On Recruiting: What is a school like ECU to do to differentiate itself?

A ranting opinion piece that may exhaust some of you…

I recently had an email discussion with a good Pirate out of the D.C./MD area about recruiting – the good and the bad – for the Pirates and it really sparked some thought. Specifically, the question pondered: “What does a school like ours need to do to attract top talent?

ECU is not in a great position from the jump to do well in recruiting top talent. Think about it. We are a non-BCS program geographically pinned to the coast by a virtual cluster-f*** of BCS programs. We have a shoestring recruiting budget relative to the competition around us. We have a school system owned and operated by UNC boosters, and our brand is not well known beyond our region. What to do?

To date, our program has done – in my opinion – a pretty damn good job in the face of this situation. Going back through all the notable coaches…Stas, Dye, Emory, Lewis, Logan, and Holtz, they all reasoned – fairly – that they needed to become the choice of eastern NC players with a smattering of Tidewater and coastal South Carolina players and a contingent from talent-rich Florida each year. That approach will always have to be part of the mix for us because we need to keep the fanbase growing and if you sign a local kid, his family and friends will follow each weekend at the Fick. But, how successful can we be with this model? Our state – as it is – loses its top talent every year to out of state big box schools with UNC then cleaning up the leftovers. We have to survive on “finding the diamonds in the rough…” the Justin Hardy’s of the world. But that doesn’t allow for sustained success and certainly won’t yield elite level football…so what do we need to do?

Stop reading if you think I have some answer for it. I don’t. But, I do think at a strategic level, we need to be different…we need to think out of the box….we need to scrutinize every dollar spent on recruiting and on the program brand in light of maximum punch for the buck. The players you sign are the lifeblood of the program…end of story. Everything else is secondary. Before I get to the big picture stuff, I have a few thoughts on a couple of in the weeds items, starting with this whole recruiting-turned-media-commodity thing.

Sure, I love heading over to HTC and Pirate Illustrated to see what we have in the pipeline and to hear how our class is shaping up. I want to know early and often…nature of being a fan. And, I don’t think you will find bigger ECU advocates then the Stephen and Mark who have busted their butts, endured criticisms, and risked their own financial futures to make those sites fly and push back against the powerbrokers as the buy more and more influence via their recruiting sites. I wish them big success. But on a broader level, I do not for the life of me know why anyone within our program would want anyone knowing anything about who we are recruiting. Definitely wouldn’t as an alumni that is well connected or a coach or administrator volunteer jack to these sites…wouldn’t do it. Recruiting news now passes as for entertainment…stuff to argue over at the office cooler and on messageboards…yet another dimension to the bravado of college sports. I get that. We all ride the information superspeedway and being even second to know…sucks. Want it all now. But if we were savvy, we would keep a tight lid on it and shock the hell out of the football world each year as we draw in the top off the grid players.

I can’t say for sure that coaches, administrators or well-connected alums are leaking out our target lists, but I can say, to put together a substantive list like the ones that the sites have, takes a lot, a lot of work hours unless you have a short cut. You would have to call every local paper in the entire region to get that information. Plus, I have seen so many tweets coming from Coach Ruff and Coach Riley in the tweetmosphere to certainly point a heads up recruit-nick to where we are looking and to me, I just wouldn’t go there considering the uphill climb it is. Again, it seems to me that schools like ECU should do their level best to make absolutely NOTHING available to these recruiting sites (let them find it themselves). It serves no value to our program and only hurts us. If you are BCS program, then I get it…the fanfare and hoopla only feeds the engine. They can spend enormous amounts of money wooing these kids and their fanbase will give even more money for the fun of bragging about top recruiting rankings. And, if you are going to leak something, leak disinformation…like that we are close to flippin’ UNC’s top recruit…even though we aren’t even talking to him.

However, IMO, we end up being the recruiting vetters for other programs. Why advertise. Sometimes we even serve as the early offer that makes that hidden jewel known to the very teams who can swoop in and lure the verbal away. Yes, verbals become known via local news, but we freakin’ mass advertise it…let it lie…like broccoli.  Obvioulsy, other programs know that we cannot canvas America for players so we concentrate heavily in our region (Southeaster VA, eastern NC, and coastal SC, and northern GA). So, if you are Tennessee, Virginia Tech, UNC, NC State, SC, Ga Tech, Clemson…you keep an eye on the guys we are recruiting because you will KNOW that we did a deep analysis on the kids and then come cherry pick. Kanler Coker is a perfect example. The kid was off the grid basically when LR/RM found him. Everyone knows our program KNOWS QBs…knows how to assess them. Fedora needed a QB, had endless resources to recruit, but chose to look at what ole ECU was doing, saw the press and hoopla we were giving Coker, made a phone call, told him that he could never play for a NC at ECU and flooded him with gratis and VOILA! A quick sign that cost UNC NOTHING in effort. I definitely fall into the camp that it should be best served cold. Let the big names figure out our players when they are already in the line-up, producing for us.

As much as I love recruiting information, I really do believe that if I were Ruff, the only people who would know who we were on would be the kids we were recruiting themselves. Would I share with a recruit maybe others we are recruiting…probably. I would leave it to local news reporters to do their jobs to find out who their local heroes are talking with. Unfortunately, it seems our insiders are all too willing to leak out who we are targeting to rivals and 247 and  the like and then those guys run with it. Could be wrong though.

Anyway, I digress.

