Seniors: These Are Your Options

Okay, so if you're a senior going through the recruiting process right now, as you know the clock is winding down and so you may feel like you don't have a lot of options or you just may be confused on what your options are even in the first place. I totally understand that. So I'm going to walk through that, figure out what the best option is for you. So that way you can go and be successful and find the best place for you ultimately. So that way you can be happy and so on, so forth. So if you don't know who I am, I'm Trent Lore. I'm a former college quarterback. I know we're in your first scholarship where we help families get the first scholarship and more. And so again, I think the biggest thing that you have to realize, and this is kind of a life thing, so hopefully I don't get too philosophic on this, but really I've stole this from someone else. But sadness comes from the lack of options and anxiety comes from too many options and not knowing which one to pick. And so I think that people fall in this trap where they get sad during the recruiting process because they don't. They feel like they have no options. They know that they want to get to this goal playing college football, but they don't know how to get there. Or they feel like they only had one option, which was Division one, for example, or just in general just playing at a four year. And they feel like they can't do that, thus they're stuck and they feel sad that they can't achieve this goal. And so I just want to shine light on that because that's not the only route you have to take. You don't have to play at a D1 school, you don't have to play at a D2 school, you don't play the D3 level even, or, or the NA level. There are so many different options and so many different paths I can choose from that can be beneficial not only to your career as a college football player, but also in your life. And so I just want to walk through each of them, talk about each one and at least how I thought of them. And also what my kind of recommendation suggestion is as far as like, based on your goals, based on what you want from a school, what might be the best choice for you. So let's kind of walk through it. So for first things first, let's talk about each division level. So obviously you have essentially five main divisions. At the four year level. You have Division one, FBS football this is the top of the top. Obviously it's broken up. You can get real granular and say power four, group of five. But I'm just going to group them all together because they take football all very seriously. And this is very much the, it's essentially turning into very much of a semi pro kind of stance as far as when you factor in nil, transport, all that stuff. And so you do have to realize that at the end of the day you have to be talented enough to get there as well as like if you want to play at this level, it turns into, I mean realistically you're going to be an athlete student at those schools. It's not student athlete, it is athlete student. And so that is your job at the end of the day is to, you know, try to help the team win games. These coaches are getting paid millions of dollars and so your job is to support that and hopefully you're a player that, that really provides in that. And even not even if you're a bench guy, like that is still, still your job to be there and support the team as much as possible. And so it's just, it's just a different kind of lifestyle. Like me even looking back because obviously I played at a smaller school, our schedule wasn't as hectic. I, I can't really say like that I necessarily would enjoyed that lifestyle. And I kind of look back at like, yeah, would I love to play D1? Definitely. But I think that it might have not matched my goals and my aspirations. That I definitely would not be doing what I do right now if it wasn't for the path that I went on. And so I think at least internally, look inside yourself, see if that's something you actually want, if you're willing and wanting. I don't think willing is, even if you're willing, then it's probably not for you. Like you got to want to put in that work for four to five years without the expectation that you're even going to see the field those four to five years because it is a business at the top. Again, you have to have the talent as a prerequisite. So obviously if you don't have that talent, no matter how bad you want it, then it's just not going to be there. The second from there is fcs. Now this is just a step down from fbs, still very much serious football, probably not quite as much, you know, just because it, it is a level down in competitiveness, but very competitive. A lot of great players there. So very much along the Same lines, like you have to, you know, be wanting to do that. D2 still in my opinion, you know, again, very serious footballers, very serious football at all levels. But you're probably not going to be in as intense of a schedule. You're not going to be, you know, as much like there's not going to be as much pressure on certain situations. And so I see it as like D2 is almost where you get into that happy balance of like you're still going to have, you know, generally speaking a life outside of sports. And you can definitely do that on D1s as well. But there's almost this more, more balanced approach to it and, and it's definitely not as high pressure, as high consequences as it would be at the Division 1 level. And then you get down to D3. D3s are obviously more higher academic schools. I've even heard people talk about that. You know, there's different ways that they structure their schedules so that way, you know, there is importance on academics and career development and all that stuff. So very much different and very much aligned with higher academic students that want to go achieve something regarding their degree or in their Future. And then NIA, very similar to D2 I'd say probably even a little more toned down on the schedule. Again I played NI football so it was a pretty competitive program. They had to won when I first got there, three out of the last five national championships. But the schedule was to my, my experience was not anything crazy intense. It was a normal