It does it in real time, so all the coaches see it immediately.
“I could be watching a prospect practice, and I could input the information right there on the field,” McClure said. The post-evaluation workload is also trimmed considerably because coaches now have the ability to watch a game or practice and make notes on handheld wireless devices. “If I take those out of the equation, I’m spending more time on the needs of our coaches.” “The biggest challenge in recruiting is making sure you have the transcripts, keeping it organized, and building a video library,” McClure said. Now, when a recruit’s highlight DVD arrives, it is transferred to a server, and immediately available for everyone to see. Coaches had to check it out to view it, and return it before another coach was able to do the same. It used to be UCLA received a highlight tape of a prospective player, and placed it in a library in the football office. The use of video, for evaluating recruits, is another offshoot of the technology. “You’re cutting down on the communication issues,” McClure said. In the end, the coaching staff didn’t get word to Price and his family about missing paperwork because they didn’t know an issue existed. One of the problems in the Price issue, according to several of UCLA’s coaches, was a lack of communication between compliance, admissions and the football offices. “So what we did special for UCLA was we wrote a program that joined those three different offices together into one database so everyone could see what each other was doing.” They had their own separate system for doing things. “There’s two islands of information we connected together, and then the third island is the guys that have to play watchdog on everything, which is the compliance department. “Before we walked in there, admissions had their own database that allowed them to do what they had to do, but it was disconnected from the database that housed all the kids’ information that the coaches were using over in the recruiting office. “Before a coach can go out and recruit a kid, specifically at UCLA, there are certain admission standards that a kid has to be able to adhere to,” Kennedy said. The company’s founder and CEO, Steve Kennedy, said, UCLA’s is one of six Pacific-10 Conference teams (California, Washington, Oregon, Arizona and Washington State are the others) to use Blue Chip Solutions, but UCLA’s system was designed differently because of the school’s, to putit nicely, unique administrative structure. The goal is to make the recruiting process paperless, while removing communication problems thatcrop up, which is especially relevant at UCLA. We’re tracking this very, very carefully.” “Let them know, hey, this isn’t a cold-call atmosphere. We can look at the different games that have been played, and talk to them about their game against Wilson High, or whatever it is, and let a young man know we really are paying attention. “It streamlines the process, but most importantly, it gets the information to the coaches so that they can make that (recruiting) phone call that much more important,” Neuheisel said. The system, put together by Atlanta-based Blue Chip Solutions, allows coaches to find information about prospective recruits by name, or position, or grades, or prospect rank, or whether offered a scholarship, or committed, or any category someone can dream up. With the click of a mouse, or the scroll of a thumb, UCLA’s staff will have everything they need to know about a recruit at their fingertips, providing they have internet access. UCLA does not play this weekend, so the staff, led by head coach Rick Neuheisel, will be recruiting Friday, visiting high schools in several states, and putting to use the football recruiting program’s streamlined recruiting system.Īnd, at least in theory, the result should be more efficient, and better, recruiting. “That’s what I’ll say, so no one gets mad.” “I think this system would have helped that,” said UCLA’s director of recruiting, Angus McClure, who was the tight ends coach last season. If the hi-tech recruiting tracking equipment UCLA implemented in April was in place during the Price debacle, the belief is the Price debacle would not have occurred. Price missed three games, and irreplaceable practice time, because the NCAA clearinghouse didn’t have proper documentation to certify his eligibility until well into the season. Defensive tackle Brian Price, UCLA’s top recruit, watched days waste away without being able to set foot on the practice field because the proper paperwork wasn’t filed with the NCAA. The saga played out for weeks last season.
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