4 common recruiting sayings that I hate

Alright, so this is four common recruiting sayings that I hate hearing and I never repeat because there's so much advice out there and a lot of it just doesn't really make sense in my mind and didn't work for me. So I want to make sure that, you know, I share what worked for me. So that way hopefully you can replicate it and get the same results that I did. So if you don't know who I am, I'm Tren Lore. I'm a former college quarterback. I went from backup high school quarterback to college football quarterback and earned a scholarship of $70,200 for just two years school coming out of junior college and didn't even play that much in junior college either. Only started five games. So how I did that comes down to just realizing that a lot of things that people told me in the past, past coaches, past teammates, all this stuff, it just wasn't true. At least it wasn't true to me. And so I'm going to share some light on these four sayings. What they are, why they are said and why they do have some truth to it, but why they don't work anymore. And so let's dive into. So the first one, my favorite one to talk about, play well and they'll find you. This is like the number one common saying that I love to throw because it's just not true. It's just not true anymore. Like if you go to a big high school and I'm talking like big, big high school because I went to a big high school, it was like probably total student body of about 24, 2500, there's about 600, 700 in my graduating class. Like big, big high school. But a lot of kids that played well at those schools still didn' found. Like there's a good amount. Like the usually the top kids at each school usually went to a decent school but like most like there's plenty of other talented kids there that didn't get found. And because this whole play well and they'll find you thing just isn't true. Like if you're at a big national powerhouse, modern day IMG yes, you're gonna get found. Like that's the only situation where I'm like okay, cool, you don't have to worry about recruiting, just play well. It'll be always coaches trying to find you because they're always at those schools and they go to that con that well constantly. But if you're at a mid sized school or especially if you're at a small school like, you cannot rely on playing well and they'll find you. Because I saw plenty of those kids. Like, I went to an NA school, Morningside, very talented NI school. But most of those kids, the situation was A, either they were lacking something that stopped them from going to a higher level, or B, they just didn't have the exposure to go to a higher level school. They just. Not enough coaches knew about them. And so that's like, that's the biggest thing is like, you can't. There's too many kids out there. There's 100,000 plus high school seniors for football alone. For football alone. And I was just doing some research on this a couple days ago. 2.7. It's 2.7% of high school football players get a scholarship to play college football. It's like 7% that play college football. Only 2.7 get a scholarship. 2.7, 2.7. That means if you get in a room of 200K, like high school football players, only a little over five of them, maybe if you round down, it's going to be five are going to play, are going to receive a scholarship to play college football. It is that low of a percentage and so to say, like, oh, yeah, all I got to do is play well and like, they'll find me. They'll. They'll scour the earth to find me. Then, I mean, just, sorry, you're being unrealistic. And that's not gonna happen because I saw plenty of my teammates that were better talented than me. I mean, again, I did not play a lot of high school. I did not play a lot in juco, and yet my recruiting process in high school went smoother than all of them. Like, just truthfully, because I understood the principles of recruiting, I understood what it took, and I did it. And I was able to come out of it with multiple scholarship offers despite not like, I got benched my senior year. Like, it just wasn't like, there was nothing that amazing about me coming out of my senior year. But still, I was able to get recruited. And so playing well will not get you recruited. It might, you might get lucky, but it's just relying on luck. And I hate relying on luck because that means that there's a chance that I might not get it or get what I want to. And if this is your dream or this is something that you really want for your son, then I wouldn't rely on luck. And I would go out there, put myself out there, do the things that people aren't doing. So that way I can guarantee this outcome of getting a scholarship that not only is a dream and something that I want to achieve, but also just financially, I mean I saved myself $70,000. Like that is so huge. And just the financial return on that was massive. So number one, play well and they'll find you. If anybody says this, just run away. Close your like don't, don't listen to them. Number two, all you need is a Twitter profile. This is the, this is the more like up to date device. I definitely don't disagree with them because they're not wrong. You do need a Twitter profile and like you can get away with just having a Twitter profile. But the thing is like the way I look at it and I kind of talked about this in the cookie cutter advice video about like why Googling wouldn't, doesn't work. Googling how to get recruited. Because this is becoming common advice. Getting just a Twitter profile is becoming common advice. I mean you're still going to be ahead of the game, like slightly above average if you get a Twitter profile early on. But just having a Twitter profile and not doing anything with it, not going the extra mile and doing things that stand out is gonna end up costing you a lot. I mean I think of I worked with one kid who just had a Twitter profile and he just didn't do anything on it and he had like no followers. And just by doing stuff, we started posting, we started DMing coaches, we started emailing. He got it up to like 120 followers, got a T2 scholarship in like six weeks and committed to that school. And so you have to do things that are different from everybody else. Because if you just, if you're just doing the average then you're going to be the average. And the average when it comes to college football recruiting is you don't get a scholarship and you don't play college football. Like that's average. Like so you, if you want to get recruited you have to be above average and you have to do things that other people aren't willing to do and that's go the extra mile. So just doing a Twitter profile again like to me that's kind of like the playwell and they'll find you of the modern day is like all like that. Like people will tell you all you need to do, you need to play well, you need to look the part and then you need a Twitter profile and you're going to magically get recruited. That's just not true. Like the algorithm is not gonna randomly suggest your profile to college Coaches, you need