Topics to Research on Sports Recruiting
While recruiting a kid to play on your elementary school sports team may be a simple conversation, sports recruiting at the college and professional levels are more involved. There are a few topics you can use to start your research whether you are an aspiring sports reporter or simply a fan who wants to learn more about how players end up on the teams they do.
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College Recruitment Services
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College athletic programs can be a source of athletic scholarships to help student athletes pay for college and a way for talented high school athletes to prepare themselves for professional-level sports. Consequently, the high school athlete who wants to follow this route wants to be recruited by a top ranked NCAA program. One topic you can research is the way in which high school students make use of sports marketing agencies, such as College Prospects of America or NCSA to catch the eye of college coaches. Your research can address questions such as how effective these programs are in getting athletes recruited, and if talented athletes still get recruited by top colleges without these services.
NCAA Regulatory Compliance
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The process of recruiting high school athletes to play college athletics is not an unregulated free for all. The NCAA lays down strict regulations about when college coaches and officials can contact high school athletes and what these officials can give these students as part of the recruiting process. This prompts another research topic: how often are these rules broken? Your research on this topic can include questioning if more prestigious schools break rules more often than less prestigious ones (or vice versa), and if the caliber of the school's program plays any role in the penalties (if any) the offending school receives from the NCAA.
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Social Networking and College Recruitment
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Social networking platforms on the Internet changed many aspects of socialization and online sharing. Another topic for research on sports recruiting is if social networking platforms have had an effect on the way colleges recruit. Do top programs gather information about prospects from these platforms? Do they use it as a mode of communication with individuals in whom they are interested? Do players use social networking platforms to get noticed by colleges? All these questions can guide this research topic.
Player Role in Professional Athletic Recruitment
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In professional sports, headlines about teams recruiting players to sign contracts with them often focus on financial negotiations. However, is there a more personal aspect to this process? For example, in 2010 Newsday.com reported that quarterback Brett Favre was personally involved in recruiting the running back LaDainian Tomlinson for the Minnesota Vikings football team. According to the report, these efforts involved direct calls between the quarterback and the runningback. One topic for sports recruiting would be to look into how often recruitment efforts involve this kind of personal contact between players.
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References
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