The awkward side of recruiting

High praise is the norm and the talking points seem rehearsed. Every player loved his visit. Every school has a family atmosphere. Every prospect can see himself playing for every coach. It’s the land of high-fives, fist bumps and bro-hugs.

Everything is always perfect … unless it’s not.

The awkward moments and off-putting experiences are often glossed over in favor of discussing facilities or uniforms or something of the sort. There are, of course, reasons for this – plenty of them actually - but that doesn’t mean the eye roll-inducing part of the process doesn’t exist.

Even Rivals100 prospects such as Amari Gainer have lived through it.

“I went somewhere for a visit and got there a little late, and the whole thing was weird from there,” Gainer said. “The coaches, like, didn’t talk to me. It was a weird visit from there. I was pretty much on my own. It felt weird.”

The incidents are by no means isolated. In the last few weeks alone, Ohio State recently sent four-star wide receiver target Jacob Copeland a piece of recruiting mail addressed to “Jason Copeland.” Then there’s the Justin Watkins situation, which the Rivals100 athlete says resulted in his flip from Florida State to Texas earlier this month.

“Some coaches seem, like, stuck up,” Watkins said. “It’s like they don’t want to talk to you. Then, with Florida State they would come but seem in a rush to leave. I never even got a chance to talk to [head coach] Jimbo [Fisher]. One day, I was at lunch and they called me to get me to talk to Jimbo. They told me that he was ready to talk to me. So I called him back, then they tell me that he had left campus already and couldn’t talk.”

Watkins’ flip wasn’t the result of awkwardness or missed connections, though. There’s also a dispute over just where FSU wanted to play him. Watkins is adamant about playing wide receiver in college and will do so at Texas. And while those close to the FSU program says the plan was always to allow the four-star athlete to play wideout, Watkins disputes that narrative.

According to him, the things he was seeing from FSU painted a very different picture of the future. The positional sticking point isn’t unique to Watkins and FSU. It happens among dozens of programs and prospects each year. The situation here just serves as a recent example.

“They would always just try to push me off to the defensive backs coach,” Watkins said. “I would want to talk to Jimbo or talk to the wide receivers coach, but they always came at me with the defensive coaches.”

The relationship between coach and prospect is inherently awkward, after all. Attempting to persuade a teenager to attend a school he’s sometimes never heard of is no simple task.

The process isn’t a string of smooth sales pitches. Not by a long shot.

“There are these quiet moments… and they happen a lot,” said three-star offensive lineman Nick Lewis, who holds offers from Missouri, Iowa State, Colorado State and others. “Some coaches just look at you and it’s weird. You just look back. You’re sitting there looking at each other and nobody talks. That’s the weirdest part probably.”

Recruiting will continue to string along half-truths. Players don’t like taking shots at their potential future homes, and coaches are outlawed from publicly telling their sides of most stories.

Publicly, visits will always be “an 11 on a 1-to-10 scale,” but the truth will almost always exist somewhere in the middle.

“One of my visits, I went to a school and the coach touring me kept saying I'll be stupid if I don't commit,” said Rivals250 athlete Gregory Rousseau. "He actually told me I won't make an impact anywhere else. I didn’t like that very much.”