How To ACTUALLY Make It In College Football In 2026

So the new year is finally here. It's 2026. This is your year. This is the year that you're going to crush it. You have your goals set out. You're going to go make the playoffs with your high school football team. You're going to go win the state championship. You're going to go and get that first Division one scholarship this year. And it's awesome that you have these big, audacious goals that you're chasing after. But the thing is, you've set goals in the past. You wanted to rush for X amount of yards and you didn't hit it. You wanted to get an offer last year, but you didn't. So what's causing you to not accomplish your goals that you're setting out to do that you so badly want? It's because you don't have a system that actually guarantees that you're going to go and achieve those goals at the end of the day. Now, my name is Trent Loire. I went from a high school backup quarterback to a college football quarterback where throughout my recruiting career I was able to earn over 25 scholarship offers totaling over half a million dollars. I set goals and I didn't always achieve them, but once I started to realize what the reason behind that was and what I needed to do to fix it, everything changed. And so today I'm going to walk you through that system. So that way you know exactly what you need to do throughout this year, so that way you can make it your best year ever. Now, first things first, let's just talk about the goals themselves, because I think a lot of people set goals the wrong way. Obviously you want to set big goals. They should be audacious. They should be ridiculous. Like if someone hears them, they should be like, there's no way you'll accomplish that because there's no reason to chase a smaller goal. Why would you want to chase a realistic goal? That's stupid. You should be always chasing after the biggest thing that you can possibly set your heart and eyes on. For example, I don't care if you're 57 and you want to play good Division 1 football, do not lower your sights. Now, it is important to keep in mind that you shouldn't be Division 1 or bust. The whole idea here is that, hey, you go chase after what you want. You need that motivation to continue pushing yourself to that next level, to push your standards higher. But obviously, if you fail that and you go Division 2, oh, boo hoo, you still accomplished an amazing goal. Nonetheless, it's always shooting for the stars. And then if you fall short, oh, well, it's fine. The great thing is, if you're a younger athlete, you have the motivation desire to achieve bigger goals. You'll see as later on in your life, some people just get defeated and they just aren't able to set these big goals because they feel like they won't achieve them. And so by you realizing this early on, that, hey, if I set big goals, even if I don't achieve them, I still can fall a little bit short. And that's probably fine too because I set up this big time goal. This will allow you to do the same thing later in life and know that things are bound to work out no matter where you actually fall on in terms of achieving that goal or not. So just realize that you're setting these big goals, obviously with the intention of like, hey, I'm going to achieve this, but also with the idea that, like, hey, if I happen to fall a little short of this, that's perfectly fine because I know it's in a good landing spot and I still like the result no matter what. For myself, I want to play Division 1 football. I wanted to be a Division 1 starting quarterback. I wanted to go play in the NFL. I didn't end up doing either of those things. I did get a Division 1 offer, to be fair, but I ended up going and playing the NA level. And I'm looking back at my own career, the way that things played out, the fact that my senior year I was benched multiple times and the fact that I was still able to go earn a full tuition scholarship at one of the top NA schools, I think that's a pretty good job of ending up short of my goals and still achieving something that I think a lot of people would have been like, hey, there's no way this kid can do that. Now a couple other notes, quick notes about goals is you want to make sure they're specific. So don't make it like super generic. You don't want to be like, I want to be a college football player. Make it as specific as you possibly can. And that's true to you. The next thing I want to talk about is goals is making sure to chunk it down. So obviously we have these goals of, hey, I want to be a Division 1 football player, I want to go and play in the NFL. Okay, let's chunk down from there. What do you need to do to accomplish that goal? Because you can set up this big goal, but it's like, okay, cool, like, I have some General idea, but I don't really know exactly what I have to do to go and accomplish that. And again, when we talk about a system, this is where you start to build that system. Because what a lot of people do is, you know, they go and say, I want to go be a division one player at ucla. Awesome. That's cool. But then all they have in their mind is that. And there's just no real actions or things that they can do along the way to know that they're achieving that goal or getting closer to it. So, for example, let's say your goal is to go play Division 1 football. Okay. What do you have to do to accomplish that? From a broad level, you have to get a Division 1 offer at some point in your high school career. What do you need to do to get a Division one offer? Okay, you have to get good grades. You have to be above, you know, 2.3 minimum. But realistically, you need to be above a 3.0 GPA. You need to be one of the best players on your team, arguably the best player. Okay, what does that look like? What are the stats that require that? Are you going to have to pass for over 3,000 yards? You're going to have to get multiple interceptions? Are you going to have to be first team all state, first team all conference? What are you going to have to look like from a height and weight perspective? Obviously, you can't control your height, but what from a weight perspective can you do to maximize your chances of making this goal happen? And what you start to create is this clear list of things that you need to do that, hey, if I check all these boxes, I am putting myself in the best position I can to accomplish this goal. And all you're doing, again, is building this clear system, this clear things, this clear checklist that tells you, hey, just do this stuff, and you'll put yourself in the best position to accomplish that goal that you want. And then you want to continue to chunk down. So the chunk down never ends until you get to, hey, I do this thing. And