college schedule with plenty of time to handle class and work. And so I didn't feel like it was this crazy hectic schedule. The only time it was really busy was fall camp, which is normal. But during the season, during the off season, by no means was the schedule that hectic and crazy. And then from there you have junior college. So junior college again is a two year school where you can play there for up to two years as far as like seasons of competition and then transfer to a four year. And so I also participated in junior college. It's a great chance to develop to, you know, get yourself a second chance at your recruiting. And again, the schedule isn't anything too crazy there. I'd say my schedule probably in junior college was probably more busier than my schedule at high school, truthfully. Big time actually. So that is one takeaway. I will say there. And then from there you also have prep schools. So prep schools are kind of this mix between a juco and I don't even know what, I guess not really mix, but it's kind of like a juco in the sense that you're going there to get a second chance but you don't take any high school eligibility away or not high school, just college eligibility away from you. So essentially how your eligibility works is you have five years to play for, so that's four years plus your redshirt. And so at a prep school you can enroll in college club classes but you're not going to be surpassing that unit criteria where you start counting as a full time student and NCAA starts your eligibility clock and starts taking away seasons from you. So it's a way to play, get film but not count it towards your eligibility versus while juco you're going to be using up your eligibility but at least you're still playing and getting recruited. Everything, it's the same thing, but just you save your eligibility. It's a little bit of a cheat code. The hard thing about prep schools is there's a lot of bad prep schools out there and so it can be hard to find the right ones. So with that, those are the different options that you have available to you. And I will say the last option I was going to present because it's just me being honest, because I have no incentive to tell anyone that you have to play college football is you have also had the option not to play college football. Like I imagine if you're listening to this, you're very dedicated, you want to play college football. You're a parent of a son who's very dedicated to college football. But I think that is an option that has to be on the table is like if you don't like any of the these options that is always presented to you and I'm very much a proponent of like your goals are what dictate the rest of your actions. And so if your goals are not aligned with, with going to play college football and putting the time and dedication to that and maybe you want to go do something else, then you have that option always there. And I think that's one of the things that happens is people feel stuck and can feel stuck and they make this decision to go somewhere and then they realize that it was the wrong decision. They should have just made this decision to not play football a little while ago when they transitioned to college. So I do want to lay that as well now. I think the biggest thing is a lot of what I talk about is exposure based and I think exposure is one of the best ways to help you make that decision because by putting yourself out there, you're going to get presented with choices. And the biggest thing is you want to maximize the amount of choices that you have so that way you can get presented with multiple opportunities and choose the best one for you. And so the best way to figure out which one is best for you is just to experience it. Go talk to the coaches, go on visits. Get as much time as you can experiencing different venues. Because I think for me, I. I didn't know I wanted to go juco until I. I left the coach that messaged me about my juco for probably a month and I finally, it was getting down to about November and I was like, you know what, I. I should reach out. Like, I don't really have much going on. I don't really like what I got going on and Sounds kind of interesting. Let's shoot him a message. Then I hopped on a phone call, already kind of was buying into it, and then took the visit. And from there I was like, this is probably where I'm going to go unless things change. And I took a visit to a four year that it was pretty much the top four year I was going to or planning on going to and just didn't feel like a home to me. Didn't feel like I would be happy there for four years. And so became this easy decision because I went and experienced it firsthand. I took my time to actually go and seek what I was looking and get more feel for it. And so really, if you're looking for options, if you're a senior going through this process, I guess my suggestion to you is, you know, you can take my words for as long, you know, as much as you want. If I were you, I would take my words with a grain of salt because my experiences, my goals, my perception is going to be drastically different than how you perceive things. For example, my buddy who, you know, has played at different couple schools throughout college and all this, like, I don't think he would. He would enjoy the school I went to, but I had a blast there. And that's just different between two guys that played the same position. So you obviously have a much more different life experience and much more different taste. So the best thing you can do is go. And obviously you can, you can sort through things very easily in your head. You're going to have a feel for, hey, I like this goal a little bit better than this goal. What not. But those top ones, you want to get out there and try and get kind of that feel for what it's going to actually be like when you get there. So that way you have an idea and can make a decision based on that. So long ramble there. But hopefully this kind of gave you an idea of how to go about things because it's a very important piece of process as far as figuring out those options and making decision on them. And I hope this helps. So if you got something from this like and subscribe, I'll see you next one Peace.