How to Get Noticed by College Football Programs...(con't)
By Doug Brien

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Strategies for Getting Noticed: The best advice I can offer to any high school specialist is: perform really well in high school and have your coach aggressively market you to college programs. For those of you who have the opportunity to showcase your talents and capitalize on it - you are the lucky ones. For those players that leave high school as relative unknowns, you will need to study this manual and do everything you can to get noticed.

One college recruiting coordinator told me that the good news for kickers, punters and long snappers is that "if you can do it in high school you can do it in college." At other positions there are always questions about whether a player has the speed or size to compete against college athletes. For specialists, you are primarily competing against yourself. It doesn't matter how big or strong you are (except for snappers, for whom this is somewhat important). If you have the ability to perform well in high school you will be able to compete in college because no one will stop you except yourself. The key is for you to perform well in high school and let college coaches know about it!

First, as a kicker, punter or long snapper the odds are not in your favor of receiving a college scholarship. It is even less likely that you will be among the top prized recruits that most college programs will pursue. As a specialist you must stay patient and create a winning recruiting strategy. You need to open your mind to the possibility of walking-on.

The Walk-On Strategy: A college walk-on is a player who has been invited to attend a school and play for a team without an athletic scholarship. This is by far the most common route for most specialists. I was a college walk-on and so were numerous other NFL specialists that I played with. If you believe in your talents, have patience and choose the correct football program, walking-on can be a great strategy.

As a walk-on you will need to prove yourself. Not many specialists get the chance to really prove themselves in high school. This is part of the reason it is so hard for college coaches to recruit high school specialists - they have not seen enough of them to know if they can perform at the college levels. The other reason is that most college coaches do not know much about specialists. Therefore, it is very hard for them to accurately evaluate your talent. College coaches have a limited number of scholarships so they are often hesitant to use one on a specialist. Many of these schools like to accept walk-ons on a yearly basis so they always have a couple of good specialists available to compete for jobs. This way, the best man wins and the coach will offer that kicker, punter or snapper a scholarship after they have earned a starting position.

Even receiving a walk-on invitation for a high school specialist is a huge win. If you have this opportunity you should consider it an honor. Most of you will have to market yourselves to many schools in hopes of one inviting you to try-out for the team.

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