What Division 1 Recruits Should Expect After Signing
Every year, Division 1A scholarships are awarded, giving each recipient celebrity status in his community. All the hard work student athletes put in over four years in classrooms, doing community service, participating in training camps and offseason conditioning pays off with the acceptance of an athletic scholarship. They have the opportunity to receive an education while doing what they love – playing collegiate sports.
The sad aspect of this reality is that most student athletes don’t take advantage of their opportunity. With all the hype coming out of high school and not much guidance throughout the process, student athletes enter college with dreams of making it to the NFL as soon as they become eligible. Most of these five-star recruits go into college with such high expectations, that without a solid foundation they don’t transition well at the collegiate Division 1A level. This causes a lot of student athletes to transfer to other programs or even drop out of college.
Once a student athlete enters college as a recruited football player, his career starts all over again, but it’s the athlete’s job to remain eligible, to go to practice, and to attend offseason workouts according to the requirements of the scholarship. Everything that was done in high school becomes a memory, and student athletes must make names for themselves all over again. Only the mentally strong will survive.
Athletic ability plays a small role in college success, but everyone in any recruiting class was the best athlete at their position on their high school teams. In college, former high school standouts compete against veterans – upperclassmen who’ve been in the system longer, other five-star recruits coming in every year, and odds are the new kids haven’t even hit the field on Saturday yet.
Freshmen still have to go to class and maintain grades in order to stay eligible to play a game where they’re now number three or lower in the depth chart, where in high school, they were number one. These are just a few of the adversities that recruits are faced with their freshman year, along with the stresses of being away from home for the first time.
Sound advice for recruits is to think beyond football, to think about what to do in life once playing football is over. College football scholarships should be used to build a solid foundation to fall back once playing days are over. NFL dreams can and should be pursued along with a business plan, not necessarily a backup plan, enabled by a free education. Gamble with the odds in your favor.
Special Feature / Jacksonville Florida / March 2014
By Joey Lopes
