NEWS & UPDATES

January 16, 2012 In News By Wes Hartline

There is no off-season: a study on recruiting

As we enter 2012, fans around the world are cap­ti­vated by a stag­ger­ing num­ber of live sports. Between the NBA (abbre­vi­ated sea­son) and col­lege bas­ket­ball, the NHL, soc­cer matches around the world and prepa­ra­tions for the 2012 Olympics in Lon­don, we are all watch­ing. In Octo­ber, the Car­di­nals won one of the great­est World Series’ in recent his­tory and just last week the Uni­ver­sity of Alabama won its sec­ond BCS cham­pi­onship in three years.

With all of this, it is under­stand­able how ingrained “sport” has become our lives. I can­not recall a Thanks­giv­ing where the TV hasn’t been tuned to a Detroit Lions or Dal­las Cow­boys game dur­ing the day. Christ­mas Day may begin with a parade, but the NBA nearly always sched­ules an incred­i­ble evening matchup for view­ers rev­el­ing in the events of the hol­i­days. Some would argue that the Col­lege Foot­ball bowl sea­son is the most enjoy­able part of the hol­i­days, end­ing abruptly with the BCS National Cham­pi­onship but fol­lowed closely by the NFL Play­offs, cul­mi­nat­ing with the Super Bowl only weeks later. And just around the cor­ner? March Mad­ness and “…a tra­di­tion unlike any other,” The Masters.

Being a sports fan in the tech-age means con­stant com­pe­ti­tion, but that doesn’t nec­es­sar­ily mean on the court or on the field. Con­sider that for five months each year NCAA foot­ball teams bat­tle to posi­tion­ing them­selves for the BCS National Cham­pi­onship; yet they spend twelve months a year bat­tling for recruits for next sea­son, and the next sea­son, and so on.

Recruit­ing is crit­i­cal to col­le­giate ath­let­ics. Con­sider other revenue-producing sports around the world; none allow the teams to entice com­mit­ments quite like col­le­giate ath­let­ics. So how can uni­ver­si­ties set them­selves apart for the student-athletes they are attempt­ing to recruit? How can your alma mater develop the best programs?

Think about it in terms of NCAA Basketball. Recruiting isn’t easy. If it were, we would rarely see repeat national cham­pi­ons. We would never see mul­ti­ple dynasty-programs like UCLA, UNC, Ken­tucky, Duke, Michi­gan State, UConn, etc. The list goes on. Occa­sion­ally we wit­ness a new uni­ver­sity break into the ranks of poten­tial dynasty, but those moments are few and they feel even fur­ther apart than ever before.

At Advent, we believe the keys to a suc­cess­ful pro­gram are the following:

–Alumni

–Fans

–Donors

–Recruits

If/when a uni­ver­sity can engage all four of these groups, the pos­si­bil­i­ties are incred­i­ble. We will spend the first few weeks of 2012 dis­cussing each of these cat­e­gories at length. We hope you will enjoy, and hope­fully dis­cover some­thing meaningful.

Authored By Wes Hartline

Director of Marketing and Video Production