You are the best player on your team. You are the best player in your league. You’ve been a three year starter and gotten all league or all county honors. Your coach thinks you’re great. Your parents can’t stop telling everyone how fabulous you are. Even the local sportswriter loves you.
You are one of hundreds, maybe thousands of best team, league and county players from across this great country. You are but one fish in a giant sea of fish.
Let’s speak plainly. Too many kids across this land get their heads filled with the accolades of others. They start to believe their own press. Their head coach is a role model so he must be telling the truth. Your parents wouldn’t lie to you and that reporter must surely know what he is writing about. By God you must be a D-1 candidate.
Certainly, some of you are. I was fortunate to have coached such a candidate last year. However, he was the only one we had on our team and it had been about five or six year’s since our program had seen one. Many programs never see one.
Many of you will go on to play at a junior college and then hang up your cleats. Those who do not may go on to play on a NAIA team or perhaps a D-3 team. A few will even go onto play at a D-2 and even fewer still might make it to a D-1 school from a JC. Fewer still will go right out of high school to a D-1. More might make it to a D-2 or D-3 right out of high school. Even then there is no guarantee that you will make the team or make the team and play.
It isn’t just about your football talent. You need grades, kid. You need a decent SAT or ACT. You need to have stayed out of trouble and have little or no baggage with you. The first stop a recruiter makes on campus is to the counseling office, not the coach’s office. You see, that recruiter may only need one or two players this year and he isn’t going to waste his time on a problem or a project when there are so many others in better shape.
What makes you think you are that one or two he is looking for? Have you put in the extra time in the classroom to ensure good or great grades? Have you hung out with the right crowd and avoided the pitfalls of high school life? Have you taken care of your body or polluted it? Were you the one with all that talent who thought talent alone was all you were going to need? Take a look around your own program or league. Did the guys you thought were great make it?
I want for you all to have the opportunity to extend your playing time past high school. The truth of the matter is that many of you will never play after graduation. That is why high school is so important from a playing aspect. If it is going to be the last time you get to put on the pads, make the most of it. Get as much of it as you can. Make yourself some long lasting memories. Prepare for this and your remaining seasons like never before. Do that, and you will also be preparing for the rest of your life.
If you are a parent or a high school coach reading this, be realistic with your sons and players. Keep them on the straight and narrow for life and the football will take care of itself. Provide them with realistic, obtainable goals and they will be more successful and happier in life. Teach them to prepare for both their triumphs and their failures.
Oh yeah, and get them to a LinemenInc camp this summer. Registration is due June 5th.
Comment
That is so true! Parents and coaches want the best for their kids, but we all need to be realistic! If we put D-1 into our kids heads, and they are not. The college coach will be rithless in telling this young man that he is not a quality player. That will hurt them much more than being realistic!
Comment
Unfortunately, many players will pass up solid offers from smaller schools chasing their D-1 dream. If a player truly is a D-1 candidate there will be letters, phone calls, peresonal visits to the school and players home and an invitation to visit the college. Believe me, a D-1 knows he’s D-1.