Recruiting: Leverage At It’s Best
Editor’s Note: The Recruiting posts are a series that focus on (wait for it…) recruiting in college athletics.
Now in all business, the company that recruits the best talent, the brightest people, and has in turn generated the most resources garners the most spoils. From Home Depot to Starbucks, the Harvard and Wharton MBA’s are the most sought after. I have a dear friend that graduated from Harvard Business Schools (HBS) and said when they had there on campus visits from Fortune 500 Company’s it was like a blue chip athlete getting recruited. That got me to thinking about recruiting and what it means to high revenue generating athletics.
Another friend of mine works in the grassroots arena of college sports. He also works in the arena of professional basketball in large part to his cultivated relationships in grassroots basketball. He lends the most valuable opinion of recruiting because he’s immersed in a profession of AAU and college sports that is a living and breathing hypocritical machine that breeds an eco-system of great proportion.
My friend, we’ll call Preston works as a bird dog. A bird dog in large part is a person that isn’t an agent, but works in some capacity (officially or not) for a company that has interests in representing professional athletes. We’ve all heard the story of unsavory types that scour the AAU basketball scene and coordinates with Sneaker company representatives to establish a rapport with a certain athlete. Covert or overt, these relationships are sneered at by college coaches and administrators, but realized by both that they are a necessary evil to maintaining the overall ecosystem of high revenue generating collegiate athletics.
Preston is an interesting cat. Nobody can spout of more facts about college basketball than Preston. Yet his road to his place upon the pulse of collegiate basketball was a long yet significant one. Unless you have a squad of young hoopsters than conditionally win and Sneaker Company’s see a sustainable revenue stream of cultivated relationships, one must work their way up the grassroots level. In Preston’s case, he would fly himself to basketball camps and work the camps. A former college basketball player himself, Preston can charm the venom out of a Pit Viper. Personable and a gentleman in every right, Preston’s ingrained southern roots won’t allow him to not recognize and despise the disparaging number of inequities of the college basketball hierarchy and the work force that fuels it.
“Give a kid some Jordan’s in a color that never came out, or some super exclusive shoes that only him and his team will have and he’s hooked. We’re talking about kids’ man! All these kids want is to play video games, holla at a few girls, and have the freshest shit,” Preston says on our trip to the Duke versus Davidson game in Cameron Indoor. “Come on man, this is some bullshit!” I can see where it’s going and I can’t say I’ll disagree with him, whereas many reasonable people will. “All these millions of dollars are being made and for what? A scholarship?” Most of us are not worthy of any type of scholarship, so we look at a college scholarship as a huge deal. But must of us, cannot contribute to the financial success of a department of a university in mass like collegiate athletes, so comparing our academic or collegiate experience to full scholarship athletes is not comparing apples to apples.
The issue I raise is the simplest most common antidote. “What if someone gets hurt?” Simple as it may sound, Sam Bradford of Oklahoma is reeling in the twenty million left on the table to appease the Oklahoma faithful. After his shoulder was gone, Bob Stoops played some Jay-Z and went “On to the Next One.” And doing so, bent over. Preston shreds that antidote. “If you’re a Ty Lawson or you’re a point guard for Santa Clara, then it’s not the same.” I ask how and get a valid response. “They sell No. 5 jersey’s all over North Carolina. In bookstores in Chapel Hill No. 50’s sell out all the time,” he says “why is it that they can get paid off of the work Ty Lawson or a Hansbrough, and they can’t get any money?” I remind Preston that these kids are going to college for free. “Carolina is twenty five grand a year, since they’re both out of state student’s right?” I concede in acknowledgment to Preston’s assessment. “Man these mother fuckers sell one hundred grand worth of jersey’s in a week.” Everyone also knows that a little exploitation is not exploitation unless it’s you are getting exploited.
“They don’t have to go to college and play,” says another friend of mine Ryan. And he’s right, even know that David Stern and the NBA have instituted an employee requirement for their workforce having to wait a year to enter for the draft, Preston’ argument is met with caution, because players can go the route of a Brandon Jennings and go to Europe. This allows people of this mindset not to examine the status of the amateurism of college sports, but more importantly, come up with alternatives that cannot answer Preston’s original question “Why can’t the player of the No. 5 jersey get paid?” good question for the player’s jersey getting sold at Santa Clara too.
Amateurism and collegiate athletics is a bundle. A bundle that consists of a top twenty-five and the rest. The rest is comprised of the other 270 schools that claim the same status as the top twenty-five, and are legitimized by having the opportunity to compete for the multi-million dollar prize that the top twenty five schools compete for. By the Wal Mart-ing of college basketball, the player at a school like Kentucky, or a Morehead State are on the same playing field, except in skill, ability, and revenue generating capabilities. Other than that, they’re just college student.
