Football Recruiting – How To Be 5-Star Recruit
5-star Football Recruit Tips
- Create a profile with a college football recruiting service
- Get talent and evaluation feedback from the recruitment service
- Identify where you stand from a physical measurables standpoint
- Get your information to the schools that align with where you are physically and mentally
- Get an early pro evaluation: An early evaluation is only done by only a handful of providers. Souletics® will help you see where you stand and what you need to work on so that when your draft year comes you are ready for the next level.
Understanding football recruiting
Recruiting for football is more like a science project than just focusing on a 5-star ranking. That 5-star ranking that is given to the nation’s most talented athletes is a badge of honor and tool that is used to identify the quality of athletes and the pedigree of athletes that college institutions have recruited.
A 5-star college football recruit can drive ticket sales, improve morale, increase alumni donations and ultimately turn a program around. It is the highest honor in football recruiting besides the first-round draft pick.
The star system lets everyone identify talent and expectations. The stars are used by evaluators and reviewers for ranking things such as films, TV shows, restaurants, and hotels.
This system of one to five stars is one being the lowest quality and with five stars being the highest quality.
Top Football Recruiting Colleges
Typically 4 and 5-star athletes are your bigtime program recruits like Alabama, LSU, Clemson, Texas, Michigan, Florida State, Miami, Texas, Norte Dame, Oklahoma type guys. They are spread among the SEC, ACC, Big 10, Pac 12 and Big 12 conferences. 3 Star guys typically go to your top mid-major programs like Utah State, UNLV, San Diego State, Boise State, Gonzaga, and others that often break the top-15, but are not among the major conferences.
The 5-star ranking comes with publicity and hype, expectation, responsibility, and accountability. These young women and men have an expectation to produce in all areas. They must show a level of professionalism.
The expectation is on high when you’re identified as a 5-star recruit. College football recruiting is the most intense process in sports, because most collegiate institutions are built around football before any other sports.
And it’s one that requires 100 percent work ethic, commitment and dedication in all areas. Rarely can a player that has failed to produce in the weight room play on Saturdays because his or her body cannot take the punishment.
Importance of College Football Recruiting
Every collegiate football recruiting program wants to land a 5-star athlete or two, which means that many football recruiting programs will be competing for recruit’s services, attention, thoughts, family members, time and, ultimately, his commitment in the form of signature.
The recruiting process leading up to national signing day is chaotic for an athlete.
Often an athlete may feel pulled in many different directions, giving multiple commitments to several different programs, coaches, handlers, and hangers-on.
Getting that signature is the goal of every football recruiter. Sending in an email with signature on national signing day can be filled with tears, pressure, anger, but it’s no competition to what’s expected once you step foot on campus.
College football recruiting coaches, students, administrators, future girlfriends, future boyfriends and all are watching, and the expectations are high. Everyone wants some form of production.
It’s not a cakewalk being the next big, bad, popular 5-star recruit, and it’s not an accidental process. It is a process of strategic focus, production, manipulation, and debate. A 5-star recruit has many people in his/her corner. The reality is often a 5-star recruit is no better than a great 3-star recruit. The difference is often exposure and opportunity.
Here are 7 key actions that produce 5-star college football recruits
Note: Natural talent, physical size, stats, school popularity, and other measurables play a huge role. But talent in addition to school pedigree, parentage, athlete history, and other variables also play a big-time role. That’s why we created our college football recruiting site; what we do at Souletics; because we are elite athletes that have wisdom, insights and understand what it takes and how to get there.
7 Must Do’s To Become a 5-star college football recruiting Gem
Football Recruiting 101
1. Start Playing and Understanding the Game Early as Possible
Sometimes there are exceptions to this rule, but for the most part, 5-star recruits have been playing football or exposed to football for a very long time.
There are rare occasions when competition experience is not there, but for the most part, most gifted players have an intrinsic understanding of the game of football. There is a problem, however, with playing football early… A lot of kids get injuries too early in their careers and by the time they get to college they already have some degenerative breakdown within their bodies.
Football is a sport that you can start later on because it is a physical sport, one that requires speed, coordination, and strength. These physical gifts can be developed in other sports. Much like Chad Johnson, who played soccer growing up and then focused on football later on.
Soccer is a sport that requires multiple levels of coordination, stamina, strength, and speed. It is a sport that is typically played by smaller players with stamina and short burst speed. A great sport!
Late bloomer or late starting is not always possible because many athletes do need time to develop while playing the game. Others have an intrinsic understanding of body movement. You must find what works best for you. That’s not always the case, as every now and then you’ll find a naturally talented athlete who just started playing in high school, but for the most part—football is a huge part of growing up for 5-star recruits.
Pop Warner to College Recruiting
Often the expectations and ratings start in Pop Warner youth football leagues, where a young football kid is far more dominant than the rest of his competition. This is always the case where some kids are bigger, faster and more dominant. There are always those few football kids that just seem to know how to play young, get it early when it comes to contact competition football, and they exceed and surpass the other football kids at that age.
But this is not a precursor to success. I say it again, this is not a precursor to success. Pop Warner is too early to evaluate, as many football recruits have not matured at this point. So making huge assessments on talent can be a mistake at this level. But often this is where expectations and ratings start.
College Recruiting Process Starts Early
By the time the player hits 14 years old and entering high school, he has already given the signature the next great athlete. Too early. Too early. I was always amazed at how often the highest-rated guys didn’t have the athleticism and physical development you would expect. I experienced this at the professional and collegiate levels. It was as if they already felt they had arrived so they failed to put in the necessary work over a long period of time because they had that label of greatness placed over them at a young age.
You may have heard the term, “you can always identify greatness early.”
