A short YouTube talk by former college QB Trenton Luera for high-school seniors (class of ’25) about the current recruiting landscape (recorded "as of" ~Aug 6) and how to maximize chances of playing college football. Main advice: recognize many Power-5 programs have largely set boards and scholarships, be "exposure heavy" (contact many coaches and widen your recruiting net), and pursue D2/D3/NAIA relationships if D1 interest is absent; signing day has moved earlier (noted as early December).
Questions this video answers
August 6 (speaker: "as of recording this, I believe it's August 6th")
The 2025 senior class (repeatedly referred to as the '25 class')
Early December (speaker: 'signing day pushed up a little bit earlier to where it's in early December')
Chapters
All right, so today I'm going to be talking about if you're a senior right now. So at this time you're a 20, 25 and you want to play D1 or you just want to get more clear on your recruiting situation. Right now I'm going to share with you what's going on. So that way hopefully you can still go D1 or you can just get your clear picture on what you should be doing right now. And if you don't know who I am, I'm Trenlor, I'm a former college quarterback. And so let's dive into it. So first off, I just want to talk about where we're at in the recruiting timeline because we're now entering as of recording this, I believe it's August 6th. So we're starting to enter into fall camp. Fall camp has started for most programs starting to prep for the season. And so what you see now is for the 25 class for seniors, they have their board set, especially at the FBS level, definitely the power forward level. And you're seeing that most scholarships have been given out. You've probably seen this on Twitter, social media, et cetera, that at these big time schools, scholarships have been getting out. They're probably not going to give out much more. And so to move on down to lower level programs. And so that's definitely true. Like a lot of Power 4 programs have solidified who they're going to offer. If they have offers out and they know their backup plans, they know who they're talking to. And if you really, I want to stress this is if you aren't talking to D1 programs yet, you're not. You don't know if you're on their boards, which if you don't know, then you're probably not on their boards, then your chance of getting on their boards or getting scholarship offers is extremely low. I'm not saying it's zero, but it's extremely low. And so that's just a reality that you have to face. And so I want to break this up into two camps. First camp is if you want to go D1 still, then I'm talking about and you don't have D1 offers yet, then how to go about that? If you don't have any D1 offers and you don't care about D1, you're cool with going D2 or below. I'll talk about that as well. What you should be doing in those situations. So start off in camp number one, the, the D1 stuff. So if you have a D1 offer at this point. And it wasn't focused on my camera for some reason, maybe because I'm moving around too much. But we'll keep going. So if you're trying to go D1 and you don't have any D1 offers, the biggest issue you're facing is that no programs have committed to you. That, hey, we're sending you an offer whether it's a non committal offer or not. The fact that it doesn't show on social media is a red flag at this point because you're gonna get D1 offers if your junior film is good enough and just speaks to coaches that, hey, nobody's really buying into this guy either there's something going on behind the scenes they're not seeing or something with this film is glaring. And so they're not going to offer you based on that. And it's extremely tough. So what you need to do, and this is for both camps really, but you need to go exposure happy. You need to really be focused on finding the one program that's going to take that chance on you. And I was just talking to a family yesterday about this is like he had a son who's very talented, just didn't get a lot of film his junior year. He's also undersized but runs a 44740 and there he's just like, you know, we're just not able to find the program that's the right fit for him or that is willing to take a chance on him because of his size. And I stressed what he even said that his head coach was saying was like, he just has to find like there's guys out there that will love him, that he just has to find that program that's. That is willing to take him on. And so the same thing goes for this. It's like you have to find that first program. From there you see the opportunity to start to arise because once you get that first offer, then other programs become interested in you because they see you and they're like, okay, well hey, let's check this kid out. Oh, oh. Actually, he's pretty solid cool. And they pull the trigger. So the more, the more schools that you expose yourself through, the better it's going to be for you. And so really be focused on just getting known by as many coaches as possible. So that way, I mean, if you think about it like if you get known by all FBs and FCs coaches, if you get your film in front of all of them, the chances that one is going to extend you an offer is extremely high versus if you limit yourself, then it's not very high. And so you have to widen your net and see what you can catch. Now for the guys that aren't looking to only go D1 if you're open to other spots, if you feel like you're D1 guy, continue reaching out to D1 schools, give yourself a chance. But also on top of that, like D2, D3, NI schools, reach out to them, build those relationships. But just remember that if you don't have offers right now, it's not a big deal. Like most of the offers from those schools are going to come after their season finishes up, after your senior year or more deeper in the playoffs. And so again, go exposure heavy. Get known by as many coaches as possible because then once that time hits, you're going to have a bunch of offers and it just makes it really easy. Once you already have those relationships built versus getting into them later and then you're far behind, you got to catch up and do all this stuff and it's much easier when you're ahead. And so that is pretty much the game plan for those two camps. Do what is best for you. But the biggest thing here is again, just keep getting done by coaches. Be exposure heavy. Obviously play well this season because that's going to be the most important piece. But you're not going to get recruited in a vacuum. So be sure to market yourself to college coaches. So hopefully this helped give you some insight into things. Again, the chance of going D1 is not gone. It will never be gone until signing day and we're all wrapped up. But you have to be understanding where we're at right now. With signing day pushed up a little bit earlier to where it's in early December, it makes things happen a little bit faster. Guys are trying to secure their spots faster and so ultimately that's just where we're at right now. And so you have to recognize that either adjust and accept that. So hopefully this helped. If you like this got something from it, be sure to like and subscribe. I'll see you in the next one. Peace.
