Entrepreneurs Entering College Football Recruiting Process

Butler Offers Updates On Bryce Brown's Recruitment On Web Site For $59 Per Year

Today marks National Signing Day for high school football players, and there is a "new breed of entrepreneurs inserting themselves into college football recruiting," according to Evans & Thamel of the N.Y. TIMES. Brian Butler, who serves as the trainer and manager for top high school football player RB Bryce Brown, on a Web site "sells updates of Brown's recruitment for $9.99 a month or $59 a year." Butler also "seeks contributions that he says are used to take players on a tour of colleges each summer." Some observers have said that Butler is "navigating gray areas of NCAA rules and brokering his clients' futures for personal gain," but others have said that he is "providing his clients with exposure they would not normally receive by leveraging connections he has made ... to create a market for lesser players." Many people in college football "question whether it is ethical for recruiting advisers to sell information on their players." ESPN and Scouts Inc. National Recruiting Dir Tom Luginbill: "We've got to the point where a handler or a street agent starts a Web site to charge money for an update. I'm not in line with that. I think that is a precedent that could become very scary and very ugly." Butler said that he would "explore the possibility of Brown's skipping college and going to the [CFL] next season if approached by a team," and he "mentioned the idea of a team paying Brown $5[M] a year for three years." But Evans & Thamel note the "salary cap for entire CFL teams" is C$4.2M (N.Y. TIMES, 2/4). Butler said that Brown "receives none of the profits" of his efforts. Butler: "If they want to make sure that every flow of information is being written correctly, this way they are saying exactly what they want to say" (South Florida SUN-SENTINEL, 2/3).

OUTSOURCING: In Raleigh, Ken Tysiac reported college football programs increasingly are "outsourcing their recruiting homework to private companies willing to provide game film, player evaluations and potential recruits' contact information for a price." A "huge majority" of Football Bowl Subdivision schools are subscribing to "at least some recruiting services." Companies like Bluechip Athletic Solutions and Cybersports "help college coaches build computer databases of prospects and facilitate contact with recruits via mail or e-mail." Others, like Scouting Evaluation Association, Forbes Recruiting Evaluation and Levi, Ray & Shoup "provide game film, evaluations and contact information on prospects." These companies "provide college coaches a legal end-around on NCAA restrictions, offering valuable recruiting information at times when coaches are prohibited from scouting the players themselves." NCAA Associate Dir of Public & Media Relations Stacey Osburn in an e-mail said that NCAA rules "allow schools to subscribe to scouting services as long as the service is made available to all schools and the same fee rate applies for all subscribers" (Raleigh NEWS & OBSERVER, 2/1).

BeRecruited.com Offers High School Athletes Chance To Upload Videos, Statistics

GETTING DIGITAL: In Denver, Paul Willis reported a "growing number of athletes and coaches are gravitating toward the technological trend," which has "eased some of the economic strains of recruiting." Sites like beRecruited.com are offering high school athletes the "opportunity to upload videos, update their statistics and essentially make a pitch to colleges as to why they'd be a good fit for their program." BeRecruited.com has "about 400,000 users," and of those, an "estimated 350,000 are athletes, the remainder college and high school coaches." Other recruiting sites like ncsasports.org and takkle.com also "specialize in matching potential recruits with coaches" (ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS, 2/1). Meanwhile, in Orlando, Iliana Limon reported Bluechip Athletic Solutions has produced www.olearypsiphi.com, a recruiting site for the Central Florida (UCF) football program. Hip-hop artist Young Jeezy's "I Put On" plays on the site as UCF highlights "roll on a small screen," and the "sleek Web site features a wide array of promotional videos designed to reach out to recruits." Bluechip offers "high-end marketing and promotional services known as techno recruiting to 35 colleges" (ORLANDO SENTINEL, 2/3).

BREAKING THE BANK: In Atlanta, Todd Holcomb reports the "cost of luring the top talent has doubled for many schools from a decade ago." Some schools "spend more than $500,000 on recruiting" each year, but they "make more than $50[M] in annual athletic revenue, mostly from football." Georgia's football recruiting expenses for FY '08 totaled $523,056, and Georgia Tech's football recruiting budget was $805,342. Defending national champion Florida spent $506,673 on football recruiting (ATLANTA CONSTITUTION, 2/4).

KIDS GAME: In Miami, Michelle Kaufman reported the NCAA Legislative Council last month "lowered the grade-level age of 'recruitable' boys' basketball prospects from ninth to seventh." The intent of the new rule is to "prevent overzealous college coaches from overstepping bounds and getting a leg up in the recruiting process as they solicit middle school students." The NCAA, by "implementing the rule and getting younger players" on its radar, can now "monitor and regulate college coaches' contacts and visits with seventh- and eighth-graders, as they do with high school students." NCAA Managing Dir of Academic & Membership Services Steve Malone: "The need to nip this in the bud was overwhelming" (MIAMI HERALD, 2/3).