PABaseball posted:There are a ton of threads on here about recruiting services. The general consensus is that they may work for a handful of people to help get noticed by smaller schools with smaller budgets, but they really aren't good for much else. Not just this service, but all of them.
Without trying to turn this into a big thing - they're almost never worth the money and paying somebody who has never seen you play to help you get recruited probably isn't a great idea. Bottom line - they provide a profile and some edited video, but they're not going to pick up a phone and tell schools what you do well. Because a) they've never seen you and b) they don't have that pull.
Save the money, make a video on YouTube, send the link to coaches in emails, and send the link to flat ground. Throw in some things like size, weight, gpa, position in the description and boom you have the same exact thing for free.
Back in the day I had a conversation with one of the founders of this service. The concept was basically social networking between COACHES in which the coach of the HS player is quasi-vetted to be a "real" coach with "real" knowledge of the player's skills and who could "verify" the player to college coaches. The thought process here was "coaches trust coaches" and as long as all coaches were being honest and forthright in their assessment of players, well its utopia, cats and dogs can live together in harmony, etc.
The reality of it is, there are a metric crap-ton of coaches out there who don't know their heads from their butts when it comes to what players are/aren't ready to play at the next level. Many of the travel ball coaches who are out there now really are snakeoil salesmen who are making a buck or two off every player they string along. This service enables that to a degree, because it also gives that moron who calls himself a coach an opportunity to go out on this platform and sing the praises of any kid he wants.
Ultimately in my son's recruitment, we had a profile that was a duplicate effort of his Youtube channel (one of those "why not, it's free" moments. His coach that he played for when he actually got offered never was on this service in the first place, but instead had the kind of reputation necessary to be able to speak to college head coaches in their language.
Sooooo, in a nutshell if your coach is already a trusted guy by college coaches, he won't need to use a service like this to promote his players (for the most part) and likely won't. If you are using it as a platform to post videos, don't expect that to get you recruited. Can't hurt, but value is minimal.