Recruiting-savvy moms run interference for sons

Dan Wolken | USA TODAY Sports

When Evaughn Person’s 6-5, 330-pound son began to get scholarship offers to some of the most prestigious football programs in the country, her instinct was a bit different from most parents going through the recruiting process for the first time.

Unsure what she was getting into or what their life was about to become over the next two years, Person figured her first call should be to a lawyer.

“We were new to this,” she said, reflecting on the process that eventually landed her son, four-star tackle prospect Navaughn Donaldson, with Miami (Fla.). “We didn’t know anything as far as guidelines and NCAA rules. I wanted him to know all his legal options and have a sports attorney let us know the ropes and what you can’t do so that we wouldn’t be messed up in the process.”

Person, a real estate agent in south Florida, is part of a growing group of mothers who have expanded their influence in recruiting beyond the role of bystander, becoming at once the spokesperson, the gatekeeper and at times the biggest hurdle a college coach must clear before National Signing Day.

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“If you didn’t win over my mom, it’s hard for your university to even get a taste,” said DeAngelo Gibbs, a four-star safety from Loganville, Ga., who enrolled early at Georgia. “She held the keys.”

While there’s nothing unusual about parents being a key part of the support structure for recruits, it was only last April, for instance, that the NCAA changed a rule allowing schools to finally pay for parents to accompany their children on official visits.

That meant, in many cases, mothers who had financial constraints were sending their children to campuses they had never seen to play for coaches they barely knew. That often left high school coaches or other mentors as the primary conduits between a coaching staff and a prospect.

But as recruiting has gotten bigger, with constant phone calls and media requests and camp schedules, mothers are bullying their way to center stage.

Last year’s top prospect, defensive tackle Rashan Gary, had every aspect of his recruitment and training screened by his mother, Jennifer Coney, who was the main point of contact for coaches and kept extensive notes on their visits before gathering the family to make a final decision to attend Michigan.

Five-star defensive tackle Aubrey Solomon, who will announce between Michigan, Alabama, Georgia and Southern California on Wednesday, told reporters last fall he would defer to the guidance of his mother, Sabrina Caldwell, on a final decision. She sent schools a comprehensive questionnaire with 31 different topics covering everything from internship opportunities to course selection to statistics on African American male graduates of the school to how the coaching staff communicates with parents. And she made it clear she was looking for more than yes/no answers.

While that’s one of the more extreme examples, Darnisha Allen-Jackson knows firsthand the benefit of being proactive in the recruiting process. Her son, Bryson Allen-Williams, got his first offer from Florida going into his junior year of high school. Having been around the football culture — Allen-Williams’ father, George Williams, played three years in the NFL before a long career in the Arena Football League — Allen-Jackson understood the importance of creating boundaries for her son, who is now a starting linebacker at South Carolina.

She took away his Facebook (though she let him keep Twitter), set strict hours for college coaches to made Sundays off-limits from recruiting, although one school defied her by putting two attractive young women on FaceTime inviting Allen-Williams to party with them the following weekend. (“They were immediately out,” she said.)

Allen-Jackson also picked up very quickly that college coaches are salesmen and were only going to show the best they had to offer, putting the onus on herself to find out the real story.

“Brian VanGorder (then the defensive coordinator at Auburn) told me the first time I met him, ‘It’s my job to make mom thinks she’s beautiful, to make dad think he knows everything about football, kiss the babies, shake grandpa and grandma’s hand, but once I get your son on campus, all bets are off,’” Allen-Jackson said. “I took it with me on every visit. You have to make sure you don’t get starstruck. Everywhere you go has a beautiful campus, everywhere has fabulous facilities, everything is wonderful but you can’t be swayed by that.

“You have to understand how it is when the fluff goes away. We’d go up unannounced and say, ‘Hey coach, I’m in town, can we come by?’ to see what the culture was like. You have to build relationships with those coaches because these are men who are going who are responsible for your son and they’re going to finish raising him.”

Dealing with recruiting-savvy mothers can sometimes be intimidating or unnatural for coaches, moreso than talking football with fathers or high school coaches.

Ashley Smith, the executive assistant to Tennessee head coach Butch Jones, had the dual role during this recruiting cycle of sister to five-star offensive tackle Trey Smith and also a key cog in Tennessee’s recruiting operation, working with student hosts and educating families on what the school has to offer.

She said Tennessee’s coaches constantly ask her for guidance in relating to the female family members guiding a recruitment, as she did with Trey, who signed with the Vols as an early enrollee.

“I think the biggest thing is that coaches get solely focused on dealing with the student-athlete, and at the end of the day the student-athlete will make the decision but he’ll consult his mom, his dad, whoever’s in the picture and that’s the biggest thing I found myself constantly reminding coaches is you have to develop that relationship with the family members that will be part of the decision-making process,” said Smith, who previously worked at the NCAA in the championships department. “I think it’s helped a lot that I’ve been through this process that I can relate and connect with moms and sisters as they’re going through this and can relate to both sides whether you’re the side that’s being recruited or trying to help recruit. It’s a blessing and a unique trait that I bring to the UT staff."

Person said some coaching staffs who recruited her son resisted the idea that the mother was taking the lead role, which was an automatic disqualification. Among her key concerns was how family members of players were treated on the visits, knowing the point of contact in an emergency or injury, dorm safety, whether the school was going to have a good enough meal plan to feed her offensive tackle and, interestingly enough, building a relationship with the position coach’s wife.

“They would be the mother while you’re gone if they’re participating in that program like they’re supposed to,” Person said. “Some coaches didn’t understand when it comes to a mother and child, we have a bond and that bond isn’t easily broken. When everything is said and done, guess who's going to be around? Mommy. Once they’re finished with him he’s going to always come back home if you have a good relationships with your child. That’s what they’re going to do, and some weren’t receptive to the fact I was (involved). The wives understood, but some of the coaches didn’t.”

Gibbs, whose mother is a middle school assistant principal outside of Atlanta and has an educational background in criminal justice, said the decision to attend Georgia was ultimately his. But he relied on his mother more than anything to help cut through the noise.

“Every time we went to a school, a university, she was the first person int eh coach’s face asking questions, talking, seeing how they were reaction to what she had to say,” he said. “Could they answer certain questions? She’s tough. She knows how to break down information, get answers. They had to pass her test first.”

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