Recruiting Trends in College Sports Pt. 1

Kelly Kulina: Your Link to the Colleges

As we’re coming up on the highly-anticipated November signing period, I thought I’d use this entry to discuss an issue I’ve been following the past few years. While all sports, baseball included, have designated “signing periods” during the prospect’s senior year, there is nothing to stop players from committing to coaches or schools much earlier than that. As reported by ESPN, college basketball has seen a disturbing trend in recruiting, leading to rumors that players as young as fourteen are committing to schools even before they’ve played a minute on a high school court! Is there a possibility that baseball could follow in the footsteps of basketball? And, if so, what are the consequences?

The “traditional” signing period has always been in April, with the “early” signing period taking place in mid-November. However, the November signing period has become so popular that it has become the norm for most D-I programs to finish their recruiting at this point. After all, if a coach can get his recruiting out of the way by mid-November, he’s able to focus on his team and season at hand. For many other teams that don’t carry enough clout to secure early commitments, they must continue their recruiting all the way to the beginning of classes in August, if necessary.

Personally, I was not a big advocate of the November signing when I was coaching at the University of Maryland. I have always felt that coaches, players and parents make more mistakes signing early than they do at the April signing period. Granted I signed a few players during this period because I didn’t want to miss out on the opportunity to lock up a few guys early. However, the players I signed early were the ones that I’ve seen the most and knew the best. Coaches don’t have as much time to assess and evaluate players early and players/parents don’t have as much time to learn everything they need to about all the schools that are recruiting them before they make their decision.

One of the most important aspects of the recruiting process for a college coach is to really get to know the player they’re recruiting, both on and off the field. I tried to learn everything about every player and family I recruited and still felt like I needed to know more! That being said, I truly believe that for the most part, you really don’t know what you got or are getting, until the player is in the program. I think most college coaches would agree with that statement. By putting total emphasis on getting players signed by November, I feel that several critical pieces of recruiting process are being overlooked and disregarded.

Check back next week when I go further into the trends in college baseball recruiting, focusing on the issue that I mentioned at the beginning of the entry.

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.

What’s in a Letter? - Part 1

Kelly Kulina: Your Link to the Colleges

It was and still is amazing to me to hear players and parents talk about who’s recruiting who. In reality the only people with any authority on the subject are the college coaches themselves.

A while back, a Nevada football player made big news when it was announced that he had lied about being recruited by several Division I football programs. Now, while this story is more about lying than anything else, it reminded me of how important it is for players to understand what it means to be recruited by a school. I can remember players, parents and HS coaches asking me about certain players that I was supposedly recruiting, and I didn’t even know who they were, let alone have any thoughts on their athletic ability.

Too many times, players believe that they are being recruited for baseball because they’ve received a letter, questionnaire, camp or general information in the mail from a coach or college. Unfortunately, this is the biggest misconception in the college search process. There are many steps before a school actively recruits a player and many more steps before there is an official offer on the table. What players need to understand as they begin the process is that there is a big difference between receiving a mailer (being on a mailing list) and having a coach call once a week.

Just to give you an insider’s perspective, when I was a coach at the University of Maryland, I would initially send out 1,000 to 1,500 letters to players across the county. Just by looking at the questionnaires I received back, about half of the initial kids could get into the school, or roughly 700. From there, the objective was to learn as much as I could about these players and begin to eliminate players by seeing and talking to them at camps, showcases and other events. By the time I got past these stages, the list of players was down to 350. The other factor was to access and evaluate my returning players given my position specific needs; now the list was cut by more than half to 150.

From this group of student-athletes came phones calls to prospects, calls to cross-check evaluations, and additional evaluations through scouting trips, campus visit invites, both official and unofficial. These players represented my priorities, and even they were split into a depth chart of prospects: A, B and C. Obviously, my focus was going to be on the A-List, but players move between groups throughout the process given their athletic and academic performance along with our face to face and phone conversations. In the perfect world, by November, I would have received commitments from my top players (six to eight) and have them sign their Letter of Intent during the Early Signing Period.

So, we’ve gone from 1500 hundred players to the average recruiting class of six to eight. What do you take away from this? Think about it, and then check in next week to get my thoughts.

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.