How to prepare for college football

Getting scholarship is great, but that's not the ultimate goal of your football career. So let's talk about how to prepare for college. So that way, once you get that scholarship, it's not the top moment of your entire career. And so if you don't know who I am, I'm Chandler. I'm a former college quarterback. I run your first scholarship where we help families get their first scholarship and more. And so I feel like one of the best things that I was able to do in my recruiting was stand out from a lot of the other newer guys coming from there. And so you need to make sure that you're prepared to go into college football because it's significantly different than high school, significantly different from anything else. And so I want to talk about a couple things that I felt like I did to kind of stand out from that, to get me the best advantage to starting to getting playing time, et cetera. And just some, like, mindset things that help you have a good experience. Because I think it's hard to know exactly, like, what to expect and if you can have, like, proper expectations, that goes a long way. So the first thing is setting a good first impression. I think this is such a hack to like, becoming a good player on a college football team and really standing out from everybody else, versus, like, if you don't have a good first impression, it can really set you behind. It's such a big thing that most people don't really think about. Like, maybe you're like, I need to set a good first impression. But it's the most important thing. I look back at, like, my juco time. That's why I did really well. I set a great first impression, and even though I made some mistakes later on, that impression stuck with me. And there was a couple things that, like, really stood out with that. So the first thing is, like, just making sure that you're doing all the stuff that you can control as far as, like, you know, taking care of your grades, showing up early, studying notes from meetings, taking notes during meetings, asking questions, all that good stuff, answering correctly in meetings. They ask you a question, making sure to pay attention. Those are all things that set a great first impression because it shows you care. Because you'll see, you'll see other freshmen that come through, and they're just not really as locked in. Maybe they're taking a little easier than you would think. And of course, this is at the higher level you play, the less people you're going to find that are less dedicated, and the lower level you Play, the more you can stand out a little easier because people are less taking it a little serious. But it's so important because if you said that first impression, whatever happens really, like, really within that first day or that first week, whatever happens, I'd really expand it out to the first fall camp. Whatever happens during that first fall camp, you're going to get labeled as that for the rest of the time that you're there until you can provides so much evidence that you're not that. Like, that is if that makes sense. Like. So an example I'll give is like, for me, my first impression I set juco was I'm a good student. I came from a high academic background, so I was often labeled as like one of the smarter guys on the team. So guys. So like, the coaches would reference to that, all that stuff. And even towards the later end of my juco time, like, I had like a c in one class. It was a really hard physics class, don't get me wrong. But like, I had a c. And so like, it's. Even though I had that c and the coaches even knew it, they still referred to me as a smart guy. And it was a hard class, don't get me wrong. But I definitely wasn't like, I'm not that extremely smart, don't get me wrong. Like, I'm not a genius. But that label stuck with me that entire time I was there. And so that's a good thing to have. Like to have that label be there. But on the negative side, I've seen guys that come in and, you know, the first week they show up late to something or the easiest example I can give is of like, they forgot a super easy play, a base play that everybody knows. They forget a route in that or something like that, and then immediately they're labeled at a guy that as a guy that they can't rely on, they can't trust, they can't remember the plays. And those are things that you don't want to get labeled as because then you. You have that label for you for a while at. Through that first freshman year. And so they're going to. When they store another depth chart, they're not going to put a guy high in the depth chart that can't remember the plays and not too sure if in crunch time is going to run the right route. So that's a big thing there, setting that first impression, doing the little things right. So I really emphasize on that the second thing from there is really, you need to prepare that. It's not going to be easy. I think there's a. Oh, another one is like a lot of people that come in there and they, you know, played pretty well in high school or they were the best player in their high school and they're like, you know, I got overlooked or whatever it might be, or I should be at this school, that school. Like, they come from this place of I'm so much better than everyone else, thus it will be easy. And I'm expecting it to be easy. And you never get an advantage by overlooking someone. I think that's. That's such a cliche thing to say, but it's so true. Like, you never get advantage by being like, you are worse than me. So I am going to go easier. You get way more of an advantage by saying, it's going to be way harder than I think. Everybody's out working me, so I got to work 10 times harder. And so regardless of your situation, whether you're going juco or to a lower level school that you think you didn't go to, you shouldn't be thinking, like, this is going to be easy. I should let off all the gas and I'm going to crush everything. You'd be thinking like, okay, I need to prepare just like any other situation and lock in and put my all into this. Because it's going to be hard regardless. Because I've seen it so many times. Guys come in thinking of their best thing since sliced bread, and then they get hit with the dose of reality, and a couple weeks later, I'd be surprised if they're still there. I mean, I can have so many examples of that. Like guys that drop off after one day of camp or even a couple weeks and they were at a D1 school beforehand. And it happens all the time because people come in with these expectations of, this is going to be really easy. I'm the best. And then they discover there's also good players there or that there's an aspect to this that they weren't expecting. And then boom, those expectations get crushed and they decide that this isn't for them anymore. And so manage those expectations and really make it, like, stick in your head that it's going to be harder than anything and prepare accordingly. From there, I'd really say those are the two big things. A couple other things that really come to mind is just again, doing the little stuff. Like this comes, like, ties in with the first impression stuff, but like doing the little things, effort, all that stuff. Like, you want to make sure that's like your Biggest emphasis, because those are the labels that you don't want to get tagged with. You don't want to get tagged with as someone who's lazy, who doesn't pay attention, who doesn't do the details. Like, if you can do those small little things, just the, like, stuff that's in your control, like, if you. If you mess up on a play and you, you know, throw an interception, drop a ball, fumble the ball, miss a tackle, everybody knows those are stuff that you can fix later on down the line. And it's common to make those mistakes. What they don't want to see is that they recruited someone that has, like, just traits that they don't want. It's fine to produce outcomes that they don't want. That's fine, that's fixable. It's when the traits happen of like, he's lazy, he's not a hard worker, he doesn't pay attention. He doesn't pay attention to details, he talks back. He's not coachable. That's the stuff coaches don't want to see. And that's the stuff that gets you really low on the depth chart. Because they're like, we can't even fix this kid. He's just not responsive. Versus, like, if you're coachable, if you're a hard worker, this and stuff, they're like, cool, I can work with that. We can get you better. And so they want to see you succeed at that point. So really making sure that the labels that you get tagged with and this is. You can only control this to so much. But it's just such a huge emphasis and can put you so much more ahead that it's the biggest thing that I felt like helped me do as well as I did at the schools that I went to. And I honestly feel like at my four year, I really didn't play. So, like, to me, I didn't set as good a first impression there. And that's part of the reason why I didn't really play, because I didn't really stand out. I wasn't as dominant as I needed to be. And that's just how it is. And so I say this because that's just a mistake that I made. And I don't want you to make the same mistake. And so if you got to this point, like, you're crushing it. I appreciate you checking out this video. Leave a comment below if you check this out or shoot me a message. Whenever I hear somebody saying, like, oh, I check out your YouTube videos, I'm like, you're a real one, then you, you know what's up? Because this is this is like me giving you my raw thoughts. It's not always super cognizant, but hopefully you get something from it. Because I think if you can take one actionable thing from each of these, then I couldn't imagine how much your situation is going. Because I'm someone who took my football career very seriously, from recruiting to on the field stuff, and I learned a lot from it, made a lot of mistakes. And so hopefully, if you can apply some of these lessons and correct some of the mistakes that I made, I imagine you have probably a 10 to infinite times better career than I did. So hopefully you got something from this. If you liked this, be sure to, like, subscribe and definitely let me know. I'll see you in the next one. Peace.