Your Value as a Teammate
What does Manny Ramirez being placed on waivers by the Boston Redsox have to do with you? Well, it's an indication of how you can be really good at one thing and not be that valuable to the team. College coaches are looking for all-around players who can play and perform at a high level, who are good athletes, and who are good teammates and hard workers. No one is questioning whether or not Manny can hit a baseball, but it's pretty obvious he is a one dimensional player, who cannot run well, run smart, field well, throw well, and who often drifts into space and creates tension with his teammates and coaches. If you do one thing really well, but lack other skills or have a negative attitude, coaches may be weary of recruiting you for their team. This is why it's important to always play the game hard and with respect for your coach, teammates, refs and opposing players. You never know who is watching.

The Swan Song in the ACC
In case you missed it, Boston College finally accepted an invitation to the ACC (Atlantic Coast Conference). The Big East is going to get messy now as several schools file more lawsuits against BC. BC was the last legitimate football and basketball program in the league and the only hopes of keeping the Big East together. In a few years the Big East will probably be an entirely different conference with several new schools. As far as BC is concerned, the move is getting mixed reviews. Unless BC wants to change their admission standards, their football team will probably struggle, check that, will struggle! As they say around here, Boston College wants to be Harvard on Monday through Friday and Miami on Saturday (meaning they want a great academic institution and a great football program). As Notre Dame has proved, in this day and age you really can’t have it both ways. There are only so many talented football players with brains that can compete at that level athletically, and most blue-chip football players would rather go with the glitz and glamour schools, like Miami, Florida State, Florida, Nebraska and Tennessee. I mean who wants a Notre Dame education and wants to play on national television every week!

As far as other sports go at BC, this could be a big problem. One of the benefits of being in the Big East was that the schools were relatively close to each other and that made travel for their “other” athletic teams easier. One BC coach I bumped into said a switch to the ACC will spell the death of a few athletic teams at Boston College. While BC will make more money through football, they will spend more money on travel for every athletic team. Flying the Softball team down to Florida State is a lot different than taking a bus to UConn or Syracuse. As far as baseball goes, this could be a blessing or a boon for BC. Over the last few years, head coach Peter Hughes has built a pretty good baseball program at the heights and has a few players in the minor leagues. The problem is the ACC is a baseball powerhouse with Miami, Wake Forest, Florida State, Clemson, and Georgia Tech. BC cannot compete in baseball vs. these schools and the team is currently limited in the number of scholarships they have to offer. On the other hand, playing in the ACC may attract better baseball talent to BC. The problem is, without the full amount of baseball scholarships to offer, it will be difficult to recruit the players needed to compete in the ACC in baseball at BC, given the $35,000 price tag at BC. Basketball will also be a step up as the Big East has declined in the last several years. Gone are the days of Patrick Ewing, Alen Iverson, Billy Owens, Ray Allen, and Derrick Coleman from the Big East. While Syracuse is defending champs, they lost their best player and will be lucky to be anywhere near as good.

How does BC leaving affect other teams still in the Big East?
Good question, and I have no idea yet. If the overall league starts to decline and that usually starts with football, you could see a ripple effect like this. Football and basketball interest declines, revenues from those sports decline, interest in these schools starts to decline, applications start to decline, MONEY starts to decline, and money and support for low profile sports declines, teams and scholarships get cut. If you think this cannot happen, then you don’t know why teams like Connecticut, Syracuse and Pittsburgh are filing multi-million dollar lawsuits right now in order to save their league. Jim Calhoun, the Uconn men's basketball coach is so mad at BC that he said he doesn't want to play them ever again! The University of Connecticut has the most at stake as they just dropped a gozillion dollars on a new 40,000 seat football stadium and made the jump to Division 1 football. Had they known BC and Miami were leaving the Big East, one brick would never have been put down for a new football stadium. It’s easy to fill that stadium by playing BC and Miami, but 40,000 people don’t want to watch UConn play Rutgers on a Saturday afternoon. Now that BC is leaving, the Big East, to say the least, won’t really have any dominating football teams, not that BC was dominating, but they were somewhat talented and well-known on the national scene, a good fan draw, and one of the last major football teams in the Big East aside of Pittsburgh.

