Palmer remembers different recruiting era
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When Jesse Palmer went through the recruiting process, there was no YouTube, no HUDL for game highlights, no real way to gain exposure through social media. His quest for publicity was doubly difficult living in Canada.
So Palmer and his father, Bill, who was his coach and had a football background playing for the Ottawa Rough Riders, did the only thing they knew: They cobbled together a highlight tape and mass mailed it to targeted schools across the country.
One of the envelopes went to Gainesville, Fla., to the office of Steve Spurrier. That turned out to be a brilliant decision, one that would change Palmer's life forever.
"I probably recruited Florida more than they recruited me," Palmer said in a recent interview prior to Spurrier's resignation at South Carolina last week.
"Playing in high school in Canada, so far away, it was hard to get exposure. I knew I was going to have to be proactive and put a film together and really send it out to schools and put myself out in front of them.
'There weren't a lot of American universities that were willing to go across the border and knock on doors in Canada."
There are still challenges when recruiting outside of the American high school system and exposure is still not great for international players, but it's certainly better than it was in the mid-1990s when Palmer embarked on trying to get college scholarships.
At that time, the Florida Fun 'n' Gun offense was cruising, Spurrier was seen as an offensive and quarterback wizard, and the Gators were revolutionizing SEC football.
Palmer wanted to be a part of it.
"We took a look at where the best passing schools were in the country and tried to decide where we should really set the bar so we knew where we should target," said Palmer, who shared the job during his career with Doug Johnson and Rex Grossman and threw for 3,755 yards over four seasons.
"At the time, Florida was the No. 1 passing school in the country, Danny Wuerffel was going to win the Heisman, they were on their way to winning a national championship."
Highlight tapes from Palmer flooded Spurrier's office -- and there was immediate mutual interest. Palmer had targeted a bunch of closer programs in the Big Ten, Big East and ACC, thinking that being closer to those schools would garner interest. But he also took a shot in the SEC. He hit the lotto.
"I sent a bunch of tapes out to coach Spurrier and luckily I heard back right away," said Palmer, now an ESPN analyst. "We were in constant communication on the phone in September through October and he offered me over the phone in mid-October. I took an official visit down for their Homecoming game against LSU and Danny Wuerffel threw six touchdown passes or something and I committed because I didn't think there was a better place.
"I didn't want to get dissuaded from my decision and Steve Spurrier was seen as this quarterback guru at the time."
Steve Spurrier is a living legend in college football. It was an honor to play for a Heisman trophy winner, but a true innovator of the game- Jesse James Palmer (@JessePalmerABC) October 13, 2015
Spurrier, 70, resigned at South Carolina last week and it's the culmination of an incredibly successful career at Florida and with the Gamecocks, where he's the winningest head coach at both programs.
Only Paul "Bear" Bryant has more SEC wins than Spurrier, who stepped aside after a 2-4 start. South Carolina beat Vanderbilt, 19-10, this past weekend.
For Palmer, the recruiting process was nothing like it is today. Kids get recruited far earlier. To only start sending out highlight tapes heading into one's senior season is almost unheard of these days.
Many of the top quarterbacks nowadays are committed during their junior seasons. It wasn't that way for Palmer, who attended camps at Penn State, Michigan and other places hoping for exposure.
"Recruiting today is so different with all these camps and social media and you can put your highlight tape on YouTube," Palmer said. "Any coach at any given moment can watch a tape and start evaluating a kid at any second. It's become so much more national and so much more global, and so much easier so I was very fortunate in the process and I'm obviously glad it worked out the way it did."
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