Football Camps: If You Want to Play in College You Have to Go!
I just finished reading an excellent article by Andy Staples about the two players from Australia playing in the upcoming national championship game on January 9 (Brad Wing and Jesse Williams). As college football coaches look for the edge in recruiting, they are beginning to recruit more and more from outside of the US.
Did You Know There Are 10 International Players Currently on Top 10 Teams in College Football?
The real focus of the article was on LSU redshirt freshman punter Brad Wing. He has been by far and away the best punter in college football and maybe even the NFL this year. Of all of his amazing stats, the one that stands out the most is that in 50 punts, he has allowed six return yards. That’s six total—any special teams coach would be happy with that on any given kick, never mind after 50 punts!
You would expect that being such a dynamic talent, Wing would have been heavily recruited coming out of high school (he played his senior year of high school in the US), but he wasn’t. There is one really interesting couple of sentences aspiring college football players should take from the article:
Because Wing did not spend years on the football camps circuit, he remained a secret outside Louisiana. Northwestern State and McNeese State were the only other schools to offer scholarships.
That means Wing received only three scholarship offers and only one offer (LSU) at the NCAA Division 1A level. You might say, “Well, he’s only a punter. I play safety, quarterback, or whatever.” But the facts are college coaches know how important a dominate punter can be (just ask Nick Sabin after their loss to LSU in their first meeting); and no matter how good you are, if you don’t get out to camps or, at the very least, contact coaches, you will fly under the radar.
Trust me, if more coaches had known about a punter down in Louisiana who could kick the ball from the back of his own end zone to the other 25 or land three out of 10 kicks into a trash can 55 yards away (both things Wing has done), then you can bet he would have received more than 10 athletic scholarship offers. If you are not getting out to camps, e-mailing, calling, or sending coaches your video and resume, you are not going to be found.
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