NEWS ON INDIVIDUAL COLLEGES
Massachusetts Institute of Technology will go from Division 3 to Division 1 in women's rowing by 2004-05. Boston is a beautiful area (at least when it’s warm) and if you have the brains to get into MIT, you can row on the Charles River right through the heart of the city every day!

The University of North Dakota will go from Division 2 to Division 1 in women's ice hockey by 2004-05. Women’s ice hockey is seeing a lot of growth.

The Tennessee State basketball team was placed on 3-years probation for recruiting and practice violations that happened under former coach Nolan Richardson. The school will lose one scholarship next year and the year after, have their recruiting days cut, and have the number of recruiting visits cut that they can offer to recruits who wish to visit the campus.

Belmont University recently completed the largest construction project in school history, cutting the ribbon on a $52 million three-building complex that includes a 5,000-seat arena, a grand atrium for large events and a new center for student life. The Center offers attractive casual seating areas, a full-court basketball gymnasium, two indoor racquetball courts, dedicated aerobics room, weight rooms, offices and meeting rooms for student organizations, student locker rooms and a convenience store. The Curb Event Center, is the new home of the Belmont Bruins basketball teams and will host the 2004 Atlantic Sun Men's Basketball Tournament.

The University of Michigan won its appeal vs. the NCAA to be eligible for the 2004 NCAA basketball Championship. Apparently after boosters paid over $500,000 to former Michigan basketball players, the NCAA felt that the schools self-imposed 2003 suspension was harsh enough.

San Diego State was not so lucky. They appealed their probation and lost. The probation is a result of illegal practices conducted by the schools football coaches over a period of several years.

Caldwell College officially added women's cross country as its 10th varsity sport this fall.

The University of South Florida is in talks about moving to the Big East.

Division 2 Augusta State University, which already had been playing at Division 1 in men's golf, has reclassified its women's golf program to Division 1,

Division 3 Ursinus College, which had been playing at Division 1 in field hockey, will now sponsor that program at the Division 3 level.

Looking for a small not-so-competitive D3 school to play football at. Don’t look at Mount Union College in Ohio. The team is coming off victories of 58-0 and 66-0, has won 46 straight games and 100 of its last 101 games. That my friends is a D3 powerhouse, and they have many players that could compete at the D1 and D2 level, but chose not to. Ohio is a hotbed for high school football and there is another strong team called Ohio Northern (another D3) school. Ohio Northern has 100 players listed on it’s roster and only 4 are from outside of Ohio. This is a good example of a coach not having to do a lot of outside recruiting because there is so much talent in his own state. If you wanted to play football for Ohio Northern and lived in say, Pennsylvania, you better have some compelling information or skills for the coach to recruit you.

The University of South Carolina (Aiken) recently opened a new 1 million dollar baseball stadium called the Roberto Hernandez Stadium. Roberto Hernandez attended the university and now pitches for the Atlanta Braves.

ACADEMIC INFO
The SAT 1 & 2 will be held on January 24, the registration deadline is December 22nd.
The ACT test will be held on December 13th, registration deadline is Nov. 7th. There will also be an ACT test on February 7th, registration deadline is January 2

Please see the August and October Newsletters for information on SAT and PSAT changes that are coming in the next year.

RECRUITING RULES AND REGULATIONS
Scholarship blending and equivalency. Varsityedge.com recently spoke to an NCAA compliance director for some clarification on scholarship blending and equivalency. Scholarship blending is when a school gives you athletic scholarship money and institutional aid in the form of academic grants or need-based aid. Institutional aid is money that belongs to the school and can be used for any purpose and can be given to any student.

