“At Yale we need to cast a wide scope because we’re looking for students that we can predict … [will] get through the application process academically, student-athletes that can play Division I football.”

THE REGULATION OF RECRUITMENT

Since its inception in 1906 as the Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States, the National College Athletic Association has served as the ultimate authority on college athletics. As the number of student-athletes has swelled, the NCAA has grown right alongside it, as have the rules and regulations it creates.

Today, Division I football recruiting is an almost scientifically precise process. Each year, the NCAA puts out a colored calendar demarcating the four different types of recruitment periods: the quiet period, in which prospects can unofficially visit schools and communicate with coaches via written or electronic methods; the evaluation period, in which off-campus interactions between prospects and students are forbidden but coaches may visit high schools and prospects may visit colleges; the contact period, in which coaches and prospects may communicate and visit anywhere, provided a coach does not visit a high school more than once in one week; and the dead period, in which only written or electronic communication is permitted.

In addition to abiding by the NCAA standards, schools in the Ivy League adhere to further standards set forth by the Ivy Group Agreement.

The first agreement, signed in 1945 and restricted to football, affirmed the decision to uphold the same eligibility rules and academic standards and to dispense only need-based financial aid, not athletic scholarships. By extending the agreement to all sports in 1954, the Ivy League was formally created.

Since then, Ivy League football has been regulated separately from all other sports. The football programs operate under a slightly different set of rules, as the league allows 120 students over four years to matriculate with support from the football coach, according to Carolyn Campbell-McGovern, deputy executive director of the Ivy League.

“All other sports are lumped together,” Campbell-McGovern said. “Every institution makes their own decisions about how they’ll further limit, or how they’ll allocate the number of slots that they have. They’re bound more by institutional limits.”

Of course, that does not mean a perfect 30 football players matriculate — or are even admitted — to Yale in any given year, according to Undergraduate Dean of Admissions Jeremiah Quinlan. Campbell-McGovern noted that there is a much larger pool of students who are contacted by, and subsequently communicate with the football programs.

Reno explained that due to the school’s high academic standards, the football program is forced to start looking early and cast a wide net.

“We’ll start gathering information on recruits or potential prospects in February of their junior year,” Reno said. “As you can imagine, at Yale we need to cast a wide scope because we’re looking for students that we can predict … [will] get through the application process academically, student-athletes that can play Division I football.”

Sometimes it falls to the student-athlete to put him or herself on a school’s radar. Gathering information often begins with players or coaches reaching out to recruitment coordinators.

Highlight tapes, unofficial transcripts and conversations with high school coaches allow the football staff to sketch a basic profile for each player.

“What we do is we get recommendations from high school coaches and we get transcripts from the student-athletes,” Reno said. “They’ll give us unofficial transcripts and we’ll take a look at them and see where they are, how well they’re doing in class, their strength of schedule and the classes they’re taking.”

Per NCAA standards, prospects are permitted to visit a school unofficially as many times as they like and whenever they like, provided that there is no contact with a coach if the visit falls during a dead period. Official visits, which the universities pay for, do not begin until Sept. 1 of a student-athlete’s senior year. There is a limit of five for each prospect, and it is up to his or her discretion to choose which schools to visit.

In the meantime, summer camps provide another method of evaluating players.