Head D1 College Coach Reveals How To Choose Camps to get offers

Most parents I talk to have no idea how to pick which football camps their son should attend. They see a stack of camp invites come in, they pick the biggest names on the list, and they spend thousands of dollars driving across the country to FBS programs where their son never gets looked at. I sat down with a Division I head coach who broke this down in a way I have not heard a coach say it this clearly on camera before. If your son is trying to get recruited, this conversation changes how you operate this summer.

The One Rule for Choosing Which Football Camps to Attend

The coach put it simply. If you are not already communicating with a coach at that school and they have not watched your son's game film, that camp is not a recruiting camp. It is a get-better camp. Those are two completely different things.

He said it directly. Unless your son is 6'5" and runs a 4.2, go to the schools that are actively recruiting him. Go to the schools that have watched his film, that are responding to his emails, that are willing to hop on a call before he drives eight hours to campus. That is the filter. Everything else is noise.

The parents I work with hear this and it immediately simplifies the summer. Stop chasing the logo. Start chasing the relationship.

What D1 FCS Coaches Actually Do at Their Own Camps

I asked Coach Stevens how his staff runs their prospect camps and his answer surprised me. He told me they work those camps hard. They are not running kids through drills to check a box. They are hunting for athletes. He said if a kid jumps a 98-inch broad jump after going 110 on his first attempt, he personally pulls him aside and gets him another rep. He is not letting a bad attempt define a kid's evaluation.

He told me about a player named Reed Nickerson who came to camp as a safety. Before lunch they moved him to linebacker. By end of day he was working defensive end one-on-ones. That kid went on to be a two-time all-conference Ivy League player at 250 pounds. The camp found him. His film did not show all of that. The live evaluation did.

This is why going to the right camp matters. At an FCS camp your son gets coached. He gets multiple reps. He gets seen by the staff making the scholarship decisions. At a big FBS camp with 500 kids in line, that is not happening. Both have a place in a recruiting plan, but parents need to know the difference before they write the check.

Why the Recruiting Process Runs Through June Now

Something has changed at the FCS level that most families do not know about. Coach Stevens told me that the early decision timeline has moved up. His program started doing June official visits last year for the first time and came out of June with 10 commits. That is not an accident. That is the new calendar.

He said each position coach goes into May having evaluated 50 to 75 players. By the time they come out of June camps and official visits, that list is down to the top 20 at each position. The coaches are making decisions before the season starts. Offensive and defensive linemen are the first positions to get locked up. Quarterbacks are committing by end of June. If your son is waiting until fall to get serious about recruiting, he is already late to the process at the FCS level.

The families that file their FAFSA early, get on campus in June, and communicate consistently with the staff are the ones getting offers this summer. That window is open right now.

What Coaches Are Really Watching for on a Recruiting Visit

I asked Coach Stevens the question I ask every coach. Two players, same size, same film. One gets the offer. One goes home. What is the difference? His answer had nothing to do with football.

He said the visit is a character evaluation. How does your son interact with the current players? Does he put the phone down at dinner? Does he get in the mix when they are playing cornhole or pickup basketball? Does he talk to the coaches or does he retreat into himself? Football is not a silent game and coaches are watching every minute of that visit to see who this kid is when no one is specifically testing him.

He told me straight that a kid yelling at his mom on a visit is done. A kid on his phone through dinner is done. A kid who tells a coach he will play wherever the team needs him goes to the top of the board. Your son needs to go into every visit with a game plan. He is selling himself just as much as the school is selling him.

How to Get Your Son in Front of Coaches Who Can Actually Recruit Him

Coach Stevens was transparent about how his staff finds players. They use third-party recruiting services. Not the kind families pay to blast a kid's profile out. The kind that college programs pay to evaluate and rank prospects by region. His staff starts by watching film through those services, then they get on the road in May to see players live, then they use camp evaluations in June to verify measurables before making scholarship decisions.

He told me they need verified numbers from a college camp setting before they can move forward. A hand-timed 40 from a high school coach texted to the staff is not enough when you are talking about a $230,000 scholarship over four years. That number has to come from a coach standing on a college sideline with a stopwatch.

What this means for your son is simple. His job is to be in the regions these coaches recruit, on film those services can find, and physically present at the camps those coaches attend. If he is in the right region, has strong junior tape, and shows up at FCS prospect camps for schools that are already communicating with him, the evaluation process works in his favor.

The Biggest Mistake Families Make in the Recruiting Process

I asked Coach Stevens for the single biggest mistake he sees at the D1 level. He said it is going somewhere with no connection. A kid from Maine driving to Utah to play for a program that has no relationship with his high school, no history of taking players from his area, no reason to invest in his development when things get hard.

He said the schools that recruit regionally do it because they want to build something real. When those kids are traveling home, they are riding together. They already know guys they played against. There is a foundation of connection that makes a team a team. Going somewhere with name recognition but no relationship is a fast way to end up in the portal after year one.

This is advice I give families constantly. Do not recruit to a logo. Recruit to a relationship. Find the staff that has watched your son's film, picked up the phone, and made him feel like they want him specifically. That school will develop him. That school will invest in him when it counts.

Join the Free Live Workshop

If your son is a junior or senior and you are trying to figure out which camps to attend, how to communicate with coaches, and how to build the kind of relationship that turns into a real scholarship offer, I cover the full system in my next live workshop.

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