If you are a student-athlete and meet one of these four criteria,
1. Rank in the top 10% of your high school class
2. Achieve a core GPA of 3.5 (on a 4.0 scale) in HS
3. A minimum SAT score of 1200
4. A minimum ACT score of 105
you can qualify for academic aid from a D1 institution and the money will not count towards the teams “equivalency”. Equivalency was established so teams couldn’t give as much money as they wanted to star athletes after they ran out of athletic scholarships. In most cases, any money you receive from a school, whether it be need-based aid, counts against the athletic team, unless it’s academic money and you qualify. The rule hurts teams that have the max amount of scholarships and little money left to give out. Here is an example. A D1 baseball team is allowed to offer 11.7 scholarships, but most teams might offer 4 or 5 and divide the money up to many players. The school can award institutional aid money that equals tuition up to the value of 11.7 scholarships. If a team has 11 scholarships used and gives the remaining .7 to you, the school cannot give you any institutional need-based aid or it will put the team over their cap. Money from federal financial aid programs is excluded in this calculation; it is only money from the school. It’s confusing, so if you find yourself in this position, ask the coach or recruiting coordinator for further explanation.

How does this affect recruiting.
Well, equivalency usually hurts teams that offer the max amount of athletic scholarships or close to the max. If a team has all their scholarships allocated to current players, it's difficult to recruit student-athletes that are depending on grants and financial aid directly from the school.

Story #1
I stumbled onto a guru so to speak, a former coach who travels the country and charges high schools thousands of dollars to speak and then sells kids a recruiting guide after the seminar (talk about double-dipping) In recent press releases and seminars, he said the following:

If you don’t receive a phone call by May 2nd of your junior year, you basically have no shot of playing D1 athletics. The funny thing is with the exception of 3 sports, D1 coaches are not allowed to call you until July 1 after your junior year. There are exceptions in football, men’s and women’s basketball and ice hockey if you live in another country! Lets be honest, not everyone can play at the D1 level, but telling someone they cannot because they didn’t get a phone call on the first day of phone calls is irresponsible. Coaches have different needs, resources, and agendas, and while Rick Pitino may be making 200 calls on the first day of allowable calls, some D1 field hockey coach might not. Also telling a student that they can’t play D1 if they don’t get a call on the first day basically says, that they “can” probably play at the D2 or D3 level. Nothing could be further from the truth. Each college team needs to be evaluated on an individual basis, regardless of Division and there are many D2 and D3 teams that will kick the crap out of D1 teams, don’t make the mistake of thinking you can play D2 or D3 just because its D2 or D3! Strike One

Attending a college camp will not really help your recruiting efforts. Lets be honest, if you are a college coach and you run a camp in the summer for 200 high school athletes who may be local or may be from different parts of the country or region, you are doing it for two reasons: (1) to supplement your income or the income of the school, program, or assistant coaches. And (2) TO GIVE YOURSELF ACCESS TO 200 HIGH SCHOOL ATHLETES WHO MAY BE INTERESTED IN YOUR SCHOOL AND PLAYING ATHLETICS IN COLLEGE. If a coach has a doubt about a recruit, they may ask the recruit to attend their camp. While attending a football camp at Ohio State probably wont get you recruited by Ohio State, here’s the hidden benefit. There is a good chance that the Ohio State camp will have coaches working at the camp from many different smaller colleges throughout the state or region. This is a common practice. As a rule of thumb, two schools that compete for the same student-athletes will not mix and match coaches at a camp, but a D1 school might have a bunch of coaches from D2 and D3 schools working at the camp and vice versa. A small D3 school can and will bring in D1 coaches to assist because the D3 coach knows the athletes they will be looking for are not going to be top D1 material and there is no fear of the D1 coach stealing campers in their next recruiting class. This isn’t a theory, this happens all the time, I know because coaches and players tell me. Strike Two

And there is an 0 and 2 count. Write one paragraph about yourself and send it to 500 schools and if you really want to play, send out 180 letters to D1 schools, 300 to D2 schools, and 400 to Division 3 schools. No recommendations, no highlights, no press clippings. Any 500 schools (or 880 using the second method)? While I do not advocate sending coaches an entire pile of newspaper clippings from when you were 12 years old, coaches need information on you and from you in order to make decisions. A recommendation from your coach or instructor can help as long as your coach or instructor has some sort of past athletic success that will make his or her recommendation mean more. My former summer coach played Division 1 baseball, was drafted by the Oakland A’s, is in the athletic hall of fame at his former college, and has coached summer and amateur baseball for over 15 years. Do you think college coaches listen to him when he calls them or writes recommendations for kids. You bet they do! If your coach is a schmuck and has no clue and writes you a recommendation, it’s probably not worth anything. As far as sending your “paragraph” to 880 schools, come on? You need to target schools that are the right academic, athletic, and social fit. But before you do that, you need to find out what you are looking for and when you do, you will find that the number of schools that meet your criteria is much less than 500. Sending letters to 500 schools is simply too many and it will be too difficult for the majority of these schools to recruit you. Foul Ball! PS, there is a good chance, no a great chance, that there are not 880 schools at the D1, D2, and D3 level that even offer your sport!

