If you want to earn a collegiate athletic scholarship, you will need to send highlight videos to college coaches. These videos show your skill set both in practice and game settings.

Many players mistakenly believe that college coaches make recruiting decisions mostly based on stats. This is incorrect. Coaches trust their own eyes — they know that stats rarely tell the whole story.

Let’s talk about how you can use video to turn your recruiting process into a rocket ship toward college scholarships (and do it better than everyone else).

Overall Video Strategy

Most players simply take a video or two, send them to college coaches, and hope for the best. Instead, we’re going to show you how to implement a comprehensive video strategy that sets you apart from every other player fighting for the same scholarship that you want.

You’ll want two types of videos:

1. Primary: These are the 2-3 main videos that you send to any schools that you’re interested in. These should be your best videos, and the first ones that you make. In just a second, we’ll show you how to make them yourself with $0 out of pocket.

2. Secondary: After the initial 2-3 videos, you’ll want to continually upload new, fresh video for college coaches. This serves two purposes: follow up with coaches who responded to your initial outreach email, and build up a massive library of video.

The hope is that over time, you have dozens of videos that prove to a college coach that you’re the perfect fit for his team. Think about it…most players send 1 to 3 videos to college coaches per year. If you send 1 new video per week, you’ll have 30 to 60 videos to prove that you’re worthy of college sports. Which player do you think a coach is more likely to offer a scholarship?

Keys to a Successful Video

When putting together a video, you should put yourself in the college coach’s shoes. What kind of video would you want to see from a recruit?

Here’s how to make the perfect recruiting video:

1. Keep the video under 30 seconds

Most players send 2-3 minute highlight videos. This is not optimal. Instead, send shorter videos — and send a lot of them. If it’s absolutely necessary to make a longer video, include a time stamp next to the video that tells the coach where the action happens.

Example: Let’s say you play baseball and you want to send an entire at-bat, not just the hit. Next to the link, put the time that the hit occurs.

Link to YouTube Video (Hit at :1:03)

This allows the coach to skip to the action if he doesn’t want to watch the entire thing. This can be applied to any sport. But it should be noted — 30 second videos are still best when possible.

2. No music or creative editing

The video should be “boring.” Don’t add any music or creative editing to the video. Simply include the raw video. You’ll want to trim the ends of the video that include dead space (where nothing happens) to shorten the video. Other than that, there shouldn’t be any other editing that happens on the video.

3. Unobstructed view

It’s critical that the action in the video is clearly visible. You don’t need to hire someone to take your video, and you don’t need a fancy camera. You can use your phone. Just make sure that there’s no fence or person in the way of play — the coach needs to be able to clearly see what’s going on in the video. Sometimes this means moving around the field, pool, court, etc. to get the best view. You’ll be glad you did.

If you stick to these rules, you’ll make a better recruiting video than 95% of athletes. And that doesn’t include athletes who aren’t sending any video at all!

How to Make High-Quality Videos Yourself for $0

Some people pay hundreds of dollars to have recruiting videos made for them. If you’re rolling in dough, feel free to do this…but it’s unnecessary. You can make the videos yourself, and not lose out on quality or effectiveness.

Here’s how to make the videos yourself:

1. Use your phone to record game or practice video. Walk to different parts of the arena, field, court, etc. to get the best view. Remember, the view should be unobstructed, and you should be close enough that the coach can clearly see what’s going on in the video.

2. Edit this video on your phone. Open your photos app, and use the in-phone editor to trim the video to only show the best parts (this is what you’ll end up sending to coaches). If there are two parts that you like, separated by one part that you don’t like, simply trim the video into two separate videos. This is easier than trying to remove the middle section that you don’t like.

3. Take your newly edited video and upload it to YouTube (more on optimizing your YouTube channel below). You can create an account on YouTube for free, and it’s the easiest way to send videos to coaches.

4. Add a title and description to the video. Don’t overthink these. The title can be something like: Name / Game (team 1 vs. team 2) / Date. For the description, add some way for the coach to contact the athlete (like an email address). You should also add the social media handles for the athlete.

Get the Most Out of Your YouTube Channel

The basic idea of the YouTube channel is two-fold: host all of your videos in one place, and make it very easy to share your videos with college coaches. When you run your YouTube channel like this, you build a single location where coaches can watch dozens of your videos and get a good idea of the type of player that you are.

To drive more interest from college coaches, do these things:

1. Use playlists

Organize your videos into playlists. If you play football and you’re a QB, you might have the playlists “Passing,” “Running,” and “Weightlifting.” You can also split video up into “Game Video” and “Practice Video.” Depending on your sport, you may have more or less playlists than this. Organizing your videos into playlists help the coaches find exactly what they’re looking for. They’re also more likely to watch more videos, which is beneficial to you.

2. Set up your about page

Add some personal (not too personal) information to your “About” page. Things like your height and weight, any relevant stats, and a way for coaches to contact you. You should also include your social media handles so coaches can find you there as well.

3. Add timestamps to your descriptions

Remember how we talked about adding time-stamps next to your video links in emails to college coaches? Do the same thing in your description. This makes the coach’s life easier.

Biggest Mistakes Athletes Make with Video

Here are the most common mistakes athletes make with video. Some of this will be review from above, but nonetheless, it’s good to review since this can negatively impact the amount of interest you get from college coaches.

1. Sending long videos: the longer the video, the less likely a coach is to watch it. Keep your videos short.

2. Difficult viewing: some athletes will send video in files which can make it difficult for coaches to watch. This can easily be avoided by using YouTube links.

3. Obstructed view: it is critical that the content of the video is clearly visible at all times. If a coach can’t see what’s going on, the video is useless.

4. Not taking enough video: so many players only make a few recruiting videos. Just remember, the more videos you have on your YouTube channel, the more interest you’re likely to get from college coaches. We have an entire strategy for creating more video and following up with coaches that we’ll publish soon. Stay tuned for that — it’s a game changer.

Frequently Asked Questions

These are the most common questions we get about video.

Should I send game video or practice video?

Send both. You want a good mix of game video and practice video. With practice video, you get to dictate exactly what the coach sees and how he sees it. But game video is also valuable for college coaches because it’s not as easily manipulated. Don’t choose one or the other — send both.

Do I need to take new video every week?

We guess you don’t have to, but it really comes down to how badly you want it. The more video you record and upload, the smoother your recruiting process will go and the more options you’ll have to choose from. At the very least, you should take and upload new video every couple weeks.

Should I make one longer video and a bunch of shorter videos?

We recommend keeping all of your videos on the shorter side. If you’re going to upload a longer video, make sure you include a time stamp to show where the action in the video occurs. We also recommend double-checking to make sure that there’s no dead space (where nothing happens) that you can remove to make the video shorter.

Should I create my own personal website for all my videos and information?

This works, but it’s unnecessary. It takes a lot of time to build a good website, and that time is better spent making more videos and sending more emails. Coaches are familiar with YouTube, so they’ll navigate through your videos quicker (meaning they’ll watch more of them). The simpler the solution, the better.

Video is the most important part of your recruiting process. Coaches observe stats, but rely on video. They trust what they see with their eyes — and stats never tell the whole story.

If you have any specific questions about video that aren’t directly answered here, shoot us an email: [email protected]