A short YouTube talk by Trenton Luera advising athletes and families that game film matters far more than statistics, awards, or media write-ups for college recruiting. He argues stats can attract initial attention but coaches base scholarship decisions primarily on how players perform on tape; a few strong plays (5–10) can be sufficient to generate scholarship opportunities at lower levels.
Chapters
In recruiting, stats do not matter as much as you think. And so if you're so worried about stats, tackles, catches, yards, then you're worried on the wrong thing. So let's dive into this. So if you don't know who I am, I'm Trent Lower, I'm a former college quarterback. And right now I run your first scholarship where we help families get their first scholarship and more. And so I've helped families get hundreds of responses for coaches. I've helped families get tens of scholarships from college coaches as well. And so one of the things I do know for a fact is that stats do not get you scholarships. You do not pass for X amount of yards and get a scholarship automatically. You do not get X amount of tackles and get a scholarship automatically. It's about what you show on the film, on the tape, and the ordering of what matters is film. What you show, your talent goes first. Below that is stats, and then below that is like awards and accolades. Awards and accolades matter the least. The, the all state, the honorable mentions, the. The player of the weeks, those don't really help you. And then probably below that honestly, is like media write ups, if anything, especially from small, little local ones, because at the end of the day, coaches need to evaluate you and they don't add things like all state and all this to that evaluation. They may add the stats just to have some idea of what you did. But realistically, the only thing that matters is how they score you based on what you did on the field. Because, yeah, you could say the stats and the words are pieces that you did on the field, but they're really just a reflection of how you did. But it's not a full picture because everybody knows you can have really good stats, but it could be situational, it could be against bad competition. So they want to see how you're doing against that competition, what you're actually doing in the game and seeing how it translates to what they want as a player. And so I talk to a lot of families and they get caught up in the stats and the awards and all this and they think, why is my kid not getting recruited? The truth is, the film is what really matters. And above all that, first off, if coaches don't even know about any of that, then it doesn't matter. And so you have to get known by coaches. And so the key there is the film matters the most. But then also on top of that is you have to get coaches to see that, because coaches aren't seeing that film, then you can't get recruited in the first place. They need to know who you are and what's going on on the tape. And so we've tested this and I can just share the stats with you and I wish I had the numbers right here in front of me, but we've split tested it to show, hey, does the, does the honorable mentions and the awards matter? And what we've seen is that the simpler that the subject line, the better. We've had a couple of cases where somebody's got really good stat line. We had a quarterback that threw for 45 passing touchdowns as a sophomore and so we use that as a subject line and it got the attention of some coaches and some mentioned it in the response to emails back. But realistically that didn't really end up getting him any more offers. They wanted to see this tape still and they want to see more stuff from that now. That was just a way for us to get the foot in the door. And that's what stats can do for you. They can get your foot in the door, they can get you the eyes on your tape, but they're not going to get you the offers, they're not going to get you what you ultimately want. And so the key there is like, don't get caught up too much in the stats. And I say this for two reasons, is because if you have good stats, this does not automatically qualify. You get a scholarship. That doesn't mean like you have the stats. Awesome. You're out of serious advantage in your recruiting now. Use it to your advantage to get more coaches to watch you. Second to that, if you're watching this, you're like, my kid doesn't have the stats. What do I do? This is a good thing because I did not have the stats either. I never threw for more than 2,000 yards in a season. I only threw 97 passes in my juco career. Yet I still was getting recruited by D1 schools. Because it's not about the stats that matter, it's about the film. And so as long as you have five to 10 good plays in your film, that is enough to get you attention and get you scholarships. I'm serious, like, that is not a joke. This is not me pulling a leg. You honestly really only need like one really good play and then the rest need to be just good enough. If you have a highlight reel with five to ten plays that look good enough to coaches to show that you're athletic and can hold your own on the football field, you can get scholarships. Now you're probably not going to get D1 scholarships, but you can get lower level scholarships. This is just the truth. I've seen it time and time again. I've seen guys, I'm like, I don't know if we're going to get you a scholarship here. And I'm real with that. And I'm like, I think we can get you like a very low scholarship as far as schools, but I mean, we're gonna have to push. And ultimately, if you put in the time and you do what's required, you can get it. It just comes down to making sure you're getting it to the right coaches. And coaches know who you are because at the end of the day, you're looking for the program that sees something in that film. See some sees what you know you have inside of you and is willing to take a chance on that. That's really the key. And so hopefully the biggest takeaway is don't focus on the stats as much. They're used as attention grabbers. They are not used to seal the deal. They're just used to get your foot in the door and use them a little bit. But the real meat is the film. The video coaches need to see how you do on the field so that way it can confirm that, evaluate you and make decision of whether they want to recruit you or offer you later down the line. So hopefully this helped. We got something from this. Be sure to subscribe and I'll see you in the next one. Peace.
