits even though he told you he was interested. It’s also possible something else was going on at the school. Some colleges have a set number of athlete admits and who is recruited often depends on the needs of individual teams, so if the soccer team needed a goalie an the lacrosse team needed a center, other coaches in other sports sometimes get screwed. It’s also possible that the school had a higher number of applicants this year for some reason which makes the admission choices more difficult.

My advice would be two-fold. To quickly start the recruiting process over and try and find some schools similar to this one that might interest your son. While its very late, if colleges have openings, you can apply up to September. I would simply tell coaches you started this process late, put all your eggs in one basket and are looking for any opportunity to play.

Two, I would put in another call to Franklin & Marshall and try to find someone really nice to speak to and try to find out what was missing from your application or profile and ask them how admissions works with recruited athletes. You can't call up and be like, “why wasn’t my son admitted?” You need to be like, "what was missing from his application and, is it possible he slipped through the cracks?" You might get a more honest answer phrasing it in the latter.

NOTE: After I started sending the newsletter out a parent emailed me and recommended that the guidance counselor call the college and talk to admissions as well. That is correct and I should have included that above. Guidance counselors often have relationships with many colleges and a college may be more forthcoming in providing a counselor information as opposed to a parent