Recruiting Web sites aid players

Many high school players put highlight videos on the Web to attract attention.
By SETH EMERSON
MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS
COLUMBIA, S.C. -- As stud football recruits go, Brandon King could have been the best-kept secret in South Carolina. If the Internet had not been invented, he probably would be.
Last fall, while other non-seniors were making names for themselves among recruiters, King was living with his father in Columbia, Mo., and playing sparingly. After one semester, King transferred to Ridge View in Columbia, S.C., where he had played his first two seasons.
King, a 6-foot-5 receiver, was an unknown when he attended a seminar given by Jim Baxter, who runs the Web site scvarsity.com. Baxter, who has been operating scvarsity.com since the early 1990s, needed only one look at King to see his potential.
Baxter placed a highlight film of King on scvarsity.com and called some of his contacts to get King into a Nike camp. Some colleges saw King on the Web site and paid close attention to him at the camp.
Now, before he has played a down as an upperclassmen, King has drawn the interest of South Carolina and Clemson, and he has talked to Virginia, Notre Dame, Kentucky and Ohio State. All, King said, because of the Internet.
"I attribute that to Jim Baxter," he said. "Because he got me to the Nike camp to be seen, and if I didn't go to Nike camp, I'd just be the same person as I was before the Nike camp: a student who came from Missouri to play football at Ridge View."
Transforming the process
Those who are involved with college football recruiting say the Internet has transformed the process. They disagree over whether some of the changes are good, but they agree the best change is players such as King rarely go unnoticed anymore.
Irmo, S.C., fullback Aram Olson toiled in relative anonymity before he posted highlight footage of himself on a Web site. Afterward, he received numerous scholarship offers; he decided on Ohio State. Blythewood's Charles White committed to Georgia after getting offers that were initiated by his association with scvarsity.com.
"The days of the true sleeper are over," Baxter said.
As far back as 2000, high school players looking to get noticed by colleges had to count on two things: on-field performance and contacts between their coach and colleges. But since college coaches could scout only a few games a night, scholarship offers often came down to word-of-mouth buzz and the ability to get film in the hands of the right coach.
So a player might go unrecruited if he played at a small school that didn't report stats to the media, or if his coach did not have good college contacts, or if he played a position that didn't produce eye-popping stats.
A few years ago all that started to change because of the Web.
At first, Web sites such as Rivals.com popped up as fan sites. But the sites' creators quickly realized they could attract visitors by focusing on recruiting. Soon, recruiting analysts such as Baxter, who had been publishing a newsletter for years, started putting their content on the Web. (Many Youngstown-area players, for instance, have highlight videos on www.scoutingohio.com.)
As readership continued to grow, recruiting sites moved beyond posting scoops on what player was going where to competing to be the first to discover prospects.
Of course, they had cooperation from players.
Getting attention
Olson's problem was that he plays a position that garners little attention: fullback. In Irmo's offense last fall, he spent most of his time blocking for tailback Patrick Goss.
"He's a human highlight film as far as fullbacks go," Baxter said. "He just levels people. So for the school that's looking for that type of athlete at that position, he was great."
Olson's dilemma was getting his highlight film out to those schools. In the old days, Irmo coach Bob Hanna might have called colleges and lobbied on Olson's behalf. Instead, he let Olson use an editing machine at school to create a highlight tape, and Olson and his family put it on his personal Web site and later sent it to schools.
"I think Auburn and Alabama were primarily the first two that hooked up real quick," Hanna said. "And once that happened, I think word got out."
Primarily because of the Internet, schools such as Texas A & amp;M and Ohio State saw other major football programs had offered Olson scholarships, and they followed suit. On Feb. 1, Ohio State emerged the winner of a national recruiting battle over a player who was barely known in his own state.