Recruiting is the lifeblood of every good program, regardless of what division we're talking about. One of the realities of recruiting is that some places are harder to sell than others, and that tends to be more and more evident with coaches that have a few stops on their coaching journey. Some coaches can sell sunshine and the beach, some can sell tradition or the league they compete in, and others have to get a little more creative with their pitch.
Kelvin Bell, the assistant defensive line coach and recruiting coordinator at Iowa, answered some questions recently about the challenges of recruiting future Hawkeyes, the type of kids they're going after and they're recruiting philosophy, and also and shared some interesting perspective on modern-day recruiting and how scholarship offers are viewed by student-athletes today.
"Kids have no idea what an offer means. They have no idea what an offer means. I showed those guys an NLI - a National Letter of Intent - and asked those kids, 'Have you ever seen this before?'" Bell asked, with Hawk Central there to capture it on video.
Bell explained that the kids responded that they hadn't before going on to tell them, "This never gets tweeted out, because when this is in front of you, that's when it's real. All the offers and things of that nature, the really nice graphics you'll get on August 1st when we're able to make official offers, doesn't mean anything until you get an official letter of intent in front of you. You only get one. You can have a dozen offers, but you'll only get one National Letter of Intent and you sign with one school."
Then coach Bell explains why he doesn't believe kids should be tweeting those "blessed to receive an offer from..." messages that fill people's timelines.
"If a kid visits here and he has a genuine interest, I have no problem extending an offer. But if a kid just wants to be recruited, nah, I'm not going to appease you. I don't want you tweet out what you're 'blessed to receive,' if you have no intention of coming here.
"You have no idea of what I'm trying to offer you if that's your motive."
See more from coach Bell in the clip.