Back to the strategic level…a school like ours, IMO, must think out of the box when it comes to recruiting. We need to be unconventional in our thinking…get inside the kids heads…spend our money there, trying to understand how to market the athletic program to the way these kids think. We need to brand our program in a way that makes us cool…different…the place to go. Boise was fashioned on multiple levels…yes, there was the scheduling, the locking down (partly luck) of a stud coach, etc., but there was more. How in the hell do you get kids to go to effin’ Idaho for college? Now, truth be told, they have probably CHEATED big time while off the radar (who is going to go looking at Boise), but let’s say they were legit…I would want to know HOW in the world they made Boise, Idaho, a cool place for football players to go?? Blue Turf? The let’s put in purple turf…why the hell not? Let’s go with one of those non-tradition, freakin cool logos and with gear that kids would envy? Let’s put out press that is more than press releases, targeting talent rich areas…nay saturate the areas with our brand. Remember…get the players, all the program success will follow. Have PC fund raisers that are oriented to the aging team…3-on-3 hoops tourneys, Laser Tag events, concerts, all put on by ECU. Put on a combine that shows off ECU…bring back the Buccaneer Babes…just a few ideas. On the recruiting trail, we need to be more strategic…recruit a class in the truest sense…instead of just say, Lucas Thompson…who showed interest, why not group together sets of top recruits with the story…hey you four 5-star DBs…you can come to ECU and start as a unit and become the greatest secondary in the country? Spend the money to go places we traditionally don’t go and then come behind it with a marketing saturation to go after “Students” from that area too. Enlist your former players – many of whom are now producing top-flight prodigy…enlist them to remain STARS in the ECU community….treat them like P-Diddy, now that their NFL star has moved into history. If I were recruiting, I would be wearing out that Dwayne Harris cribs video, finishing it with a surprise call from the NFL impact player of the year himself. John Elway used be one Stanford’s best recruiters…showing up to recruit visit weekends and sitting down in the stadium with the kids…try to say no to that. It is not enough to get them to be involved, but we have to be creative in how we stage their involvement. If today’s 18 year old doesn’t quite know who Robert Jones or Jeff Blake is, we need to media hype them in a way that connects to the kids…then have them say “hello.”

Not saying we should do this, but I remember when Oregon boosters paid $250,000 to put a 10-story mural of QB Joey Harrington on a building in NYC across from MSG to hype him (and the program) to the Heisman committee and the world? They took a lot of criticism for that, particularly from the same ESPN that now hangs on every demand the Ducks throw their way. Oregon was not yet the prime destination for top talent then. Out of the box, that was. Controversial yes, but one argue that the quarter mill ended up being a good investment in development of the Oregon aura and swagger.

One thing Boise State does that is interesting is that they regularly scour Texas and California for players…they invest a lot of money and time in those big geographies. We face a huge recruiting dilemma. On the one hand, we are cash-strapped relatively so we cannot really canvas the country AND we are seen as a regional school so we need to bring in local players (to sell tix and to drive interest); but on the other hand, we also are situated in an area saturated with Division 1 football teams. We have to contend – as I said earlier – with UNC, NC State, Wake, Duke, SC, Clemson, Tenn, WVa, Virginia Tech, UVA and now add to that group, deep-pocketed Charlotte and ODU for players. Man that is 12 Division I schools in close proximity, 10 of which have exponentially more cash to recruit with, higher profile brands, and direct access to the NC game.

OUT OF THE BOX…we must be different in terms of recruiting and marketing to young kids.  Another approach is that we need to look what we can bring to bear from the academic side. Hey, maybe we should look into ECU starting a satellite prep school…college preparation for kids in the region whose grades are lacking or need better achievement scores. This way we could help our local population by keeping the kids home while they prep – and of course, the school would have football and basketball – as they get their academics in line and maybe even take a few college courses to get started. Then, they just move to ECU when they qualify.That way, a Dontrill Hyman type wouldn’t be talking to LSU and would more likely have 4 to play 4 when he arrived. Just a thought.

Man…I could go on.

Short of cheating – which I neither advocate or expect we could ever pull off (that one is only reserved for the UNC ilk) – we have to be creative…we have to look for synergies within our community and academic offerings to turn into recruiting lures. For example, we have a communications school right? We should be telling recruits that if they are not the next Chris Johnson, then they could be the next ESPN star. We have a drama department right? Draw on those skills to make recruit visits almost movie like (I know, sounds crazy), when they enter the stadium. Don’t play the loud speaker, give them a show with real live people. Hell, we could maybe even enlist a few budding actors/actresses to be Ruff’s posse…making our HC out to be a celebrity himself so when he rolls into town, it is always with big fan fare.

We need not only to make a positive impression on the prep coaches, but treat them especially right (though I know the NC prep coaches love this staff) but go over the top to the extent possible. Every once in a while you gotta sign the star’s best friend and teammate to get the star…hey, it happens.

We also should take a long, hard look at ODU, Charlotte, MTSU, FAI, FAU and schools like that…scour their verbals list like schools do to us and see if we can swoop in and take the kid they did all the research on. Turnabout if fair play, no?

Look, it all sounds cool on paper, but at the end of the day, it is for our marketing and athletics department to turn the trick…but that said, I believe efforts should zero in on understanding the psyche of the 18 year old star athlete, and cater to it – within legal reason. Get enough of them, you win a lot of football games and 50,000 fans becomes 75,000 and Big East becomes SEC.

I am probably out of my head…off the reservation…lost on a straight path…but something has to differentiate us beyond being a family-like school (which I also love). And, to do what I am suggesting takes a whole lot more than saying. But I also know we have the people at ECU who can get it done…they have that much talent.

Would love to hear your thoughts, friends.