ESPN's Ivan Maisel give his Ten Commandments For Recruiting, and touches on coaches doing their own evaluations of players. This in a time when more coaches are beginning to use outside services for film scouting and even evaluation.

Butch Davis touched on player evaluations, and even offered a warning about players coming from the State of Texas:

Davis said the facilities that the player has available to him in high school can lay a trap for a recruiter.

 

"You may be buying the finished product," Davis said. "There's a little bit of that in Texas. Those schools have got more money than God. They have a strength coach, 15 high school coaches. The players have been in the same program since sixth or seventh grade. You get them and four years later they are the exact same player.

 

"You go to Pahokee, Fla., where a kid eats once a day, his parents may not be around," Davis said. "You get him in a weightlifting program. Two years later, he's three times better than the kid from Texas."

With all respect to Coach Davis, who I am a big fan of, I think he oversimplifies matters here. I agree that at some programs, a very small few, the resources as far as coaches and the strength and conditioning program may help a high school player reach his physical ceiling faster. However, for every Katy or Southlake Carroll or Highland Park, there are ten schools like Carter or Kimball or Houston Yates. Since colleges recruit heavily in inner-city areas because population density and poverty tend to go together to produce elite athletes, you're more likely to end up with a kid who hasn't been fully developed than you are with a kid who has hit his ceiling. In any case, if Davis is actually concerned about this, maybe he should stop recruiting in Texas, and stick to building his program with kids from North Carolina. I'm sure the coaching staffs at A&M, texas, Baylor, Tech, etc. won't complain about his absence. (It is worth noting that of the 29 commits Carolina currently boasts in their recruiting class, only one is from Texas, and he is a juco transfer from Blinn  College.)

I think it is interesting that Davis doesn't mention the programs who basically redshirt high school players, like Evangel Christian in Louisiana, keeping them back an extra year so they will be bigger and stronger their senior season. Many of the stud recruits who came out of Evangel as 19 year old seniors failed to distinguish themselves at the college level, I think in part because they don't adjust to the step-up in the level of competition. They are too accustomed to beating up on players who are weaker and physically less mature than they are.I am happy A&M has never brought in any of those kids from Evangel.   

My main issue in talent evaluation when it comes to recruiting is just to make sure every kid you recruit is an athlete who has some speed. I think checking track meet results to see what football players are two sport athletes is a good start. Recruits who run track have gone through speed training, so despite the lack of a strength and conditioning program like one the wealthier schools Davis mentioned may have, they are at least receiving some training on their core that will help them later on in college.  You can also get a better idea of their true running times, since many recruiting sites tend to embellish the 40 time of certain players. When it comes to offensive and defensive linemen, you can also look at the recruits who participate in field events like the discus and shotput, because those are guys who will have a solid base to move off of, as well as showing some athleticism.

I also think coaches should look at quarterbacks, running backs, and wide receivers at the high school level, because many high school coaches put their best athletes in those positions. While they can succeed at those postions in high school, in order to get a shot at continuing to play in college, many are willing to move to another position. The athlete who rushed for thousands of yards as a RB or QB in an option offense can be your next elite LB or DE at the college level.

I think if you focus on getting athletes with speed first and foremost in recruiting, you really can't go wrong, because you will always have some raw material with which to build your team with.