Why you're not getting recruited

One of the most frustrating things in recruiting is when you're not getting recruited as much as you want to and you see other players getting interest in offers that you know you can get as well. And so I want to break down why that might be happening so that way you can fix it and start getting the interest in offers that you deserve. And so if you don't know who I am, I'm Trent Laura. Your first scholarship where we help families get over $4 million in scholarship money. So let's dive into it. So the way I think of it and the way that coaches basically do this in their head is it's a checkbox system. And so coaches, when they're checking you out, whether it's an email, an xdm, your X profile, wherever they're finding you, they're going through this checkbox system to figure out, okay, does it make sense to put more time into evaluating this kid and actually figuring out if he's a fit? Or can I just skip this and save myself some time and go to someone else that may be more worth that heavier amount of valuation? Because coaches do not have this amazing amount of time. They're hosting meetings, they've got games to win. They just have other recruits to potentially evaluate. And so the last thing coach wants to do is waste his time spending five to ten minutes evaluating recruit. That just doesn't even make sense in the first place. And so they try to save themselves by going through this process. That way they can figure out if a kid is a right fit or not in a matter of seconds rather than minutes. And so this is what they're doing. So the first thing is like, do you check the boxes? So the first one is size. Just straight up, they're going to check the size. And now you can always overcome a lot of these if you're good enough. You know, if you run a four, two, you know, whatever it might be like, you can overcome a lot of this stuff. Size, for example, is one of them. All of us know, you know, stories of guys that were undersized, Tyreek Hill, whoever else you want to name, that were still able to play at a highly elite level because they were highly elite in the talent that they have. But that's the whole point. You need to be elite in other areas to be able to make up for area that is not elite. And so if you don't have the size, for example, your offensive lineman, you're, you know, 5, 9, 5, 10, you're probably going to get skipped by most coaches just right away. They're not even going to look at anything else. They're going to see your size, see that, your offensive lineman and go next. I can find someone that's probably as good as this guy, if not better. That's you know, 6, 3, 6, 4. So that's the first one is size, the next one is position because again like I mentioned, they're going to check your size and they're going to check your position because that kind of pairs two together. If someone's 5, 9, 510 running back, that's obviously different than offensive lineman as well as if they're recruiting that position. Because if they're not really looking for quarterbacks at the moment, they already have one committed. They're not going to spend their time recruiting and evaluating a full on quarterback that they don't necessarily need. And so that can also get you kind of disqualified. If they're not necessarily recruiting a position. It's not as a big one, but it's more of that pairing of the size of the position is stuff that coaches want to see as well as graduation year. You can loop into that too, but that's a little more of an obvious one to me. The next one is grades and so this is a big one. I always make posts about grades because I felt like it opened a lot of doors for me and I see it for a lot of recruits that we work with and recruits that we haven't worked with that it closes a lot of doors for them. And so you have to understand that the minimum GPA to be eligible is 2.3 for D1, 2.2 for division two, that is core GPA. So core GPA, if you don't know, is the actual classes that you take in high school. And by actual I mean English, math, social science, regular science. So anything outside of that, electives, pe, all that kind of stuff that may fluff your GPA up because they're generally easy as I hope you're getting A's in those. So that does not count. So that means that if you have a 2.6, 2.7, 2.5 cumulative GPA then your core GPA is going to be significantly lower. Especially if much of that, what is inflating, that is increasing that number is those fluffier classes. And so the grades is a huge piece because most of the time coaches can find a kid that is similarly talented with a similar size, if not better, that has better grades meaning in their mind. I mean just from past examples even I have this own stereotype and you know, you can always say that, you know, grades don't reflect these certain things, but this is just stereotypes that people have in their head from past examples that kids with bad grades generally aren't great kids to have on the team. They're not going to remember the playbook, they're going to be a pain because then you're going to always have to make sure that they actually pass classes there. And coaches are willing to do this extra work for someone who again is worth it in the sense that they are an elite player. Ultimately, if you're an Alabama kind of guy, Alabama is going to recruit you if you're just on that line because hey, they don't really care about the McGrades as much. They're going to give you all the tutoring the world to make sure that you make it as hard as possible not to get the grades. But if you're at a Division 2 program like that, Division 2 doesn't have the resources to make sure that you get the grades. They don't have the time to do that. And also on top of that, that means you're a Division 2 talent, which they can find other guys that, that are that kind of talent. And so those grades can cause you to be skipped very easily. Most of the time that line is somewhere around 3.0. If you're above a 3.0 easy, you know they're going to check the box. Obviously like higher academic schools, ivies, some D3s, Pioneer League schools for example, they're going to need to see, you know, higher than that. But for the most part, if you're at a 3.0 plus, you're going to check that box and it's not going to be a huge issue. If you're below a 3.0 then it starts to become a question, you know, what's his actual core GPA is even eligible in the first place? What if he, his grades continue to decline and then he's not even recruitable. So it's like all this stuff they don't want to put time into because like you can say that, oh, I'm going to get my grades up, had a bad freshman year, sophomore year or whatever. But then to these coaches minds is also like, what if this kid doesn't even become eligible and we spent all this time recruiting him when we could have recruited someone else that is going to be eligible. And so this is the biggest block and most people just don't necessarily realize it or realize how many different levels there are to this. And so there's so many things on the coaching side of just, you know, when he