Most of you have probably encountered someone pitching their recruiting service on Instagram or TikTok. I hate recruiting services. As a prospective college student athlete, you should immediately scroll past these videos because a recruiting service will be the biggest waste of money and time during your recruiting process, guaranteed!!
These services do 3 things to draw your attention, trust, and ultimately make a sale.
1) Make you (or your son) feel like they will get lost in the crowd
Not a lot of players move on to play college baseball and there are a million different reasons. However, “getting lost in the shuffle” is more of an excuse to cushion the blow of failure rather than a legitimate reason as to why someone didn’t get recruited. Usually, the biggest reason as to why players who “want” to play college baseball don’t ultimately get the opportunity is because they 1) were not talented and/or strong enough 2) didn’t put enough effort forth in the recruiting process. I have yet to see a player who TRULY wants to play college baseball unable to find a program that will give him a shot.
One of the biggest misconceptions (or excuses) about unsuccessful college baseball recruiting is that it is too difficult to stand out in the crowd. Recruiting services are the biggest proponents of that misconception. If they make it seem like recruiting is difficult, then they can get “potential clients” to listen to their message and begin to believe that they need help to play college baseball.
Recruiting services overstate how important “getting noticed” is. Attracting interest from college coaches is one thing, maintaining that interest as they evaluate you as a player and person is another thing. I have watched countless sales pitches from recruiting consultants who say, “Do these 3 things to gather interest and turn it into an offer” and then they proceed to list 3 generic actions that won’t get you any closer to an offer. Coaches are “interested” in hundreds of kids every recruiting cycle, so getting an offer takes way more than simply capturing a coach’s attention. Gathering interest is about standing out as a player that can help a coach win. That is the very first thing a coach looks for in your e-mail to him. He isn’t looking for a specific 3 things in your e-mail; he’s quickly evaluating you to see if you’re worth his time to pursue. The best way to check that one box is to prove in your e-mail that you are a high caliber player ready for the next level.
I played for 20+ coaches (yes, this includes assistants and summer ball coaches) and with 150+ players throughout my college career and none of them ever discussed recruiting services as something beneficial that they used. I watched coaches take interest in players who went to camps and showed up on campus. A good way to stand out from the crowd is to 1) ensure your talent and strength is at a level to capture a coaches attention 2) contact the coach directly from your personal accounts with film attached so they can quickly see that YOU ARE GOOD 3) attend a camp on campus and talk to the coach face to face.
None of those 3 things require a recruiting service.
2) Make recruiting sound difficult
I just outlined 3 ways to stand out from the crowd, none of which are exceedingly difficult. But you will never hear it that plainly from a recruiting service because their livelihood is made by extorting their knowledge of the recruiting process over families who are just starting to learn the process. There are 2 main reasons that recruiting services will try to make the recruiting process sound difficult. Obviously, one reason is to create panic in families or players and get them to buy the service. But the second reason is one that I did not realize until recently when I was observing the current state of college baseball recruiting.
The second reason is that people who work for recruiting services create the myth that the recruiting process is an enigma to validate their success in navigating the process as players, LIKELY because they did not have much success on the field at the college level. They portray themselves as experts in the field, but successfully landing an offer to play college baseball was the peak of their college career. I did a deep dive into these players careers and found that most of these “successful” founders were transferring after their freshman year and never saw the field.
It makes sense as to why these former players chose recruiting as their business, because what player or parent would choose to take hitting lessons from someone who didn’t get on the field in college when there are plenty of all-conference studs and former minor leaguers who offer the same thing.
When I came to this realization, it was the straw that broke my back. The main reason I started Athora Lab is to help players get better at baseball, but I also wanted to expose “recruiting services” companies and employees for the frauds that they are.
3) Over-embellish past success (as players and recruiting consultants)
To establish a sense of authority about the recruiting process, recruiting services will lavishly oversell their success stories. The biggest example of this is the claim that they played in a big conference like the ACC. However, if one claims to play in the ACC, you expect them to last longer than 1 season before transferring to a D2. There is nothing wrong with transferring, but anyone can see how misleading it is to highlight the briefest point of one’s college baseball career.
The other thing recruiting services over embellish is their success in landing their clients at any school. The service makes their involvement seem crucial, yet any player who credits their recruitment success to the recruiting service is making a mistake. If the recruiting service is bragging about placing a player at D3 school in Wisconsin, I assure you the player could have landed at that school if they reached out to the coach themself. If a recruiting service brags about placing a player at a D1 school, I assure you that player could have had his pick of the litter and did not need to seek the help of a recruiting service.
A non-biased third party is a big part of the recruiting process, but that can easily be accomplished by a good coach that wants to see you succeed. A coach who has seen you develop and knows your work ethic on a personal level, carries more weight to a college coach then a recruiting service who does not have the same rapport with you as a player.