Tren Lohr says college football is a job first, not a game. Programs are demanding, and your first week sets the tone for everything after. Most recruits don't realize how much work it actually is until they show up.
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If you don't know who I am, I'm Tren Lohr. I'm a former college quarterback. And this is the Recruiting Game. It's a podcast that I started a while back, and I'm starting it back up again. And today we're going to talk about what college football actually is and what most people just don't understand about it at all. I'm here to talk about some of the misconceptions. I played at the junior college level and the NAA level, though played is a little bit of exaggeration at the NAA level and have friends that played anywhere from D3, D2, FCS, FBS, including University of Washington, while they made the national championship game. So if you're watching this, you're probably coming from my email list or you just happen to stumble upon this on YouTube. So really, this is going to be unfiltered. Just me ranting about different stuff, talking off the top of my mind. This is unscripted. So if you're looking for something to give you positive stuff and all this good stuff, then probably not the place for you. And so I just wanted to start out with saying that the number one thing that most people don't understand, and they hear this, but they don't really understand it, is that college football is a business. It's a business and a job. Like, when you step on campus, you are an athlete, student. And now maybe some people may say, like, but you're supposed to be a student athlete, and your degree comes from. That is not true. That is not true at every single level. It's. It's that way for college football. You may find a couple programs that will allow you to put academic first, but I would be shocked to find many top programs that do that. And what I'll say is that definitely, as you go up through the levels, it becomes more serious, it becomes more taxing on you. And again, I mean, I can't speak on every program, but this is my experience, is my friend's experiences. I mean, this is what we all talk about. And so again, this is not to knock on that and say, like, you shouldn't play college football. I'm saying that most people don't understand that and they don't understand what they're walking into. I mean, that's what you see here. Like, for example, and I went to Morningside University. It was one of the top NI programs. And so a lot of kids will walk in here thinking, oh, it's NI program. This is going to be a Breeze. And then by the time the freshman class wraps up their first semester, half of them have dropped out of the school of the football team because it was completely different from what they were expecting. They're expecting this. Be a breeze, be a starter, be the guy for the program. Sadly, that's not how it works. And so if you're a parent or you're a player watching this, then you need to have that expectation that this is going to be hard when you get on campus. And it's just a different kind of thing. And hopefully I went to a very competitive high school, so it wasn't a big shift for me. But you have to be ready for that kind of shift, otherwise you're going to get smacked in the face right when you get in there. Another thing is just the how, how it works. A lot of people think that, like from. You can have a lot of time to correct mistakes and that every coach likes you and that they recruited you for a reason. And that's definitely none of that by any means is not true. And people, most people will call this politics. They'll say like, oh, the politics of college sports. And there's definitely politics. But the first week that you get on campus is essentially your identity that you're setting for yourself. So if you don't have a first week that is good or great, your four to five years of that program are probably going to be matched with that same energy. And some people may think that's dumb and not fair. And yeah, sure, I agree it's not fair, but that's just the truth of it all. Like, your first impression matters so, so much. I think back to, and this is just hard to realize because when you're in high school, you probably grew up and you're probably just a stud guy or pretty good and everybody knew that you're around the same people all the time. You're sitting around coaches that have watched you for a long period of time. Everybody in town knows who you are. You have this identity already in your own little bubble. And so you've never really had that new identity shift where you're starting from square, square one and just completely renewed. But that's how it works. You get on campus, you're completely new. Everybody, Everybody starts at zero on day one. Like even at the D1 level, five star, four stars, whatever. Unless you're a top of top guy that everybody knows is going to be a freshman starter. Even then you're still going to have to go through the same thing. And if you don't have a good first week, people are going to recognize that stuff. And so one of the things I felt like I always did well was especially in my junior college, I did this really well right off the bat. And this was pretty easy to do because we were in Covid and people were doing all kind of stupid stuff. And so like just being at practice and meetings every single day set me apart from everyone else. And I got labeled as this stud, this leader because I was at practice, I was at meetings, I took care of all my grades. And that just wasn't necessarily like it was a standard that they tried to set, but not many people did it. And so that got me labeled as this and that. I got like two coaches of the year award. And you could say that's dumb or whatever, but that's the truth. I just got labeled as that then because I took care of my stuff right from the start. I would knew to be a trustworthy guy and that got me presented a lot more opportunities then I can think of plenty of other quarterbacks that came through that room that were not labeled as that kind of guy and that kind of, you know, did not lead to their benefit, obviously. And so you need to prioritize if anything lasting a good first impression because that will last you way longer than anything else. It's way easier to get ahead and then just maintain that over time rather than get behind with a bad attitude, a mispractice, low effort, making a big mistake, not learning the playbook, and then have to make up for that later on. I can just write off some examples like let's say you're putting in low effort in the first week. Instantly they're going to think of you as a low effort guy that you don't put in the time that they're not going to be able to trust you when the game comes, that you're going to be running down the field as hard as you can. If you mess up on a route like really bad and just completely mess up the play, they're immediately leaving you as someone that can't understand playbooks. Especially if it's first week, it's base install stuff. So like you have to understand that and they just instantly write you off as that. And you, you may think that that's not the case. I, you know, that's a high percentage that can only understand or low percentage that can only understand that stuff. But that's just how people think of just psychology. They just see you, they immediately stick that to you as your identity and that's you until you can change that. Like you have to provide so much proof that that is not you. And that takes a lot of proof to prove that, a lot of time to do that, especially when you're a freshman. And then you don't get a lot of reps and just becomes this bad cycle. And then you transfer out and you got to restart at the new school and you're like, this is different, this is going to be my time. And then you do the same thing and then it just repeats, repeats and that's what happens. So you have to make sure to leave a good first impression and then just maintain that over time. If I can give you any kind of advice if you're going to step into a college football program, oh, what else could we go over? Those are two big things I want to touch on. But overall, just most people don't understand just how it actually works. And everybody thinks that obviously you need to be a great, great football player, but you need to understand the ins and outs and how you can get a competitive advantage and obviously like hard work. Being a good football player will push you ahead of a lot of people and then just doing the little things along that will set you apart as well. But just wanted to touch on, touch on that short little video here. If you like this, be sure to let me know. I'm thinking about bringing this recruiting game podcast back, doing it on YouTube and Spotify and Apple Music and all that stuff, so. Or Apple Podcasts. But if you like it, be sure to let me know whether you want to reply to my email. If you want to leave a comment down below. But hope this helped give you a little bit of context on college football. Hopefully it was at least somewhat informative and I appreciate you listening, especially if you got this far. So peace.
