The Dangers of the Internet in College Recruiting

Kelly Kulina: Your Link to the Colleges

Familiarity breeds comfort. As humans, we’re more likely to prefer something that we’ve been exposed to the most. In the marketing world, we call this “brand power.” Brand power gives the prospective computer, car or cell phone buyer a short list of products to choose from. Regrettably, many prospective baseball players will treat the college search process in a similar fashion.

In their defense, however, recruits are overloaded with information. Don’t get me wrong, the Internet revolution has been a huge boon for college recruiting, but when players are receiving 50+ daily e-mails about baseball-related events, something has to give. When bombarded with information, we revert to our natural instincts, which is to choose the “State-U” school or camp that we’re most familiar with. If you’ve been following this blog, then you’ll understand that most players won’t be able to play at the bigger Division I state schools.

So, how do you avoid following this path of least resistance? You need to be the proactive one. Don’t wait for schools to come to you (another common theme in this blog); get online and start researching schools. What’s getting lost in the dust cloud of camp e-mails are websites like collegeboard.com, d3baseball.com and meritaid.com, which offer remarkable amounts of information on very obscure areas of the college search process. Fight the temptation to only look into schools you’ve heard of or have seen on TV (or even worse, have sent camp e-mails). These websites can give you access to schools you’ve never even heard of, so that’s the place you need to start!

More important than the research you’ll do in front of the computer, it is essential that you visit schools on your college list. In the Exclusive Program, we stress to our underclassmen the need to visit at least three schools prior to the summer before their senior year: a large state school (10,000 or more undergrads), a medium-size school (5,000 undergrads) and a small school (2,000 undergrads or fewer). Your gut reaction to stepping on campus may be worth more than your countless hours of Internet research!

As I’ve written in previous entries, there are several things you should try to cover when you visit a campus. In addition to going on the campus tour, meeting with coaches and even seeing a practice, here are a few more things to do while on campus:

• Talk to students on campus. Ask them for their impression of the school and the surrounding area. You’d be surprised how honest they’ll be.
• Look around during a class change. Are people running to class?
• Sit in on a class. Are you in a large lecture hall or smaller discussion? Are you comfortable with this setting?
• Eat the cafeteria food and visit the dorms. Be honest with yourself- this will be your home for the next four years!
  

To have the most success with this process, you will have to do things differently than 95% of people trying to find a place to play in college. The Internet is a fantastic tool for those taking part in the recruiting process, but it’s so easy to fall into those old habits. Do yourself a favor and break that habit.

Kelly Kulina is the Senior Vice President of College Recruiting at Baseball Factory. Kulina is a former Associate Head Coach and recruiting coordinator with the University of Maryland. As a former recruiting coordinator for ten years in the ACC, Kulina has vast contacts and is widely respected throughout the nation. From 1989 to 2000, Kulina coached 46 players who were selected in the MLB draft.