Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Existential recruiting

I've often wondered if BC's current coaches understand how to sell the school. Maybe I've been missing the point and their efforts. Instead of "selling the school" it looks like they are turning the tables on recruits and asking them challenging questions. In a world full of slicksters how often are these guys being asked about life beyond football and why are they here. Read BC target Faith Ekakitie's blog on Sean Devine's recruiting:
I’ve come to develop a pretty close and healthy relationship with many of the coaches from Boston College, especially Coach Devine (offensive line coach) and coach Comissiong (defensive line). At first I’ll have to admit i was a bit skeptical about BC because coach Devine approached and just started throwing question after question after question at me during our first phone calls. Some of his questions made me stop and think (actually all of his questions made me think), “what in the world does this question have to do with football?”


In fact, one of his most memorable questions to me was “If you could talk to any member of your family who has passed away already, who would it be and what would you talk about?” If you want to know the answer to that question, you can email/call/text me personally and I would be happy to tell you. But you could imagine what was going through my head at this point whenever BC got brought up in conversation.



Will this work? I don't know but at least it is something different.

6 comments:

mod34b said...
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BCDoubleEagle said...

I'm glad to see the staff is going beyond 40 yard dash times and film clips to find out what these guys are like before my donations subsidize their $250,000 education. More to the point, the guys who respond well to this kind of recruiting are more likely to be the kind of "BC guys" who fit in at an intellectually rigorous Jesuit institution where you can't major in food service or crop dusting. When you think about some of our most successful and high-profile recent athletes -- Castonzo, Kuechly, Matt Ryan, even Jared Dudley on the hoops side -- you'll see a common theme. They're generally known as smart guys, in addition to being gifted athletes.

Jeff said...

Wow... I mean, asking about plans beyond football is one thing. That question was... a bit out there! Guess they're just trying to get to know these kids. Not sure I would have ever come up with a question like that.

mod34b said...
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eagle1331 said...

The twitter account @fakebaldwin posed a pretty good question though... is it tampering with a recruit for someone to comment on that story promoting him coming to BC? I remember a few years back a school got a secondary violation because a top recruit was playing a HS game and some kids from the school held up a "Come to (forget the name of the school), (forget the recruit's name)" in the stands...

D-Murph said...

If anything, this type of recruiting questioning will make the kid remember BC, whether it be good or bad.