then it helps everything else. This simple action, this one five to ten minute thing. So for example, we talked about. Okay, wait, what weight do you need to be to. Okay, cool. To get to that weight, I need to eat more food. I need to, you know, gain weight. Okay, cool. You could talk to ChatGPT, you could ask some AI, or you could do research on it if you really want to get that in depth. Or you could talk to your parents, some kind of expert in the field and say, okay, what do I need to do to gain weight? Cool. Okay. I need to eat X amount of calories per day, and I need to eat X amount of grams of protein. So that way I don't just get fat per day. I need to have X amount of fats, X amount of carbs. Okay, cool. What does the meal plan for that look like throughout an entire week? Cool. Okay, what do I need to cook? What do I need to meal prep? What do I need to buy? Okay, cool. Now I already know what I have to do throughout a week. All I need to do is actually execute that now. And you craft this clear game plan, this clear weekly schedule that just makes it easy for you to go, okay, do this thing. Boom. It's accomplishing this goal. Boom. Do this thing. It's accomplishing this goal and just makes it so easy. Your goal is to break your 20, 26 goals down to daily and weekly habits, because that's ultimately what is going to allow you to accomplish a goal, is the habits that you have throughout the year you put into action over the course of 365 days. And that's going to add up and help you get to that goal. It's what we call the compounding effect. A great example is the stock market. If you invest a dollar every single day into the stock market, not only is that principle, the amount that you invested going to go up, but the stock market generally goes up. If you're looking at S and p, anywhere from 6 to some say 10%, the average return right now is actually closer to 10% over the past couple of years. So let's say it goes up 10% over the course of the year. You invest $365 over the course of the year, and it's also going up at that time. So it could be at the end of the year, closer to $400. You just added $30 just because it compounded over time. And then that happens year after year after year to where that's able to turn into thousands, tens of thousands, even more if you give it enough of time. It's the same thing with the habits that you put in. It compounds over time. That's why you've been able to develop as a football player. You started out when you were 10, 11, 12 years old, and now you're 16, 17, 18. And that skill that you've grown over time, where you've invested an hour, two hours, three hours every single day, maybe even more, into the weight room, into your nutrition, to your film, into the field, and that's allowed you to compound your skill to where you look back four years ago and you can't even recognize yourself. And that's exactly what we want to do in every single goal that we're setting is we want to have that compound effect playing for us, not against it. Because if you look at the other way, if you're putting in negative habits, if you're eating junk food, if you're not getting proper sleep, that is only going to hurt you. You're going to regress, you're going to get worse. And that is going to lead you to regress. It's going to lead the compound effect to go downwards, not upwards. Now, we talked about systems, we talked about what habits are, how to use those, accomplish your goals, and how to chunk down. Ultimately, one thing I want to talk about is actually executing on those goals and habits. And so I think there's two really cool ideas that author James Clear, who wrote the book Atomic Habits, is a great read, highly recommend you read it. It's a very simple book. You can very put in probably a couple sentences. He talks about how to make it easier to start new habits that will help you do a certain thing, and then how to decrease habits that may hurt you. You know, like we talked about eating junk food or playing video games, watching tv, all those kinds of things. I think one of the most important parts that he talks about in the very beginning of the book is two things. One thing he says is that you do not rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems. And so we've talked about some systems here that you can use. And so again, you've set up goals every single year. And probably at the end of every single year you go, man, I didn't reach that goal. But, you know, I move forward in some capacity. I'm going to get it this next year. But then the next year happens and you still didn't get your goals. And so you have to realize that, yes, goal setting is important because it gives you that sense of direction, gives you that North Star to know, hey, I need to go to this point, but it's not going to do it for you. And so a system is in place to make sure that, hey, this is what I need to actually do to get to that goal, because that's what you fall down to. Most people just don't have a system in place to get anything done, which is why most people are average and they do average things. The second thing that he talks about is arguably Even more important than that. And he talks about identity. He talks about that you need to shift your identity to be the kind of person that goes and does these habits to go and do the things that you're trying to do. A great example he gives is that a lot of people go out and set fitness goals, they try to go and run and they say, I am going to try and run this year. To you, that may sound perfectly normal, but if you compare it to this, I am a runner this year. This makes you identify as a runner versus someone that's trying to run. Who is more likely to succeed in that situation? The person that says I am a runner or that I'm trying to run. Obviously it's a person that says I'm a runner because that's part of your identity. For example, you guys, if you look at yourself and you look at your own day to day journey, you probably have certain identities that you already just aligned with. For example, you may be a good student in the classroom. So for you, classroom, work, tests, homework is all extremely easy because you continue to tell yourself, I'm a good student. This is easy to me. You may be a bad student. And you continue to tell yourself the story, hey, I'm a bad student. This is not easy to me. I don't like homework. This is stupid. I don't get it, I'm stupid. And these things then create all the actions that you do and then make it harder or make it easier on yourself as well. Another great example is around the trait of work ethic. You may tell yourself that I am a hard worker. And so for you, doing hard things is easy because you know, whether it's conditioning