Summer football camps vital to college recruiting

As foreboding clouds hung overhead, a line of eager football prospects lined up outside Foreman Field on Old Dominion’s campus.

As each registered for the Monarchs’ one-day camp earlier this month, ODU quarterbacks coach and recruiting coordinator Ron Whitcomb went down the line, making introductions, shaking hands and occasionally glancing skyward to see if the rain would hold off — as if it mattered.

“Rain or shine,” he said. “Here’s a fact: Half our games are played in rain.”

On this day, with 100 campers in attendance, maybe 25 of them legit prospects, they’d luck out. The rain that pounded the area the previous night held off.

As Whitcomb gathered the players at midfield, he left them with one message for the day: “Let’s work. Let’s work. Let’s work.”

And with that, the campers dispersed to different parts of the field for the next 3 ½ hours for drills, instruction and evaluation, all part of a camp scene being replayed on just about every campus across the country in the summer months.

The camps have become a vital element on the recruiting calendar, a time when coaches can get a first-hand look at prospective recruits and players can expose themselves to a number of different coaching staffs with relative ease and minimal cost.

“I think it’s mutually beneficial for everyone involved,” Virginia Tech tight ends coach and recruiting coordinator Bryan Stinespring said.

Whereas team or multi-day camps are more involved — and tough to schedule around competing 7-on-7 events or things like the ACT (which many Norfolk-area high schoolers were taking the day of ODU’s first camp) — the one-day camps that have become so prevalent are quick-hitting events.

Usually costing anywhere from $30 to $60, they’re open to rising ninth- through 12th-graders and consist of a few hours of non-contact, on-field work, allowing potential recruits to pop in, work out and move on to another school’s camp the next day if they time their trips right.

Many schools will allow coaches from programs they aren’t competing with for recruits to attend as well, broadening the exposure these camps provide athletes.

“My philosophy is that camps are for all the kids,” Old Dominion coach Bobby Wilder said. “So as many eyes that can be on them and find them a school, that’s OK.”

A first-hand look

That’s not to say putting on these camps is a selfless act. Football coaches are always trolling for prospects. Getting them to work out in front of you, particularly in today’s recruiting environment that limits in-person contact off campus, is huge.

“You really can’t have many mistakes in your recruiting classes,” said James Madison coach Mickey Matthews, who estimated that 75 percent of the players he signs will have attended one of the Dukes’ camps.

Game tape supplied by high school coaches or the players themselves can be deceiving. Bigger kids can dominate smaller ones. Bigger schools can, too. The bad plays can be edited out. Seeing players compete in camps levels the playing field.

“It’s for those kids that you think maybe are good enough but you’re not quite sure,” Virginia Tech offensive line coach Jeff Grimes said.

While every camp will run prospects through the regular workouts — the 40, shuttle drills, agility tests, all recorded by the watchful eye of well-placed video cameras — it’s the one-on-ones that really pique the coaches’ interest.

Stinespring said coaches look for a player’s “competitive ire” in those one-on-one drills, which generally involve a receiver running routes against a defensive back or a defensive lineman trying to beat an offensive lineman and get to the backfield.

“We look for little things too,” Wilder said. “Let’s say two guys are the best players. Are they looking for each other in line to go against each other? We’re trying to see if kids are wanting the competition.”

The value of the camps is more than just the on-field work, however. For coaches, there’s great value in getting players on their campus, a recruiting tool made more important by the fact that the NCAA doesn’t allow official, paid visits until the fall of a recruit’s senior season.

“Recruiting doesn’t go all the way to February signing day anymore for most kids,” said Oscar Smith High coach Rich Morgan. “Most kids are making their decisions well in advance. … It is replacing some visits, because kids get to see a campus, work out for the coaches, and a lot of times they get an offer.”

Some players don’t even attend the camp to work out. Torrez Wentz, a 6-foot-2, 280-pound defensive tackle from Warrenton, Ga., who is high on ODU’s list, went to Monarchs camp earlier this month just to meet the coaches and see the campus for the first time.

His coach at Warren County High, Cherard Freeman, and an assistant even made the seven-hour drive up with Wentz, taking a tour of the facilities while ODU’s camp was taking place.

“I think it was nice of him to come up here to see it not during football season, not when a lot of pressure is on him,” Freeman said. “He’s just up here now just being able to be a kid and just look around.”