Now in all business, the company that recruits the best talent, the brightest people, and has in turn generated the most resources garners the most spoils. From Home Depot to Starbucks, the Harvard and Wharton MBA’s are the most sought after. I have a dear friend that graduated from Harvard Business Schools (HBS) and said when they had there on campus visits from Fortune 500 Company’s it was like a blue chip athlete getting recruited. That got me to thinking about recruiting and what it means to high revenue generating athletics.
Another friend of mine works in the grassroots arena of college sports. He also works in the arena of professional basketball in large part to his cultivated relationships in grassroots basketball. He lends the most valuable opinion of recruiting because he’s immersed in a profession of AAU and college sports that is a living and breathing hypocritical machine that breeds an eco-system of great proportion.
My friend, we’ll call Preston works as a bird dog. A bird dog in large part is a person that isn’t an agent, but works in some capacity (officially or not) for a company that has interests in representing professional athletes. We’ve all heard the story of unsavory types that scour the AAU basketball scene and coordinates with Sneaker company representatives to establish a rapport with a certain athlete. Covert or overt, these relationships are sneered at by college coaches and administrators, but realized by both that they are a necessary evil to maintaining the overall ecosystem of high revenue generating collegiate athletics.
Preston is an interesting cat. Nobody can spout of more facts about college basketball than Preston. Yet his road to his place upon the pulse of collegiate basketball was a long yet significant one. Unless you have a squad of young hoopsters than conditionally win and Sneaker Company’s see a sustainable revenue stream of cultivated relationships, one must work their way up the grassroots level. In Preston’s case, he would fly himself to basketball camps and work the camps. A former college basketball player himself, Preston can charm the venom out of a Pit Viper. Personable and a gentleman in every right, Preston’s ingrained southern roots won’t allow him to not recognize and despise the disparaging number of inequities of the college basketball hierarchy and the work force that fuels it.
“Give a kid some Jordan’s in a color that never came out, or some super exclusive shoes that only him and his team will have and he’s hooked. We’re talking about kids’ man! All these kids want is to play video games, holla at a few girls, and have the freshest shit,” Preston says on our trip to the Duke versus Davidson game in Cameron Indoor. “Come on man, this is some bullshit!” I can see where it’s going and I can’t say I’ll disagree with him, whereas many reasonable people will. “All these millions of dollars are being made and for what? A scholarship?” Most of us are not worthy of any type of scholarship, so we look at a college scholarship as a huge deal. But must of us, cannot contribute to the financial success of a department of a university in mass like collegiate athletes, so comparing our academic or collegiate experience to full scholarship athletes is not comparing apples to apples.
The issue I raise is the simplest most common antidote. “What if someone gets hurt?” Simple as it may sound, Sam Bradford of Oklahoma is reeling in the twenty million left on the table to appease the Oklahoma faithful. After his shoulder was gone, Bob Stoops played some Jay-Z and went “On to the Next One.” And doing so, bent over. Preston shreds that antidote. “If you’re a Ty Lawson or you’re a point guard for Santa Clara, then it’s not the same.” I ask how and get a valid response. “They sell No. 5 jersey’s all over North Carolina. In bookstores in Chapel Hill No. 50’s sell out all the time,” he says “why is it that they can get paid off of the work Ty Lawson or a Hansbrough, and they can’t get any money?” I remind Preston that these kids are going to college for free. “Carolina is twenty five grand a year, since they’re both out of state student’s right?” I concede in acknowledgment to Preston’s assessment. “Man these mother fuckers sell one hundred grand worth of jersey’s in a week.” Everyone also knows that a little exploitation is not exploitation unless it’s you are getting exploited.
“They don’t have to go to college and play,” says another friend of mine Ryan. And he’s right, even know that David Stern and the NBA have instituted an employee requirement for their workforce having to wait a year to enter for the draft, Preston’ argument is met with caution, because players can go the route of a Brandon Jennings and go to Europe. This allows people of this mindset not to examine the status of the amateurism of college sports, but more importantly, come up with alternatives that cannot answer Preston’s original question “Why can’t the player of the No. 5 jersey get paid?” good question for the player’s jersey getting sold at Santa Clara too.
Amateurism and collegiate athletics is a bundle. A bundle that consists of a top twenty-five and the rest. The rest is comprised of the other 270 schools that claim the same status as the top twenty-five, and are legitimized by having the opportunity to compete for the multi-million dollar prize that the top twenty five schools compete for. By the Wal Mart-ing of college basketball, the player at a school like Kentucky, or a Morehead State are on the same playing field, except in skill, ability, and revenue generating capabilities. Other than that, they’re just college student.
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