Most families come into August burned out. They’re hobbled by injury, recovering from whirlwind camp tours and, if they haven’t gotten a committable offer, are often left wondering “what the heck just happened?” So I’m going to write this article with an eye towards what to do if you’re a rising 2027 senior and if you’re a rising 2028. If you’re any younger than that, I’ll also have a few pieces of advice.
2027’s
If you didn’t get an offer this summer, while disappointing, it’s not entirely “game over”.
If you’re looking at an Ivy+ (Ivy, NESCAC, Patriot or other T25 school) they usually need to get the bulk, if not all, of their remaining offers out by ED1 which is usually in November. So, these schools will need to pivot back to their pool of recruits in the Fall. While they may not have as many open spots as during the summer, they’re still trying to finish their recruitment up. The Ivies tend to not have EDII, that’s mainly NESCAC or other high academic DIII programs which occurs in January usually. If you find yourself falling outside EDI or EDII windows, you really need to be a near perfect student to get into these schools to apply RD (regular decision) confidently.
If you’re looking at an FCS/FBS program, unless you were perceived “good enough” to be a potential starter this summer, many are going to keep you in a holding pattern until the transfer portal opens up in December. While it’s not completely the Wild West it was the last two years and there are more rules and regulations on the transfer portal, these FBS programs are essentially NFL franchises financially speaking and they need to do their due diligence to see what talent the portal might bring them. A HS family who has 2-3 FBS programs telling them to “hang tight” going into the Fall is facing a situation where they’re going to be compared to the portal players and the school will just take the better of the two.
Going into the Fall, you really need to be honest with yourselves - players and parents alike. It’s a good time to sit down and simply say OK, who was most active recruiting us? Which trade offs are we facing here? Do we have committable DIII offers that we risk losing if we wait out a late Ivy/DI offer? Are we OK with giving up the bird in hand for a maybe bigger school offer? Unfortunately, you can’t un-experience the glamor of a big DI program recruiting you and players/parents alike will severely round up on that program’s interest in them which clouds sound decision making. If I’ve only learned one thing in recruiting in the past decade it’s this: nothing will go according to plan.
If you have an offer in-hand from a smaller but reputable NESCAC/DIII programs and several “hang tights” from FCS DI programs, my usual advice is take the smaller committable offer. These big D1 programs will not lose sleep over reaching out to a player they really like even if they have “committed” on X already. A “hang tight” is not an offer. And, until you have an offer, you don’t. Interacting with a DI coach is correlated to recruiting interest, but itself is not a coach putting you on the team.
However, if you’d like to be stubborn and hold out for the big school, that’s OK too, just know what you’re getting into.
The best things you can do going into the season are simple:
Be a great student → Gettting the best grades possible will only help your admissions cause. And, if you were a bubble admit academically from your summer pre-read you really need to get all A’s.
Be a great player → Getting the best tape possible will only be a net positive. Coaches may actually need to see something specific on tape. Maybe you’re a great pass protector at OT, but you’re run game needs some work. Maybe you can kick but you can’t punt. Maybe you’re a running QB first, and need to show some throwing ability.
Be a great teammate → This won’t show up in the stat sheet, but don’t become so obsessed with recruitment that it becomes you’re entire personality and you forget to be a great student, teammate and citizen in the hallways.
2028’s
Rising juniors are about to entire the recruiting pressure cooker for the next 12-18 months.
The best things you can do, even more so than the 2027’s, be a great student, player and teammate. Especially junior year academics and game tape are valuable to college coaches and these are usually what teams’ main evaluations are based off of.
Outside of just being a great student and player, however, there are other things you can do to get the ball rolling on your recruitment.
Honest Assessments: The problem with private coaches and consultants is that they’re not always incentivized to be brutally honest with parents and players. It’s not always been great for my business model to tell families upfront yeah Johnny ain’t DI but, after years doing this, I’d rather be a little blunt upfront than risk a rupture in the relationship later when the DI offers eventually fail to materialize. Whether it is your HS coach, private coach, or someone else, you need a really honest assessment of where you project on the high, medium and low ends of your recruitment. Parents and players mistake the high end projections for their recruiting floor while college coaches usually treat a player’s floor as their ceiling.
School Selection: Pick four reach schools, four target schools and four safety schools. A reach requires everything to go right and then some - maybe a killer SAT/ACT score, a late growth spurt. A target school requires consistent, long term hard work - minus the late growth spurt or stars aligning. A safety school is just a school you could start at tomorrow as you are.
Initial Outreach: Every program DIII → FCS will have public facing recruiting questionnaires that, when completed, will create you as a digital data point in their recruiting data bases. These are tedious, but you need to do them. They are on a team’s website. Next, you need to send an initial email/DM on X to your area recruiter and position coach initially introducing yourself. Coach, my name is John Doe ‘29 K/P 3.9 GPA 1300 SAT 8/10 FG long of 49 All State K and I’d love to play for you. I already filled out your questionnaire and have attached my transcript/tape below. SHORT is always better on these. Volume negates luck → You need to send a critical mass of DM’s/emails to get some hits on coaches replying to you. If you get 1-2 coaches replying to you for every 20 messages you send, that’s really good.
Fall 2026 → Gameday Visits: Coaches have 100s of tickets set aside just for game day visits. Even if you are a borderline recruit it’s not a bad idea to attend 1-2 of these just to (1) see what a game day is actually like and (2) it can be a good way to generate interest from other rival schools in you. The caveat here is that just because you COULD attend a bigger FBS school’s game day visit DOES NOT MEAN you are in serious contention for an offer. These recruiting staffs are so massive with so many different tentacles talking to different kids that it’s not terribly difficult to get a visit. Once you see a Clemson, you really can’t unsee it and it is going to anchor - for better or for your - the rest of your recruiting. Don’t anchor yourself to an unrealistic landing spot.
Winter 2026/2027 →
Thanksgiving to Winterbreak → Coaches are on the road visiting schools selling you on Junior Days.
January to February 2027 → Almost dead. Coaches can talk to you but they’re gearing up for Spring Football and Junior Day visits coming up in March. This is a good time to circle back to all those coaches you spoke with over the Fall and Summer to gauge their interest.
March to Mid April 2027 → Spring Football/Junior Day visits happen. These are not you getting an offer, although some top shelf talent might get early offers (a lot of these aren’t exactly committable on the spot and are more a way to get them to come to camp - it’s a lot of recruitment theater which deserves its own article someday) but most kids won’t have something committable and will still need to show up to camp (unless you’re 10% of talent in your class which probably isn’t most). These can be good to post on X to generate some rival team interest, but by themselves will not get you an offer.
Mid April to Mid May 2027 → This is when coaches can go back on the road to your high school but now they can watch you workout live. Some call this “showcase season”. If you’re lucky, you play for a team that does a good job with other area schools to pool talent in one spot for college coaches to evaluate. This is a core advantage over kids at lesser well-known programs. These showcases or private workouts can almost be like the summer camp before the summer camp. These really are where offers that are committable start coming out.
June 2027 → All the big FBS camps happen in the first month of summer here.
July 2027 → Starting end of June into July, FCS programs will then start having their own camps. Then, towards the end of the month, is when DII/DIII programs will run their own camps.
August 2027 → From 8/1 to 8/31 is considered a Dead Period where coaches are not allowed to reply to you during pre season.
OK so this is literally everything I can think of for a 2027 or 2028 to get the ball rolling on their recruitment this August. If you’d like to continue the conversation please feel free to reply to this email or drop a comment below!
Brendan
PS I also do one off strategy calls if you’d like to schedule one as well.