to get it seen by college coaches and you need to make sure highlight videos. Getting in front of college, like all those things are important because none of those three things to me get you in front of college coaches automatically. Like, again, if you're at a big school. Yeah, okay, cool. Coaches should be stopping by your high school, coaches should be suggesting you to them and things will work out. But if you're at a small school, that's not gonna work. That's not gonna actually work for you. So that's the second one. The third one is the big one. You need connections. I'll just be a personal reference point to this. I received a D1 offer and I had zero, zip, none connections. And so you don't need connections. I hop on calls with parents, recruits all the time and they're always like thinking that somehow I hook them up and connect them with coaches. And I'm like, no, that's not what we do. If you want something like that, I'm just probably not the person for you because to me, it didn't work for me. And most people that I knew that went that route, it just seemed like it built this false relationship and these. It doesn't set you up for success like a lot of people think, like, oh, yeah, all you need get in the door, you get a pwo, get a scholarship through connections. And then, you know, you really got to work your butt off. But like, ultimately, like your depth chart is decided during recruiting. Like, obviously, you know, you got to put on the pads, get in there. But like the guys who they invest, especially now with nil, the guys who they invest into, they are going to give them a lot of chances and unless you really stand out, they're not going to give you a chance. And so to rely on connections to get somewhere. Like, unless that's just your goal, you want to go D1 and you don't really care how to do it, go for it. But for me, I wanted somewhere that I really enjoyed being. Not just for the school aspect or for the status aspect, but on a day to day basis. I just, like, I want to be around the coaches, want to be around my teammates. And for me, that was going through the recruiting process without connections because, yes, I didn't have those connections even present to me in the first place, but also, like, I just was able to build a real relationship with coaches. I was able to move through the process without someone else there behind the scenes. I was able to be forward with these coaches and it just, it went a Lot smoother than you'd expect. And it also just built these really awesome relationships where, I mean, shoot, I get texts from coaches sometimes where they're still like, dudes, just saw your tweet. Like, just reminded me of this moment that, you know, we had. I always enjoy talking to you. I always enjoyed doing this. And I mean, like, you just don't get that if you. If you go this connection route. And so I. I just. I can't say I necessarily despise the connections. I tell my. My people that I work with, like, hey, if you have them, use them to your advantage. But also, don't rely solely on them, because then you could get tough, stuck in a really tough spot. And also, again, it just. If you're not really building that real relationship with these connections, then when you get on campus, it might not turn out to be the best spot for you. So the last one, the fourth one, is just when people say, like, something doesn't work. When people say, like, oh, you know, emails doesn't work is the big one. Like, emails don't work. College coaches don't read their email. That is a lie. My scholarship that I took, the70201 came from email. So to say that scholarships don't work or emails don't work, scholarships don't come from emails is a lie. We've gotten emails because I sent emails for our recruits, at least some of them, and it looks like it's coming from them. It doesn't look like it's coming from me. It's personal to them. And we get responses all the time. We get responses from Notre Dame, plenty of other Power 4 schools, Group of 5 schools, all the way down to NI and JUCO. And it works. It's gotten these kids scholarships. They pay attention to it. And even the ones that don't respond to email still go on Twitter and follow these kids. And so to say that email doesn't work is just wrong. My number one question I would ask these people that say, oh, X doesn't work, Y doesn't work, is like, what. What's your numbers behind that? Have you been tracking stuff? Like what? Because I track things. We track things. And some of our emails that get sent out to D1 coaches get a 85% response rate, sometimes 90% response or not response rate, open rate, Response rate would be insane. I. I hope we can get there one day. I don't think we will, because we send thousands. But 90% open rate and like, 60 to 70% click rate. Like, these coaches are Opening emails, clicking on them, reading through them, responding to them, and I have the numbers to back it up. And anyone that's saying that it doesn't work probably sent 10, 20 emails, didn't get a response back, and just was frustrated through their hands up and said this doesn't work and then went to go do something else. So whenever someone says something doesn't work, just be sure to question them and dive deeper into that because you may just learn it was from one experience, one story, and not really from this wide gap that someone like myself who does a lot of work with a bunch of families really knows about. So those are the four most common recruiting sayings that I just, I hate hearing because they're just most of the time they're wrongly incentivized because you know, most time when you hear play well and they'll find you, it's coming from your high school coach. My, I mean, personally, my juco coach would say that sometimes because he's incentivized to say that he wants us to focus on the season. He doesn't want us to focus on recruiting because he feels like it might take us, our time and our energy and our mind away from football. And I understand that. I'm not saying there's anything bad about that. But it's like if you want to get recruited, you can't just play well and they'll find you. That just doesn't happen. So you can't do that. And the same with the connection stuff. People want you to try and feel like you have to rely on some people's connection. So just make sure you understand where people are coming from, why they're saying these things. And always ask deeper to see what exactly makes them be able to prove that, hey, this is the right answer. Same with me. Make sure to check me out so that way you make sure I'm actually legit. Because who knows, maybe I'm just lying to you. But regardless, hopefully you got something from this. Hopefully you learned something. You go crush the recruiting process. If you want to learn more, check more stuff out. My handle is TrentLaw14 on all social media platforms, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter. And if you want to learn more about how to work with me, you can check out YourFirstScholarship.com and learn more there. Peace.