Trenton Luera tells high school athletes to stop chasing D1 scholarships if major programs aren't already calling. He explains why focusing on realistic opportunities in lower divisions makes more sense than waiting for interest that may never come.
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If you are a 20, 25, a senior right now and you're still trying to go Division 1, you're not talking to any Division 1 coaches. You need to focus elsewhere or just give up the dreams of going college football. This is just me being completely honest. If you don't know who I am, I'm Chandler. I'm a former college quarterback. And now I run your first scholarship where we help families get their first scholarship and more. And so I'd say this because I've been talking to families I just talked to yesterday. I talked to the uncle who was trying to help his nephew. And the nephew's good, don't get me wrong. Probably should be going. I mean, to be honest, probably should be on a group of five. At least he still has a chance to go FCS and he's talking to a few schools, but there's not really any conversations going on, truly. And I mean, we went to the conversations about stars, all this stuff. And I feel for him because it's frustrating and he has the talent and there's still a chance that something might happen. But realistically, at this point in the timeline, I mean, we just don't have much time to get on the board to move up there and get an offer going. Because at this point, most FBS schools, power fours especially, have their board set. They're probably not going to change unless somebody really lights it up. They're just not going to shift. Of course, yeah, you still see some things somebody does really well or somebody catches their eye, some things change and somebody gets an offer, but just such a low likelihood. And again, I'm not saying it's impossible, but if your goal is to play college football, then the lowest likelihood of you doing that is you continue focusing on FBS schools. Fcs, on the other hand, they're still recruiting. You can definitely focus on those a little bit more if your talent level matches that. But if you're not talking to FCS or FBS coaches and you're still having that goal of like, I'm a D1 guy, I should be playing D1. If you're not talking to any coaches at this point, then A, either you're not as good as you think you are, or B, you've just done a terrible job of getting coaches to know you know about you and you're just really, really behind now. And so again, those boards are pretty much solidified at this point. Again, they'll shift a little bit here and there, but even with decommits transport all that, they have the guys that they have that they know, hey, if this guy leaves, this guy decommits, boom, we're replacing him. It's not like, hey, we have these guys locked in and we have no one else on the board and we'll see what pops up. No, they've got five to 10 other guys, probably more in their database that they got ranked and they know exactly who they're offering and guy after guy. And if they don't know exactly who they're offering, they at least have a general idea and they'll just talk about that as it happens, not just the truth. And that's why I say, I've said this in other videos too. It's just like realistically, if you go into your senior season not talking to any Division 1 coaches seriously, and I'm not talking like, you know, a recruiting analyst or you're getting generic emails from them, I'm talking, you're talking to someone that's legitimately recruiting you on a weekly basis, then it's going to be very hard to turn bland interest or no interest into a Division 1 scholarship offer. And so with that being the case, you have to either you have to ask yourself the question, okay, do I want to play at a lower level? Do I want to continue focusing on D1 schools? We will continue focusing on D1 schools. Just being again upfront and honest. The chances of you turning something into a scotch buffer are very low. It's not possible. But at this point in time, the roster spots are being changed next year from 120 to 105. So there are going to be less opportunities overall. There is word that right now with that walk ons would be taken away. I haven't really got confirmation on that. My thoughts and my guess is that they probably wouldn't take those away, probably replace them with some kind of practice squad thing, but who knows? NCAA is crazy. So with it right now and with what coaches know right now they're planning on only having 105 spots come next season. So that means there will be less opportunities out there. Meaning that if you're banking on a walk on spot, if you're banking on sliding into a scholarship spot, the chances are even lower than they were last year. And already last year I was seeing guys go to lower programs than they probably should have. And so that is just the realistic nature of it. And again, if you feel confident that you are this level and you can find a way in there, by all means do that. I don't want to discourage you of anything I just hopefully have given you an unbiased take on what I'm seeing and observations that I'm seeing from working with plenty of families and also talking to plenty of guys around the scene. So with that, from there, if you're more of an FCS guy and you don't have any interest right now, definitely just try to spark things up. There's still some time there and there's opportunities to move in and then D2 and below. Realistically, those are the schools that you should be targeting at this point and then work your way up to fcs. If so, ideally, if you have no interest right now, I'd probably target a little bit of all divisions as far as NAD3D2FCs, maybe even juco, if that's something that you're open to and just see what kind of responses you get, what kind of interest you get back. So that way from there you can kind of adjust and make a decision on. Okay, I'm getting more responses from here. I actually got two FCS responses. Let's focus a little bit more there. Or hey, I got, you know, I only got one D2 response, didn't get any FCS responses. Let's focus on D2 then. Let's just really build some interest there. Because the worst thing you like, the worst situation is you continue to focus on this D1 stuff or worse, you just don't do anything at all and you're like, oh, coaches are going to finally find out about me because my senior film is super good. Sadly, that doesn't work. Hopefully you know that and you end up with no interest. Come after the season in November and then from there you're even more behind and you've got three months get up to speed by February and that's, that's not a position that you want to be in. So make sure you're getting on this, adjust your, your sights a little bit according to your situation and hopefully get some stuff rolling, get some offers, stack some interest and then go from there. If you got something from this, be sure to subscribe like this and I'll see you in the next one. Peace.
