I'm not really talking criminal checks but that certainly is important. More so, how do coaches really find out if a recruit is who appears to be? I know they ask the us coaches, the recruit will come for a weekend and be around many members of the team and that may give them a good idea. But, not much Money to doll out what are some of the other ways coaches can find out about potential kids?
Race results?
When you get the transcript and you see the classes, both already taken and current, you get the names of the teachers and you call the school for a reference check. Easy as pie. It's always a plus when the parents come along for the visit-either official or unofficial. You can get a real sense of what they have raised by how they act. I know many times for me I might have an Eddie Haskell situation or a helicopter parent, both of which were red flags. If you do call the school, don't just call the teachers that they had A's with, but the ones that they struggled with can tell you a lot as well.
Crusty Old Retired Coach wrote:
When you get the transcript and you see the classes, both already taken and current, you get the names of the teachers and you call the school for a reference check.
...If you do call the school, don't just call the teachers that they had A's with, but the ones that they struggled with can tell you a lot as well.
You are pretty old and crusty if you think any teacher in their right mind is going to give out information about a student to some stranger on the phone without a signed release from the parent/and or student.
And yet they(teachers) did it all the time with the idea that they would be helping the student-and many times they were and gave really good character references-other times, well, if you are a smart-alec, or a pain in the ass, payback is a bitch in a sometimes frustrating profession like teaching. We aren't talking about academic information, believe me, it's all in the approach. You wouldn't believe how loose public schools are with info- I was often times very surprised. This isn't to say that they are all like that, indeed some were very on target with procedure with regard to things like transcripts and the like, but just as many were not. Many times all it would take is a call, and I would have transcripts on my desk in an hour, and I could have been anybody! Anyway, I'm not in the business of college coaching anymore, and things may have changed in the past 5 years since I retired, but that was my experince as recently as the 2005-2006 recruiting year.
Interesting, I wasn't sure if they did any other type of snooping besides going to the school. With some schools over 50000$ a year the coaches a doling out quite a bit of money and I'm sure they want to have a very good feel for the athlete. Besides what his times and grades are.