College recruiting

This process typically culminates in a coach extending an athletic scholarship offer to a player who is about to be a junior in high school or higher.

There are instances, mostly at lower division universities, where no athletic scholarship can be awarded and where the player pays for tuition, housing, and textbook costs out of pocket or from financial aid.

During a dead period, they cannot make in-person recruiting contacts or evaluations on- or off-campus or permit official/unofficial visits.

[2] The NCAA has imposed stringent rules limiting the manner in which competing university-firms may bid for the newest crop of prospective student-athletes.

Such rules limit the number of visits that a student-athlete may make to a given campus, the amount of his expenses that may be covered by the university-firm, and so forth.

[4] During recruitment, a college coach may ask a prospective player to sign a National Letter of Intent or NLI for short.

[5] By signing a NLI, a prospective student-athlete agrees to attend the designated college or university for one academic year.

An important provision of this program serves as a recruiting prohibition applied after a prospective student-athlete signs an NLI.

[4] Recruiting top student-athletes is even more strategic due to the potential increase in undergraduate admissions and booster donations that a championship may bring.

Although, he says there are benefits to universities in playing big-time sports, which he defines as Division I basketball and schools in the Football Bowl Subdivision.

Budget minded administrators have realized that a winning team can provide an effective means of advertising their institutions and securing much needed additional funding.

Prior to the internet, popular recruiting services used newsletters and pay telephone numbers to disseminate information.

However, FCS schools are allowed to award partial scholarships, as long as the total number of "counters" (NCAA terminology for a person who counts against limits on players receiving financial aid for that sport) is no greater than 85.

Each summer, high school players attend various football camps at nearby college campuses to be evaluated on measures of athleticism, such as the 40-yard dash, vertical jump, agility shuttle; and the number of repetitions of the bench press that an athlete can perform at a given weight, usually 185 pounds unlike at the NFL combine where they use 225 pounds.

Recently, the SPARQ rating has become a popular composite metric of a high school football player's athleticism.

At this time of year, based on game film and performance at combines, this is typically when players begin to receive most scholarship offers.

In April 2017, the NCAA Division I Council approved a piece of legislation that significantly changed the FBS recruiting landscape.