Mailbag question: Highlight tapes of recruits

Quick question:

When Coaches watch film are they looking at highlight tapes or complete game footage to see if the kid blocks, takes plays off, etc...Because I wasn't the greatest player in the world but I'm sure I could make a video to show people and they'd think hey this kids not bad. I guess that would be time consuming but you'd probably learn a lot more about the kid. I mean how much can you learn from a highlight tape.

Thanks, love the blog. On a side note I got my picture on your site so that's cool too. So thanks for all you do. I know its probably tough putting things together everyday, especially this time of year.

Jason H.

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Thanks for the question and comments.

This is one of the biggest changes in football recruiting. When CoachBt first started coaching (they sent sticks figures to coaches because there was no tape ... lol). Okay back to it the players would put together highlight tapes and send them around to get noticed.

As you said even an average player can look outstanding when you use to put together a thirty second video highlights of your best 7-10 plays. A few years later teams started requesting entire game films, usually two or three to get better idea how good a player was.

Teams wanted to see how a player reacted to a negative play, how they played in different situations, and if they were as good at end of game as at beginning.
Today's teams will actually request specific games tapes. They do enough research to know about the quality of opponents and want to see how they perform against top notch competition.

Then you throw in all the combines and camps that are put on for kids these days and kids can get noticed a lot easier than ever in the past. The only problem with going off camps and combine "numbers" is it might be tough to tell how good of a football player a kid really is without seeing game film of him.

Thanks for stopping by http://gobluemichiganwolverine.blogspot.com/
If you have any questions please e-mail erocwolverine@gmail.com

Written by CoachBt and ErocWolverine