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http://dispatch.com/football/football.php?story=dispatch/2006/01/22/20060122-E4-01.html
Few limits, more work
30 years ago, recruiters faced fewer restrictions on contacting prospects
Sunday, January 22, 2006
Tim May
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
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Day after day, week after week that winter of 1979 in the Cleveland suburb of Parma, Jim Heacock found a seat in the Valley Forge High School gym and kicked back.
At first, that might have seemed strange, considering Heacock was a new member of the Bowling Green football coaching staff. He wasn’t hiding out and slacking off, though.
He was there because Andy Molls was practicing basketball. And where Molls went, Heacock was supposed to go, because Miami University was likewise bird-dogging Molls, a highly regarded defensive back.
Such was major-college football recruiting in the late 1970s.
"There were no contact limits like today on how many times you could see a kid, so we determined Andy Molls was an important enough recruit that we had to see him every day," Heacock said. "Really, you had the feeling that if you weren’t there every day, you were falling behind. That’s just the way it was done back then."
Heacock, 57, is the defensive coordinator at Ohio State now. The contemporary game of recruiting is played by different rules but with the same goal.
"You want to sign the best players you can," Heacock said. "That hasn’t changed at all."
But recruiting isn’t quite the physical grind for coaches that it once was.
For instance, in Division I-A, only seven members of the nine assistant coaches are allowed to be on the road seeing prospects in any given week. And they are permitted just one faceto-face contact per week with a particular recruit.
"The whole process has been speeded so much compared to back then," Heacock said. "Now we’re looking at guys going into their junior years, and we’re offering them most of the time before their senior seasons."
Internet recruiting services now track prospects’ progress. Coaches may not be able to meet a recruit every day, but a few clicks on the computer can tell them what the player might be thinking, and it’s breaking news if one commits to a school. Three decades ago, there might be two or three assistant coaches, maybe even a head coach or two, in a prospect’s home or school on signing day waiting to see who would win the player’s services.
"That was kind of crazy when you think about it, but that’s how the game was played," Heacock said.
One thing that hasn’t changed is the essence of the exercise, which is trying to persuade a 17- or 18-year-old and his parents that your school is the right place for him.
"I’ve always enjoyed that part, because recruiting is the heart of what we do, really," Heacock said. "If you don’t do it, if you don’t get a good player, you’re not going to last very long. So you better do it well."
Even with skill and perseverance, there are no guarantees. Heacock learned that chasing Molls back in ’79.
"Kentucky came in all of a sudden the final week, made him an offer, and that’s where he went," said Heacock, who recalled that Molls went on to be a captain at UK. "I told you he was a hell of a prospect."
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