The raw reality of JUCO Football

So if you don't know juco football is also known as junior college football. It is two year schools that you play at and get a second chance at your recruiting. You're able to play there, develop, go to school, still get classes done, but then have the opportunity to transfer out later and you have the opportunity to play as a freshman and sophomore instead of having to wait till your junior and senior year at a different school. This is often used. Most people think that most of the guys in juco or junior college are guys that had bad grades in high school and are not good kids and end up playing there because there's academic or off the field issues. So I'm going to talk more about that because I went through the junior college football process and will share some of the insights as well as share with you if you're thinking about the experience, why you should potentially go down that route road and why maybe you shouldn't. So let's dive into it. If you don't know who I am, I'm Trim Lauer. I'm a former college quarterback. Like I said, I played at the junior college level, also played at the NAA level over at Morningside University. How I your first scholarship where we help families get their first scholarship and more. And so let's dive into it. So like I said, junior college football is a way for players to go. It's a two year school, you can play there and essentially get. It's a way kind of like a bridge. It's a bridge between high school and college. Just like kids use community college or junior college for academics alone. So it gives you an opportunity to get more film, get coached, get developed. And so it's true, there's a good amount of those kids that go to junior college that had bad grades, that had off the field issues. But a lot of the kids that I was around, though I went was in a interesting situation at Santa Barbara City College. Most of them were just under recruited in the in the easiest way to explain things. So with that being said, you're not running into the issue where there's a bunch of bad kids on the team. There's definitely some cases where that is the case. And don't get me wrong, on our team we have plenty of kids that we're not great people. But that is to be said that just because you're great off the field does not mean that you should immediately exile junior college football. I went junior college, I did not have any grade issues. I graduated with a 4.19 on a 4.0 scale at high school, took seven AP classes, all that stuff. It didn't have any character issues at all or anything like that. So to say that junior college was definitely not the most common route for a guy like me, but with that being said, said it gave me a second chance at my recruiting. That's really what I look at it as. Everybody. It's a way to, like I said, develop and give you a second chance at your recruiting. And so that's really who it's for, is the guys who messed up somehow in the recruiting process and needed a second shot at it, the guys that just needed to develop. I was kind of a mix between both. And so I definitely need to develop. I definitely needed to redo my recruiting because I just didn't go about it the right way. And so that is really what junior current of college football is about. About and what it is. And the easiest way to explain it. Now, the reason why I'm talking about this is I actually just visited one of my old roommates. He has a crazy story which I won't go into. I recorded a podcast with him way back. You could probably search through it. His name is Luke Johnson. He goes to Quincy University, D2 or Quincy, Illinois. And we were just talking about juco, how crazy it is, all the different things. But one of the biggest things that I take away from our conversations and what we talked about and in my experiences, it is not easy. It is very hard. There's a lot of hardship struggles that you have to go through, whether it's financially, just learning how to be on your own financially and get through that, especially as a California juco guy, because you don't get scholarships. If you're in state, then you're lucky enough that you don't have to pay for school. It's free. And so you do have to pay for rent, though it's expensive, unless you're living at home, which I couldn't. My school was four hours away, and gas, food, all that stuff. It just really adds up. And on top of that, just you're on your own, you're introduced to a college program, all that stuff. And so you're going to face a lot of difficult things going through juco. And so it's definitely not an easy way out. I think that's what a lot of people walk into is. And I'll say that I thought the same way and I thought, oh, I'm a. I'm an X guy. I'm a D2, I'm a D one guy and I should easily go here and start right away and just crush everybody. But the thing is like everybody walks in with that mindset. You are no different from everybody else. And you're going to get met with a realistic reality of that you're not as good as you think you are. And you start to figure that out very soon. There's definitely some guys that just crush it. But most of the time that mindset of, hey, I'm better than everyone else, I deserve starting right away, all this stuff does not help you. And so you have to walk in there ready to work, ready to get to work. Especially if you're going to a top JUCO program. I mean, Santa Barbara City College by no means is a powerhouse. So I can only imagine at a, I'll say Iowa Western, Iowa Central, Fullerton, Riverside, I could go on Ventura, all that stuff. So you have to recognize that you're competing against guys that are just like you, that potentially are better than you, talent wise. And so you got to work your butt off and do what you gotta do. With that being said, I guess just that's, that's really what I want to harp on is just how, how tough of a journey it is to go juco though you will come out of it stronger and you will be as long as you get through it and you don't give up. And so I think that's just what I see often is a lot of guys just give up. It's not like anyone like has something terrible happen to them and then they can't play. I mean, for example, I'll use my roommate Luke. You can go listen to podcasts. He talks more in depth about it, but he literally got there for his final year of JUCO eligibility, played, got hurt at the end of the season towards acl, coached for a semester or coach for a year essentially. And then while he was coaching, the school came by, they were just looking at some of the guys and he ended up going up to them was like, hey, you should check me out, I'm Luke. Well, he has ACL brace and all that stuff and they end up offering him a scholarship and he got dang near a full ride scholarship to his DCU school. He had an ACL and they recruit or he was still repairing his ACL when he got recruited by the school. And so like that goes to show you, as long as you don't give up, like you can get through it, you can make it. That's why I think back to my recruiting journey. What made Me be able to go so far and have this cool story because I never sat there and said, boohoo, me. I, you know, I. I just didn't get