Web-based services often don't provide much exposure
Stu Whitney
Argus Leader
published: 8/31/2004
On a Web site for the National Collegiate Scouting Association, Augustana College freshman football player Mike DuFrane is listed as a "success story."
The NCSA is a Chicago-based recruiting service that charges families as much as $1,500 to help high school students find college sports scholarships.
DuFrane, a defensive lineman from Hortonville, Wis., hired the company to promote his abilities to coaches. But he says the group had no role in his recruitment by Augustana, and he's surprised that he's being touted as a recent NCSA success.
"That would pushing the truth a little bit," says DuFrane, adding that he learned about Augustana from high school teammate Jayson Winterfeldt, who signed with the school in 2003.
Says Augustana head coach Jim Heinitz: "We didn't get (DuFrane) off a service at all. You can't rely on those things."
But as more players and parents chase athletic scholarships, these services have become big business. There are more than 200 such sites on the Internet, and NCSA founder Chris Krause says his company currently has about 5,000 families enrolled.
Critics say the services prey on the hopes and wallets of gullible parents by promising things they can't deliver - like credibility among college coaches. Simply sending out highlight tapes and player profiles typically isn't enough to produce a scholarship offer.
"We don't put a lot of stock into those things at all," says University of South Dakota head football coach Ed Meierkort. "Most of them end up in the trash can, to be quite honest."
Meierkort says the legitimate scouting services are ones that charge coaches, not kids. Like most area football coaches, he subscribes to Collegiate Sports Data, a Nashville-based service that lists prospects from every high school in the country.
That information is gleaned from high school coaches, whose opinions carry weight in the initial recruiting stage. But most players on that list won't get scholarships - something other Web-based services don't always tell their clients.
"You recommend a kid, and a lot of those for-profit sites will call his parents and try to make money off it," says O'Gorman High School football coach and athletic director Steve Kueter. "It's a huge problem. From what I can see, the only legitimate ones are the ones that don't ask for money."
Recruiting networks such as Rivals.com and Insiders.com rank football and basketball prospects and charge subscribers to view news. But they aren't in the business of marketing athletes to coaches for a fee.
Krause, who founded the NCSA in 2000, defends his company by noting that athletes need an extra edge in a competitive recruiting environment with expanding opportunities.
"Since Title IX, there are so many more programs available, and most coaches don't have the budget to recruit on a national basis," says Krause, a former scholarship football player at Vanderbilt University. "In my 15 years in this industry, I've never had a student-athlete tell me that they started too early or that they had too much help."
As for Augustana's DuFrane, Krause says that the NCSA helped him draw interest from Division I-AA football programs such as Butler and Holy Cross - but he chose to play Division II football in Sioux Falls.
"If we can give a student-athlete more schools to consider, in addition to the one he had contact with, at least that gives him options," says Krause, whose minimum start-up fee is $395. "If he looks at the other ones and still ends up at that school, it's not like we're going to talk him out of it."
Other recruiting sites use an interactive system to help athletes and coaches find each other - usually in non-revenue sports such as golf, s****r, tennis and swimming.
"It works like a dating service," says Ryan Spoon, a former Duke swimmer who founded BeRecruited.com in 2000. "Athletes create a profile with qualifications, while coaches create a profile based on need - and we try to match the two. They can also search the database if the match isn't suitable."
Of course, none of these sites can help athletes if they aren't taken seriously by college coaches. Most experts say it's better for prospects to personally contact a school to get the recruiting process started.
"It's nice when a kid has done some research and has genuine interest in your program," says Augustana women's s****r coach Steve Burckhalter. "But if it's just some Internet service sending out profiles to every school in the country, it's almost like chasing your tail."