Head College Coach Reveals How to Get Recruited in 2026

I sat down with a head college football coach who has 25 years of experience in recruiting, built a program from sub-.500 to conference champions, and now runs his own program as a head coach. He told me something during our conversation that stopped me cold. A parent came to him after her son got an offer and said she thought the process was basically over. He looked at her and said, "It hasn't even started yet." That is how most families approach football recruiting in 2026, and it is costing their sons real opportunities.

How to Get Recruited: Start With Your Film Package

The first thing every family asks me is where to start. The answer is always the same. You start with an evaluation so you know your level, and then you build your film around that level. Not your best plays. Your most complete plays.

Coach Calloway made a point I want every parent to hear. Coaches watch tape with a minute and a half to two minutes of patience. If they see something that grabs them, they keep watching. If they don't, they move on. That means your son's first five clips are doing all the work. And those clips need to show diversity, not just highlight reel bombs.

He told me he recruits linebackers and he doesn't need to see 15 tackles at the line of scrimmage. He needs to see a linebacker drop into coverage. That one clip tells him more than a pile of stops behind the line. Put the effort plays in. Put the full picture in. Coaches are looking for what's important, not just what's obvious.

The Three Levels of Recruiting Interest and What to Do With Each One

Coach Calloway broke down something I had never heard framed this clearly before. There are three levels of interest a college coach can show your son, and if you don't know which level you're at, you cannot make good decisions about where to spend your time and energy.

Red is low interest. The coach is sending mass blasts. Form emails. No personalization. If your son got an email and nobody called, that's red. Yellow is moderate interest. The coach is texting, asking how the season is going, checking in on what other schools are in the mix. That means your son is on a list and the coach is watching. Green is high interest. The coach wants your son on campus. A camp invite. A game day visit where someone actually called and said why they want him there.

Too many families treat a red light like a green light and spend weekends driving to game day visits that were mass blast invites. Coach Calloway was direct about it. If a coach did not call and explain specifically why they want your son at that game, that visit should not be on the schedule. Your son only has so many fall weekends. Spend them where the light is actually green.

Follow-Up Is the Recruiting Process

I hear this from every coach I bring on this show and Coach Calloway said it as clearly as anyone. The follow-up is not optional. It is the process. Coaches intentionally do not respond to first emails to see what a kid does next. The ones who come back, in the same thread, one week apart, are the ones who move up the list.

He told me straight up. When a coach sees three or four follow-ups stacked in the same conversation, he thinks, this kid shows up the same way I need him to show up on a Tuesday morning lift. Persistence on the keyboard tells him what to expect on the practice field. That is not my framing. That is what the coach said.

And when your son does follow up, it cannot be copy and paste. "Hey coach, I know it's the season. I reached out a few weeks ago and didn't hear back. I'm still really interested in what you're building." Something that shows he actually paid attention. Two or three of those and the coach knows the interest is real. One blast email with a Hudl link and silence after that, and your son never entered the process at all.

What Parents Should Be Doing That Players Cannot Do Alone

Coach Calloway gave me one of the better frameworks I've heard for how parents and players should divide the work. Players need to handle the communication. They need to be the ones on the phone, in the DMs, looking the coach in the eye during a visit. The coach is recruiting your son, not you. If mom or dad is driving every conversation, that coach is already worried about what four years of that family looks like in his program.

But parents have a real job in this process. They need to ask the questions a 17-year-old is not going to think to ask. What is the total cost of attendance? What does academic support look like? What are players doing after football? What does life look like in that community? Your son is going to be focused on the logo, the depth chart, and the travel schedule. Somebody has to be focused on the actual decision.

Coach Calloway gives families a scorecard when they visit his program. Athletics. Financial aid. Scholarship. Playing time. Location. Social environment. Life after football. He tells them to fill it out on the drive home while the visit is still fresh. That structure is what separates families who make good decisions from families who chase the obvious stuff and end up somewhere that was never the right fit.

Practicing for the Recruiting Process Like You Practice for the Game

This is the part most families completely skip. They prepare the film. They send the emails. And then they show up to a coach's office having never practiced what they're going to say or how they're going to carry themselves in that room.

Coach Calloway put it perfectly. You would never go into a game without practicing. So why are you walking into what is essentially a job interview for a scholarship worth 25, 50, 100, or $200,000 without any reps? He told me he coaches his players to be comfortable in uncomfortable conversations at all times. In the classroom. In the store. Anywhere. So that when they sit down across from a college coach, they already know how to hold that conversation with confidence.

Your son needs reps having those conversations before he walks into a coach's office. How he sits. How he makes eye contact. What questions he asks. Whether he drives the conversation or waits to be talked at. Two players can have equal film and one of them gets an offer because the coach liked how that kid showed up in the room. That is not a small thing. That is often the whole thing.

Join the Free Live Workshop

If your son is a junior or senior and you are still trying to figure out how this process actually works, I want to show you the full system in real time. I run a free live workshop where I walk families through the exact steps to get your son in front of college coaches and into a position to earn real scholarship offers.

Register for the free live workshop at gonextplay.com/free-training.