I do not believe this site allows posting links to podcasts, but for those interested, Mark Pantoni just did a podcast for something called daddy’s ball podcast. Google if interested.
Pantoni is Ohio State’s Assistant AD/director of recruiting. He is primarily a football guy, no idea whether he is involved with recruiting for other sports. Obviously getting recruited to play football at Ohio State is different than getting recruited to play tennis at Carleton College, but it seemed to me that this could be of interest across sports to parents going through this or gearing up for the process.
Some highlights:
On evaluating recruits
“So anything that’s more than really a minute and a half, two minutes, it’s almost kind of worthless to put on there because we’re probably going to stop watching it just because we’ll have seen probably what we already needed to see. So the first two plays better stick out right away to grab our attention to get us to want to keep watching.” and “We want to see the true story. I always compare watching a highlight tape to watching a movie trailer. Like, every movie trailer you watch is great. It makes you want to go see that movie, and then you pay that money and the movie sucks. So we’re going to put on that game film and see if the game film matches that highlight tape or if there’s a lot of inconsistencies, taking plays off.”
On families
“So we’re watching the kids and families, how they act, what their demeanor is, how their personalities are. And that, it’s not the decision maker, but it could be a decision factor as we’re recruiting. Because we want to make sure it’s the right culture fit for the kid in the family because we don’t want to have an overwhelming parent that’s going to call and complain and after a year, their son’s going to go in the transfer portal and go back home.”
On “non comittable” offers
Pantoni: “What’s happened is you have young kids, say in their sophomore year, and you invite them to camp or you invite them to campus and the kid and his parents say, ‘Well, we’re not going to pay all that money unless we have an offer.’ And so they almost become un-recruitable unless you tell them they’ve got an offer. And so it’s a game you have to play. A lot of people don’t like it.” and “It’s what you have to do. But throughout the process, the kids you are very serious about, you just have to be honest with them. Obviously most schools can only take one quarterback in the class, so people realize that spots are limited as well. So not all offers are equal.”