JMU has added a wrinkle of its own: It takes four of its nine one-day camps to the recruits.

Knowing how isolated Harrisonburg is within the state and understanding the difficulties some recruits have in traveling great distances to get there, Matthews has held satellite camps in big population areas like Hampton Roads, Richmond and Northern Virginia the past three years, with great success.

NCAA rules only require the camps to take place within the state’s borders. Matthews got the idea from Texas schools, which move their camps around to account for that state’s vast size.

“I think you’ve got to go where all the people live,” Matthews said. “There are some prospects out on the Western part of the state, but there’s a lot more on the Eastern part of the state just because there are more people out there. It’s just a numbers game. … You’ve got to be able to read a map.”

A chance to shine

For recruits, camps provide a chance to be seen. With assistant coaches doing much of the grunt work on the field, it’s an opportunity to make an impression.

Camps are littered with out-of-nowhere success stories. The Monarchs’ No. 2 receiver last year, Antonio Vaughan, camped at ODU several years ago. Wilder remembered working out the high school quarterback at receiver and defensive back.

“He blows us away,” Wilder said. “And I end up offering him a scholarship that day at the camp. Now he goes back to his high school that year and plays quarterback. So nobody sees it. You watch him play quarterback and they’re running a little dive option, read option, throwing the ball occasionally. And if you’re just looking at the video, you’re saying, ‘This kid’s not a quarterback.’ But we got to see him in person.”

It happens everywhere. Danny Coale was a two-star recruit with few offers several years ago when he showed up for a one-day camp at Virginia Tech and made a big impression on the coaches, shooting up their board. He would go on to finish his Hokies career second in receptions and yards.

Matthews remembered an all-timer back when he was an assistant at Marshall. In 1995, a lightly recruited quarterback from Knoxville, Tenn., with two small-school offers was visiting his grandmother in West Virginia and decided to pop over to one of the Thundering Herd’s day camps.

The kid, Chad Pennington, went on to star at Marshall and then become the first-round NFL draft pick of the Jets.

Recruits know there’s some salesmanship involved. They’ll do most anything to get noticed, even randomly chatting up an onlooker wearing a press badge at ODU’s camp.

“When you’re those guys that are those hard-working guys that aren’t 6-5, you’ve got to come out and show them your arm, just impress them from your appearance basically,” said Ryan McFarlin, a 6-foot-1, 195-pound quarterback from Jacksonville Fla.

McFarlin, like many of the event’s attendees, lined up his summer with camps, wading through the avalanche of brochures he’s been mailed to find places that seriously are considering him.

By the time he arrived at ODU’s camp, he already had hit Samford and Middle Tennessee. Liberty was on this trip, too. The following weekend was Coastal Carolina and Furman, with UAB, Troy, Florida International and South Florida on the docket as well.

He’s not alone. Parents and their kids make weekend-long trips on the camp circuit. Russ and Dyan Caso, from Alpharetta, Ga., drove up to ODU for the camp earlier this month with their son, Trey, a 6-6 offensive/defensive lineman from Blessed Trinity. Along with ODU, they planned to see Georgia and Central Florida on that trip, with James Madison, Richmond and Temple on another down the line.

“You’ve got to go out and kind of do it on your own,” said Russ Caso, a Temple tight end in the early ’90s, when recruiting wasn’t nearly as accelerated as it is now.

“You don’t want to kill motivation for kids. If the kids are motivated and they’re doing it themselves, they’re doing their own homework, you’ve got to give them the tools and the resources to see it through.”

The costs, in the grander picture, are negligible. The $30 to $60 most schools charge usually goes back into football operations or, in JMU’s case with satellite camps, to break even on the cost of renting facilities and transporting equipment.

Players think it’s worth it. Jaquan McCullough, a go-getting 6-1, 180-pound receiver from Rochester, N.Y., was eager to go on the camp circuit this summer, hoping to get noticed by a school and snag a scholarship.

He plans to hit six or seven in the next month up and down the coast. But mounting travel costs were the furthest thing from his mind.

“I feel like it’s worth it, man,” McCullough said. “I feel like me spending no more than $5,000 altogether to go to all these camps is well worth $240,000 for tuition and a degree.”

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