National Scouting Report is dedicated to finding scholarship opportunities for athletes who possess the talent, desire, and motivation to compete at the collegiate level. We’ve helped connect thousands of athletes with their perfect college.
If you are ready to take your recruiting to the next level, click the Get Scouted button below to be evaluated by an NSR College Scout.
Get Scouted Scouting CareersThe tremendous growth of club and travel events has made identifying prospects much easier for college coaches. Prospects put on display every weekend can be cherry picking for coaches roaming from tournament to showcase to combine. But there is a catch.
Coaches go to events to scout athletes they already know about.
As National Scouting Report on-the-ground scouts, we are tuned into what coaches are doing and how they do it because we go where they go and we scout the same prospects.
Competition among college coaches has always been fierce. But the current recruiting environment allows college programs, when they see their chances improving of landing one recruit over another, to turn their heads away from other athletes who are equally qualified. It is the new nature of recruiting.
That puts prospects at a distinct disadvantage. Yes, there are more coaches out there recruiting. However, one small slip in skill, attitude or other key trait can doom a prospect’s opportunities to be followed, recruited and offered.
The 5 Bad Habits That Turn Off College Coaches
Here are five characteristics college coaches will not tolerate from prospects:
- Disrespect: Regardless of how manifested, when a young athlete shows even the slightest degree of disrespect, they are toast with coaches. Look in another direction while getting instructions from a coach? Treat family members badly? Finished. Argue with a game official? Take a hike. Pick one or any number of other rude acts? You are history.
- Temper: Toss a bat, argue with a teammate, ignore a coach’s instructions or yell like a banshee, and you will be crossed off the list. Coaches see bad tempers as long-term fixes and they do not have the time to be psychologists for the uncontrollable head case.
- Lack of Promptness: When coaches see young athletes are habitually tardy, they begin to doubt whether they will be able to manage their own time in college. If a youngster cannot be on time with adult supervision, a coach has to assume there is no chance that he or she will turn a new leaf when left on their own.
- Laziness: So-called game players are of no use to college coaches. There are too many issues coaches already have to cope with to add a lazy player to the list. If you plan to be a college athlete, you have to prove it every time you step onto the court, diamond, pitch or field. Too many hard workers are available for coaches to spend a minute considering the rehabilitation of a lazy one.
- Selfishness: Success in college has everything to do with teamwork. A selfish athlete sticks out like a zombie on steroids. They want nothing to do with them.
National Scouting Report is dedicated to finding scholarship opportunities for athletes who possess the talent, desire, and motivation to compete at the collegiate level. We’ve helped connect thousands of athletes with their perfect college.
Really!! Because some of the players I see are ALL of the above. However good info from the horses mouth! To pass on to the this is tge path I want kids!
Yeah that sounds good on the surface, however I see all of the above in alot of college athletes. Therefore I disagree totally with the concepts mentioned above. In fact, many college coaches overlooks their principles to get players so they can compete.
Chris, the reason you see this in some athletes is because they understand these principles, and can pretend long enough to get the scholarship they are after. I would imagine a lot of your co-workers work a little harder when the boss is in the building, if you know what I mean. As a coach, I can tell you, players button up in front of who they want to impress. The real challenge for coaches is to be able to see through those tricks. As the writer stated – if a coach is able to see ANY of these behaviors prior to him arriving on campus…they have no shot!
Seriously, I learned in seventh grade that words like always, never, and in your case “ANY of these behaviors and you have NO SHOT”, rarely have a place in something so subjective. Why did Dennis Rodman have such a long and profitable career?!?
Bad attitude, bad grades, disrespectful, 4.2 40 speed, 42″ vertical, 6’5″ height, bench press 55 reps with 225lbs equals a 4 year scholarship to a D1 school. Only the slightly above average and mediocre kids have to follow those rules.
Yes . . . I know that all to well with some of the young players I have coached and challenged to get better! Obviously the are great athletes but many of the need attitude adjustments!
Those days are gone. You hit .300 you are on the field. You can do all of those, get arrested, and you name it and you are on the field. Nieve to think there is Character in College Athletics anymore. Salaries grew and once it’s about WINNING=Money , the Character thing is no longer remotely important, unless you are fighting for a spot, then sure, it comes into the picture but if the kid you’re fighting against is batting .300+, guess what, you are screwed. Softball is loaded with 1 dimensial players now at the NCAA level. Game is very diluted. tons of 3-4 tool players sitting because kid infront of them that can’t run, can’t throw, can’t field, and doesn’t have an arm can hit .300. Ironically, when it comes to crunch time in a conference championship and nobody is hitting .300 anymore, it’s the error in the field that loses the game. Coaches are tooling their teams with kids with bats, which may get you lots of wins, but if you can’t play defense, you’ll never win anything meaningful.
Sad to see this when it happens. And sometimes kids get too big for their britches when they have a taste of success. Doesn’t make the behavior right. This article is to help the up and coming athletes behave in a way that is NOT like what you described. The type of players college coaches are recruiting is changing! Keep in mind there are more kids competing for roster spots at the Mid major D1, D2, D3, NAIA schools and JUCO combined than the power 5 conferences. Hopefully this message will reach a few of them.
Great article but wow! Is there a way to share this without all the negative comments? Seriously, I believe this article was meant to be shared to a high schooler in hopes that the current “entitlement” culture can be reversed. Thank you Alan Parham for some great words of wisdom I would like to share with my players… only if I could delete the comments.
Great article!!! My son is a 7th grader. I’m a firm believer that morals, values and upbringing goes on and off the field… I always tell my son, as I was told, your attitude can take you along way. Kids these days are disrespectful. I saw over the weekend, a 10U player, raise up at his Coach… In my days, the Coach would have jacked him up. I was amazed that the parent didn’t run to the field to beat his butt.. It starts at home.
Yes ma’am! It sure does. And unfortunately for the ones who are already in college and in pros, they didn’t have this type of guidance. And I certainly wouldn’t use them as my child’s role model. This article is for the up and coming athletes.
Some of you guys need to look at the title. 5 habits that CAN turn off college coaches! This means sometimes this can turn off college coaches. READ THE TITLE!