what I wanted and I deserve so much more. I just stuck with it, kept my head down, and I kept grinding and it turned into what it. I talked to you guys today about that. You know, I went from, you know, my junior year, I was the backup behind another junior, ended up pushing him out, became the starting senior quarterback. I finished my senior year for a junior. Didn't even start my last game of high school in playoffs came in. Then I came into the juco. We had Covid. A lot of guys quit during COVID Obviously only played, only started one game in that first juco season. Then the second juco season, only started four games, committed to Morningside, and so on and so forth. But ultimately you. You can't if you're going the juho route. The biggest thing is people just quit because of, I won't say dumb reasons, but just they lose confidence. They, you know, they lose their love of the game or whatever it is that whatever the situation might be. And I'm not saying any of this stuff is invalid, if you want to go do something else, that's totally fine. But if your goal is really, hey, I want to play college football, I want to play the D1 level, I want to play in the NFL, then you can't let little things get the best of you and ultimately deter you from your goal. If that really is your goal, if it's not your goal, then go do something else. Like, if you want to go be a baker, then don't play juco football. And you know, but if your goal is to be in the NFL, your goal is to play real deal college football, get a college football scholarship, then you have to stick through this stuff. And that's why juco football is such. Just such a test, a test of will. There's a guy, Jared, I don't remember his last name, something with the M. But he talks a lot about the juco stuff. I see pop up my Instagram feed. And he just talks about how tough it is, how much of a grind it is, and that, you know, hey, you better be ready to go. Because there's nothing more ruthless than juco. And because there's not many guys on scholarship, there's not nil money getting thrown around. You're having to pay for a lot of your own stuff. It's gritty, it's grindy. The coaches don't Care. The coaches are there, they're not getting paid much either. They're just going there to go win games. And so you got to be ready to compete, work your butt off. And you know, if you do the right stuff, if you go about the right way, you will get recruited, you will get out. I really do think anybody that goes juco football can go and get a scholarship. It's just up to you whether you want to make that happen if you went bad enough. So it really. I might not gone too deep into the whole juco itself process. Let me know if you want a more in depth video on that. But I really just want to talk about just some of my thoughts when I was meeting up my roommate because great guy, went through just a lot of things with him. And so I'm fortunate to have that and to have those relationships. I have a couple other juco guys that I still keep in touch with and so I'm glad to have that and want to change it for the world. And so anybody that's ever thinking about the juco process, I'm like, hey, man, I did it. I definitely recommend it, but at the end of the day, it's up to you. And so I'll leave it with, should you go the juco route? Should you not? So ultimately, to me, the biggest reason why I went juco is because I went juco because I was getting recruited by four years and I didn't like any of them. Like none of them. I won't say I don't like any of them. I like them, but I didn't see myself staying there for the whole four or five years and be happy. And I was like, well, like, ultimately, the best school that recruited me was the juco that I went to. And so that was the case for me. I just. See if you have any hesitation about a school, it's not the school for you. I had no hesitation making my choices when I got recruited, and I don't regret either of them. And so that is just a big goal of mine, is always like, hey, have no regrets. And I have no regrets when it came to making the decisions I did in my recruiting. And so if you have hesitation, that means something's wrong. Either you just have unanswered questions or you're doing something against maybe your own will. And so that's why I went to juco route, is because, like, to me, if I committed to one of those schools, I was essentially saying that I kind of just given up in my eyes that I was being Safe with it and taking what I had on the table rather than kind of being like, you know what? I saw more to go, I still have more to prove. And that's why I went to juco route. And maybe some people will say like, oh you, you know, that's egotistical or whatever, but ultimately like it's your journey and you get to write it how you want it and so don't settle for something less if you know you can go and achieve more. And that's why I'm such a big advocate for it because worst case scenario, and really what happened is I went to juco route, I came out with a slightly better recruiting, but I developed so much more as a person and a player that it became so worth it. And I just was able to go through my process much differently and just come out a completely different, better and different person. And so hopefully your goal is not just to play college football but also to be a better person and set yourself up in the right track for, for success. And I feel like juco football did that for me. But that being said, the people that should not go the juco route are the ones that are not. First off, if you have a four year school that you love and you got offered by you like the scholarship amount, take it by all means, do not like, do not throw that away because that is not something to take lightly. And so that's the biggest thing. Second be, you have to be serious with yourself. Like do you actually want it? Because if you don't, don't go the trico route if you do do it. But again, if there's any hesitation there, don't do it. You're. You're gonna like, if you're nervous about it, that's fine. But if there's hesitation about like, I don't know, like, I don't know if I'm really wanted to do this. Like that's, that's going to set you up for success or set up you up for failure. That's what I just see a lot of guys that went to juco route and failed is it was just clear they weren't all in. They wanted to, they didn't have their priorities set straight. They wanted to have fun over playing football and they felt like they could do both like in high school. And they got, they met that reality eventually chose one over the other. And I say the same in the four years. I mean in fall camp a bunch of guys drop off too at some of these smaller schools and it's because the same reason is they weren't serious about what it took to actually get there and what it takes to finish it out and weren't able to do it. So hopefully, you know, this kind of helped you if you're thinking about the JUCO process at all or if you're just learning more. Regardless, this applies to whether you go juco or not, so hopefully this helped. If you like this, be sure to like and subscribe. 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