You are not a D1 prospect if you haven’t heard form 200-300 colleges by your sophomore year! Good God, some kids in high school don’t even play varsity in their sophomore year and college coaches don’t watch JV games. Michael Jordan was cut from his varsity team as a sophomore and you know how he turned out. Frank Thomas walked on to the Auburn baseball team. The only scholarship offer Shammond Williams (an NBA point guard) got was for band, so he walked on to North Carolina. Rocco Baldelli (the centerfielder for the Tampa Bay Devil rays) was the number 9 batter on high school team his junior year. His senior year he was the number 6 player in the June baseball draft. Kids mature at different ages, some gain 30 pounds, some grow 6 inches, some get stronger or faster, and depending on the level of talent at your school, you may not even get a chance till junior year. My high school basketball team had 4 starters go onto play college basketball in one year, do you think any sophomores got playing time that year as the team marched towards the state championship? NO! Foul Ball!

AAU, junior Olympic and Club sports don’t translate into scholarships and coaches only go see players they have already heard of. Neither does playing 18 games at the high school level in the middle of Montana. Getting recruited is partly about exposure, and the more you play and the further you play from home, the more chances you have to be seen by college coaches. First off, how do college coaches hear of players? Well, they go to games, tournaments and camps and see players. That’s their job, they do it 365 days a year. They go to events to see players for the first time, not just players they have heard of. College coaches usually migrate to events where they will see more student-athletes of skill. AAU and Olympic development teams don’t take every kid that has a glove or a pair of cleats; these programs are usually more skilled players who dedicate more time to the game. With that being said, if a college coach has to choose a game to go to (a high school game or AAU tournament) they are probably going to choose the AAU tournament. Playing AAU and Club ball doesn’t guarantee you will be recruited, but it’s a step in the right direction. A D3 coach I know in New York begged his school for 2 years to let him fly to Las Vegas for an AAU tournament. He finally got to go this year and there were 70 teams in attendance and he will be actively recruiting many of the players he saw at the tournament. Why did he want to go to this tournament? Because he knew he would be exposed to 1,000 high school basketball players that most likely want to play in college. His other option was to attend 300-500 high school basketball games to see that many skilled players. Which option would you choose? Another Foul Ball!

You aren't a Division I prospect just because you receive a few letters. If you don't get at least 100 by your junior season, forget about getting a full ride to a D-I. Instead, keep the mail from the smaller schools. Did you hear the story about a football prospect who got 180 letters from the University of Nebraska and never ended up getting any calls from the coach or getting recruited by them. In reality, after football and basketball, there are very few individual programs that will send a 100 letters to one prospect! The only teams that can do that are nationally renowned teams at schools with lots of money, but there are hundreds if not thousands of D1 teams that can’t afford to send a 100 letters to a single prospect. On personal phone call from a coach will do more for them than 20 form letters. Foul!

Kids with good grades who are willing to attend school far away from home will get the cash and the playing time. While having good grades can help you, the kids that get the cash are the kids who made the best athletic impression on the coach during their recruiting efforts. The kids who get the playing time are the kids who displayed the most skill on the field. It has nothing to do with location. I transferred, walked on a team and started as an outfielder over 2 freshman recruits, and two sophomores on partial athletic scholarship. Why? Because I displayed the most skill and the coach wanted to put the best team on the field. A coach cannot get back scholarship money they gave out, but that doesn’t mean they have to play a kid getting $5,000 bucks when there is another kid on the bench that is better. And it’s a called thirds strike on the outside corner

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