or just doing something that sucks and nobody else wants to do, you're a person that goes, I'm a hard worker, I'm gonna do what other people don't. So you go and do it. You need to recognize when your identity is causing you not to accomplish the goals that you want, when it's causing roadblocks and getting certain things done. So that way you can flip that identity and make it work for you, not against you. Now this is a very hard like psychological concept because it takes awareness. So it's not something that's gonna happen overnight. And it's a skill that you develop over time. So again, it's not going to happen tomorrow, it's not going to happen next week. But hopefully you're already thinking of some things of like, oh man, like I haven't been good at this thing. I think it's actually because I keep telling myself this story that I'm not good at this thing because of X reason. Okay, cool. That's not actually true. Okay, what can I do to change that? Or is it just a simple me telling myself a different story instead? And again, it's going to take a bit of time to get used to that. To be fair, I'm still on a lifelong journey. I try to improve that myself because there's certain things that I tell myself and certain stories that I tell myself that are just not true, that I continue to believe that are causing limitations in my own life as well. So now we've talked about systems, we've talked about identity. Let's talk about reasons. I think reasons are one of the most important things that you can have when you're setting goals. Most people set goals without a clear reason on why they're actually doing it. And so you should have clear and believable reasons to why you are trying to accomplish a specific goal. Now, some may have came to mind, but I want you to really think on this. Are these reasons clear? Are they super simple and are they believable? What I mean by believable is that they shouldn't just be this virtue signaling thing of oh, I love football or I'm doing this for my family, if that is actually what it does. These goals have to be something that internally in you fire you up when it's five in the morning, it's you're jolting awake and you're going, hey, this is the reason I'm doing this. I want to go and get this done. When it's late at night and you need to do one more thing, you're willing to do that thing because of this reason. These reasons have to be extremely powerful to motivate you, to fire you up in the toughest and hardest and most boring situations of all time. One of the reasons that I went and played college football and wanted to and just kept on pushing is because I wanted to prove all the doubters wrong. I wanted to say you, I don't care what you think, I don't care if you benched me my senior year, that you didn't think I'm a good quarterback. I don't care that if you think that I wasn't good enough to play the collegiate level, I'm going to prove you wrong. And I did. And that continued to push me when I didn't want to go further, when I didn't want to work out, when I didn't want to get up. I was like, fuck this person, fuck these people. I'm going to go do it. I'm going to go prove them wrong every single day, day in and day out. Now you can say that's not healthy, that that's bad, whatever the case might be. But if you're really setting out to go and accomplish your goals, you need to use all the fuel you can. Dirty, clean, doesn't matter. You need to do what is required to get that goal done. And at the end of the day, what's healthy? Not accomplish your goals or actually doing what you set out to do. Another reason to be fair was looking cool. Playing the quarterback position obviously comes with status. It comes with hard situations, pressure moments. To me, like that was definitely a part of the reason too. I wanted to be put in those situations. I wanted to be in those moments that I always dreamed of, of handling big games or handling big pressure situations. And that would also keep me going as well. You need to have multiple reasons that you can lean on at the end of the day. And so you should take, you know, a couple minutes to think through these reasons of what are you trying to set up and do. And again, something that fires you up, that's something that's going to keep you going. And it doesn't matter if it's selfish, if it's not selfish, if it's good or bad in the eyes of someone else, think about those true reasons that deep down keep you going. Because if you're having a hard time coming up with it, it's gonna be extremely hard to keep going. Because if you have a hard time thinking of these reasons and you can't come up with any, then you're just not going to accomplish your goals. Because someone else with those reasons that's going to put in more time, going to put in more effort than you because they have those reasons and are willing to is going to crush you every single day. The last thing I want to talk about is accountability. Number one, you should have self accountability. Just every week, every two weeks, just do a quick check in, check in with yourself, say, hey, am I doing the right things? Is there anything else that I'm missing? Is there anything else I should be doing? Is there anything else I should remove? Maybe to make sure that I'm doing everything that I can to get to my goal. And also just having other people to choke you as well, having a mentor, having friends, having your parents, whoever you can and trust to hold you accountable, make sure you're doing the right stuff, make sure that you're supported throughout this journey you want. So that way you can make sure that you're doing everything you can to get to that goal. You want to make it impossible to fail. And the things I walk through today pretty much outline the system that you need in place. Now, if you're looking to get recruited, if you're looking to play college football, what you can do is go down below. I have a link to our scholarship playbook. It's a quiz that takes you through your recruiting process and then depending on your situation, ranks you at one of seven stages and gives you the exact advice that you need in that situation. Situation took me over 100 hours. I highly recommend that you check it out. If you're looking for more one on one recruiting help, what you can do is also there's a link below. You can book in a call with our team. They walk you through what we do, how we do it. They also give you a ton of advice on the call because no matter whether you're going to work with us or not, we want to make sure that you're getting put in the best situation possible. So if that's something you're interested in, you can also go down below. Hope to see you in there. I'll see you in the next one. Peace.