Football finds young talent

Johnny isn’t a specific person. He could be any one of the members of Princeton’s football team, all of whom went through the highly complicated recruiting process. And it’s not just the student athletes who have a hard time: Coaches face the same problems that admission committees do in building the recruiting class that will best serve their program in that class’ four years on the field of play.

Football has the most regulated recruiting process of all collegiate sports, and football recruiting is given the most exceptions in the NCAA bylaws. The process can start as early as a high school athlete’s freshman year. Coaches start with as many as 1,500 names on their recruiting lists and begin to send out camp brochures and recruiting questionnaires to those on the lists. Camp is the most useful recruiting tool Princeton’s coaching staff has in its arsenal, head coach Roger Hughes said.

“If we’re lucky enough to persuade a young man and his parents to come out to our summer camp, we can show them what Princeton’s about, make them understand the very unique opportunity going to school here at Princeton affords them, and then also explain what [Princeton football is] about, what we demand, how hard it is and the benefits of a Princeton education,” Hughes said.

Though the camp may be the most important tool for coaches, recruiting starts at a different place for the players. For freshman running back Jonathan Meyers — a highly sought-after recruit who turned down programs like Florida and Michigan in favor of Princeton — the process began when he sent highlight films to various programs around the country after his sophomore season in high school. Though he didn’t attend any camps in the summer before his junior season, he did begin to receive recruiting materials, and in the spring of his junior year, things started to heat up.

“There was a time period, probably in my junior year, when recruiting was at its height … There were letters every day and text messages during that May recruiting period,” Meyers said. “You get pulled out of class to talk to visiting coaches, and there’s a lot of work, especially on top of schoolwork and the athletics you have in high school … because you’re playing a sport for a reason. You’re not playing a sport to talk to coaches, you’re playing it because you love it. If not, you wouldn’t be playing it.”

Junior offensive lineman Mark Paski also remembers the fall of his senior year in high school as being incredibly busy because of the pressures of the recruiting process.

“You literally get bombarded with phone calls,” Paski said. “You have to stop your schoolwork because you know you are going to spend two hours on the phone with five different coaches.”

Like Meyers, Paski was weighing attending a BCS school on a scholarship against the benefits of a Princeton education. Hughes said this is a dilemma that many Princeton football players face, adding that the job of convincing the athlete and his family lies with the coaching staff. Hence, the weekly phone calls and home and school visits.

“Some kids who are offered scholarships, we’ve got to talk them into going the financial aid route, where their parents and they themselves may be taking on some of the financial responsibility, where at other schools everything would be paid for,” Hughes said.

Ultimately, Paski, Meyers and many of their teammates chose Princeton. The choice was not a difficult one for Meyers, he said. Following an official visit to the University of Florida and one to Princeton, Meyers picked the Tigers over the Gators.

Athletes being recruited by BCS schools aren’t the only athletes Princeton is focusing its recruiting efforts on, however. Senior defensive lineman and tri-captain Matt Koch was not interested in playing football outside the Ivy League.

“Basically, if I didn’t play here, I was going to do the Florida Bright Futures [Scholarship] Program,” Koch said.

Get the best of the ‘Prince’ delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe now »

So not only do the coaches have to convince students not to take athletic scholarships, but the coaches have to convince them not to take academic ones as well.

Still, Meyers said he thinks Princeton has an advantage in the recruiting process that other schools simply don’t have.

“The Princeton coaches are in a unique situation in that it’s not really a tough sell to come to Princeton,” Meyers said. “I think that if a student athlete has not only the athletic ability but has the grades to get in here, I couldn’t see a reason to not want to come here. With all the intangibles of Princeton, [Hughes] didn’t really have to say too much to get me to come on board and choose Princeton. I was really excited about my decision. I don’t think it was too much of a hard sell for Coach Hughes.”

Ironically for the players, recruiting doesn’t end with matriculation. They also have to help bring in the next three classes of recruits, mostly by helping during the official visit weekends.

“It was definitely different,” Meyers noted. “The kids come here, and they put up this hard front, you know, ‘I’m a big, tough recruit,’ and you kind of adjust to that a little bit. They’re definitely a little bit intimidated coming to the school, but once you get to talking to the kids and really figure out what they’re interested in, you can almost see the ones who are going to come to Princeton, the ones who are going to fit in here.”