Not true…this is a lie! True greatness always takes a solid strategy with consistent positive action over a long period of time.
The good news is if you are not where you want to be yet, if you are determined to put in the work and align with the right people to give you feedback and a game plan, you can get there.
2. Can The Player Overcome Obstacles and Handle Non-Ideal Situations?
5-star football recruits are constantly under intense situations. They often live under the microscope, those that are evaluating, critiquing, and waiting for a mistake. Jealously has more than ever become part of American sports. Specifically high-level sports, such as football. A 5-star recruit must be coached through this so they can develop the internal infrastructure to deal with such scrutiny.
Often this pressure and scrutiny start long before they become a 5-star football recruit. Once people recognize you have talent, the vultures, those that are jealous and those that are watching every move, increase over time.
Football recruits must become aware of this from the moment he or she is able to separate themselves from the pack during competition.
Tik Tok, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook have all become ways for evaluators, fans, coaches, GM’s, organizations and media to keep an eye on the football player.
Failing to realize the impact of your new-found exposure can be detrimental. In a moment of weakness or youthful exuberance, a wrong tweet or social media post could negatively impact football recruitment.
Every interception, drop ball, tackle, catch or throw is analyzed and evaluated. Consequently, so is every dropped pass, bad throw, missed block, run for loss, fumble, interception, missed sack, penalty or mistake.
Additionally, how you respond to each situation is evaluated as well. When being scouted during football recruiting, information moves through the sporting world at a rapid rate. With social media, it can almost be instantaneous.
Learn how to deal with success and failure. One of our main focus areas is mindset coaching and player development on the strategy and preparation side. This is more important than training. Without the right mindset, you will not be able to maximize your physical ability.
3. The Study
As a talent evaluator and development coach, I often look back at my collegiate, and high school athletic career and realize that as good as I was and as much as I dedicated myself to the classroom.
I could have taken more time to develop a strategy, study all aspects of football recruiting and other efforts.
My father was progressive for that time no doubt, but we look back on that time and realize we missed a few areas.
Such as:
- Studying and identifying the best position for me to play in not only college but professionally
- Specifically reaching out to schools that were a fit not only athletically but socially, culturally, academically and racially
Great players understand the game.
If you are a football recruit, you must study all the aspects of the game.
Increase your understanding of offenses and defenses
Study-specific players
Increase film study
Talk to experts in the field
Become a person that is inquisitive
Becoming a 5-star 4-Star or even a 3-Star football recruit includes you doing everything necessary to be on that level.
4. Belief, Confidence, Swagger, Not To Be Confused With Arrogance
A non-fiction story about the college football recruiting process and aftermath of collegiate and professional sports
Swagger is a word I know well. I wrote the best selling book “Don’t Stop The Swagger” in 2004, before it was a mainstream word. This is a word I connected with as a player and defined in my book “Don’t Stop The Swagger: Preparing the Mind, Body, and Soul for Peak Performance”
A 5-star recruit has belief in herself or himself. Great athletes have confidence that is rooted in the hard work they have exhibited over time and the times they have shined in competition.
5. Work Hard – “The harder you work the harder it is to surrender”
To be a 5-star football recruit, you must work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work.
You must believe when you don’t see it. You must forget about what others are doing and how they are being evaluated on focus on improving yourself.
Faith!
The result is you will be recruited for football! You will draw interest from someone. And you will be given the chance to realize your dreams.
6. Focus on developing your gifts
Develop and then share those talents with evaluators. In that order… Don’t become romantically connected with being popular over developing the real skills that will translate to game day.
7. Work on Physical Measurables
40 yard dash time
- 20-Yard Shuttle
- Bench Press 225
- Vertical Jump
- Broad Jump
- Don’t forget squats, even though they do not test
- and position-specific drills
College Football Recruiting Sites
How does college football recruiting work?
recruiting is the process in which college This is the process of coaches identifying high school student-athletes as potential players for their collegiate team. This is an ongoing evaluation that ends with a scholarship offer if the college coach identifies the high school student-athlete with meeting the necessary talent and academic standards.
Who is leading in college football recruiting?
1. Alabama 2. LSU 3. Miami 4. Clemson 5. Ohio State 6. Florida 7. Michigan 8. Oklahoma 9. Georgia 10. Texas A&M
How do you become a 5-star football recruit?
A 5-star recruit t is evaluated to be one of the nation's top 25-30 student-athletes,4-star is the top 250 - 300, 3-stars is a top 750 level player, 2 stars identify the player as a mid-major recruit. Lastly, a 1-star recruit is not ranked or considered to be a recruitable talent.
How many high school football players make it to college?
Only 6 percent of high school seniors will play college football. 1.7% of senior college football players will get drafted by an NFL team.
How do you get recruited for football?
Here are 10 tips to help you in the recruiting process. 1. Register with NCAA Clearinghouse to qualify for college eligibility. 2. Maintain a minimum of 3.3 high school GPA 3. Develop your body by training 4. Player on your high school and club teams 5. Get video of your performances 6. Register with a recruiting and exposure platform 7. Make a list of colleges 8. Contact and visit colleges. 9. Make a list of your college choices. ... 10. Meet with an academic counselor at your high school 11. Learn the FAFSA process.
What GPA do you need to get into a Division 1 college?
In order to receive full NCAA academic eligibility to compete in your freshman year, you must achieve at least a 2.3 GPA in your core courses for Division 1 and a 2.2 GPA for Division 2 to fulfill the NCAA GPA requirements.
How do I get a Rivals recruiting profile?
1. Go to a Rivals Combine. 2. Get an Invitation to a Rivals 3 Stripe Camp. 3. Complete a Rivals Underclassman Questionnaire. 4. Contact a Rivals scout.