Ari Wasserman: An anonymous survey of recruiting staffers

Ari Wasserman of The Athletic put out a piece about a week ago where he anonymously interviewed 15 recruiting staffers from seven conferences (including at least two staffers from each P5 conference). They talked about misconceptions, underrated recruits, preferred changes to recruiting rules, etc. Due to CG's/the paywall, I won't link the article, but I wanted to share some themes and comments I found interesting.

To start, there were two misconceptions fans have about recruiting that really stood out to me:

• A PAC-12 recruiter discussed that (contrary to fan belief) the history of a school, tradition, and anything that has happened outside of the past five years doesn't matter to recruits. I wasn't surprised by this. I don't really have any sports memories from before being a teenager, and everything I know about college football pre-2008ish is because of research I did on my own, after I developed an interest in the support. I imagine recruits are the same way.
• A Big 10 recruiter talked about how little coaches are involved, saying "Recruiters recruit, coaches coach." He discussed how recruiters do the heavy lifting, and coaches come in to close or save the day. He goes on to talk about how most coaches don't want to recruit, they just want to coach. This one kind of surprised me. I know TnT went on a (precovid) tour through the 757 to meet recruits and coaches. I'd love to know how common this is for P5 teams.

When asked about how much of their 2021 class they were unable to evaluate in person because of the COVID-19, every scout answered between 40% and 85%. This is insane to me that at 15 schools, including 10 P5 schools, at least 40% of the kids they signed they haven't seen play in person. Really hoping that our staff is as good at scouting as I think they are; I guess we'll find out in a few years.

When asked what each staffer thinks makes a great recruiting staff, there were a lot of answers, but two themes were pretty common: You have to have a clear strategy, and you have to be able to build relationships. This one concerns me. I don't know what VT's recruiting strategy is.