gets on campus, is he going to be actually worth being on our team to Is he actually worth recruiting? Because what if he's not even eligible to number three? As well as the amount of academic that you might get if you're at a FCS or lower school and they can just offer you a partial and not have to offer you the full academic if they're or full athletic if they're able to split that up according to different programs. But that is a long tangent on grades. All I gotta say is get 3.0 or above, it's an easy one. And if you're below that 3.0 line, good chance that you're getting skipped. And so if you're not above that 3.0 again, that might be a reason why you're not getting recruited as much. Now the next one is if you get past the grades is content. So again, like most of recruiting happens on X. So again, this could be happening in email. It's a little simpler. And they're going to probably skip most of the content stuff because there's not really content to check on on the email. But if you're on X or you send a dm, if you have a post, they're going to check your content. They're not going to read your DM first and respond back. They're probably going to check out some more about you. They're going to give you a quick little scroll into the X stuff. And so they're looking for a bunch of different things. They're looking for what is this guy posting? Is the recruiting activity on his stuff? Is he being recruited by other sculpts? Does he have other offers? We've seen that. Like we have, we have one kid that we work with. He's a safety from Georgia. In the past two months, he's gotten 10 Division 1 offers. And when we first started out, it was taking him about one out of every 400. This is his words, one of every 400 messages to get a response. Last time we talked about this is probably a couple weeks ago, maybe a month ago, we he said that now it takes him about one out every 40. And he was about like four to six Division 1 offers at that point. So coaches are more apt to respond if you have higher recruiting activities such as offers, et cetera, rather than if you have no recruiting activity. It's just a bandwagon effect of, hey, there's some verification, some proof that this guy is recruitable. Other coaches trust that he's a guy that's working, worth recruiting and worth offering. Now, outside of that, you know, maybe you don't have offers, which is perfectly fine. If you don't have offers as a 2026 at this point or 2027 at this point, that's perfectly fine. You're still way ahead of the game just by watching this video. But you need to have content on there that shows that you're worth recruiting. So you need to have your highlights, video, workout film as much as possible, as well as, like, recruiting activity stuff that shows that you're being recruited by schools. So if there's nothing on there, it's just a red flag to coaches, like, why is there nothing on there? Does this kid want to get recruited? Why is he just sending me a random dm? Whereas if you have it set up as this good, solid recruiting brand where they can see that you're a clearly a dedicated individual as well as you're showing them proof of why they should respond to you or recruit you as far as different plays that you make and just stuff that you can do makes it way easier for them to respond. And that's what we've seen. Just the more content that you have, the more higher chance that you're getting responses. And there's a direct correlation there versus if you have no content or little content, it just becomes a lot harder because then you have to make up for it in some way because they just may not even check out your film because they're not able to scroll your feed for a few seconds to see, hey, does this guy have some stuff? And it's that simple. Again, it's coaches wanting to make a decision in seconds rather than taking the minutes to find out that it was all a waste of time. Now, the next thing is the evaluation. So if you pass that content section and they're like, cool, this guy's got the size, he's got the position that we're looking for the graduation year, he's got the grades, he's a 3.0 or plus, and he's got some content, it's clear that he's getting recruited by some schools. He's doing some cool things. I see on a couple things here. Let me check out the film. I'm finally going to check out the film. So when they make that evaluation, they're going to look at your highlights first, and they're probably going to just check out the first three to five plays. So your best plays need to be first because if they don't see something within that first three, five plays that makes them say, like, okay, this guy probably can potentially play at our program. Again, we're just going to skip you. If they do see something, then maybe they're gonna watch a little bit longer to get more of a fuller evaluation. Again, they are highlights. The coaches know that. So generally they're not gonna watch the full thing because maybe they make a further evaluation on game film, which they can do in huddle, but they're going to make some kind of evaluation at that point. Again, their whole goal is to make it in as fast as possible to save time. So that way they can either get to another kid that might be worth their time or decide that, hey, this guy's actually worth recruiting and continue to make a longer evaluation. And so that is the evaluation stage. Then lastly, if you pass that, you're going to be on their board. They're either going to contact you, contact your high school coach, do a heavier evaluation, whether that requires game film, like I mentioned, camps, all that stuff, or even might just follow you. And so there's a couple different ways, and I won't go into this too much because more of this was just on those first couple of steps in that checkbox system. But ultimately, if you pass that evaluation, then sometimes you might not even know other than just a follow. And it is hard to say. Most of the time, you're not being legitimately recruited by a school unless you're really in contact. I mean, like weekly contact or having a coach's phone number or something more in depth that makes it clear that they're really interested in you. But this at least gives you an idea of kind of what that process is like, and it is kind of contextual based on the program, based on the coach and how the conversations look like. But hopefully that gives you a good idea. Maybe you realize, hey, there's something missing. Maybe it's the content side. Maybe you're just missing a couple pieces here and there and hopefully you can get this fixed as well as if you're just looking to get a full audit on all this stuff, get our full game plan on what's helped families get scholarships, then you can go ahead and click the link below. You can book a call with our team where they'll walk you through what we do, as well as maybe some pieces that you might be missing and just point you in the best direction if possible. If it's working with us, awesome. If not, then it's not. But yeah, you can click the link below. Check that out. And I hope to talk to you soon. Peace.