Am I overdoing this?

Amen ... I had a parent call me a couple months ago wanting us to do a story on his kid going to play football at a D-II school. Kid's a great student, blah blah. We've got 30 high schools in our coverage area -- 26 play football. There are so many of our kids playing college football, I wouldn't even want to guess at the number. It's high. We have lots of kids at all levels. This kid didn't make our all-area team (first or second). I tell him we'll include the kid in our roundup of college signings. Fast-forward to this week. Same guy calls. Tells me he's the SID from the school. I didn't recognize him at first, but as he starts telling me about the kid (again) it starts to ring a bell. Plus it's obvious fairly quickly that he's no SID. I look at the caller ID on my phone ... the call is coming from a local number. The school the kid is going to is in another state. I explain to the "SID" that we included him in a roundup several months ago. And dad is thwarted once again.

 

nice work newbie. but dad will be back for a return engagement.

bad things/douchebags always come in threes.

 

Non-scholarship kids work just as hard as the scholarship kids...

 

A lot of it depends on the size of the paper. We're an 8.2K biweekly with six high schools to cover. We write about every scholarship signing. We've had 21 kids sign in the last 12 months, 1 DI football, 1 1AA football, 3 DII football, baseball, basketball and 16 JC/CC (several sports). Also had a kid commit to an SEC school last week and had to do a story on it, because he's the first SEC football commit from the school in about a decade.

 

I only wish D-III football schools gave scholarships.

 

Would kinda defeat the purpose of Division III.

 

I always specify what level the school is and if the kid will be on scholarship or not. I don't differentiate full or partial scholarship. If the coach gives them money to play, the scholarship intent is there.

I also make sure to clarify "signed a National Letter of Intent" versus everything else. I don't write about kids who plan to play or walk on in non-NLI situations until they matriculate and appear on a roster released by the school. I've been burned on that one before.

Too many readers don't know the difference between "recruited" and "signed" and "plans to walk on". There is also a lot of ignorance about "invited by the coach to walk on" - they don't realize walk-ons don't have all the privileges of scholarship players.

There is no harm in spelling out the differences and/or waiting for an official roster to be released.

 

Tim Stevens in Charlotte did a nice take on the college scholarship situation in Sunday's paper, looks like:

http://www.newsobserver.com/sports/story/598344.html