As revenue in college sports has risen, so has the pressure to recruit the best high school athletes from around the country.
According to documentation provided by the Virginia Tech athletics department, the 2007-08 year saw $824,296 spent on recruitment, the highest since 2003-04. Football accounted for 26 percent, or $217,714, of this total.
Tech's recruitment budget increased 148 percent in preparation to join the Atlantic Coast Conference, and it's not even among the top 25 Division I teams with regard to spending. Tech's intention to join the ACC was announced in the summer of 2003. In the previous academic year, the school spent $345,755 to recruit athletes. The following school year, anticipating entrance into the ACC, the school's recruitment expenditures jumped to $856,464. Overall success of athletic departments is measured by the United States Sports Academy Director's Cup. It awards points based on final rankings in a set number of sports.
In 2002-03, Tech finished 112th. Since the entrance of the athletes recruited after the spending increase, Tech has finished no worse than 58th. The 2007-08 academic year produced Tech's highest finish, 37th.
After the initial surge of spending upon joining the ACC, Tech's spending has leveled off. In 2006-2007, Tech spent $755,848 on recruitment. The median for Division I-A schools was $632,600.
Lisa Rudd, assistant director of athletics for financial affairs, said each athletic program's coaching staff is given a general operating budget and they decide how to spend it. Therefore, recruiting expenditures vary each year. Much of the money spent in 2007-08 went into bringing in what scout.com rated the 20th best recruiting class in the country. This included running back Ryan Williams -- redshirted by the team in September -- and offensive guard Vinston Painter.
While Tech has seen major spending increases, other schools have spent significantly more.
Among ACC schools, Tech was 10th in recruitment spending during the 2006-07 year. Only Boston College and Wake Forest spent less on recruiting. Tech was also the 10th ACC school in the Director's Cup rankings, 48th overall. Duke spent the most -- more than $1.2 million -- and finished 11th in the nation in the Director's Cup. North Carolina, spending just under $1 million on recruiting, recorded the top Director's Cup finish among ACC schools, finishing third.
However, in previous years, football and basketball have not been included in Director's Cup rankings. Changes have been made to the scoring system and the first rankings for the 2008-09 year will come out in January.
Spending on men's sports jumped by 190 percent in 2003 compared to only 89 percent in women's sports.
In 2007-08, women's sports accounted for 31 percent of recruitment expenses.
As of 2002, football accounted for over 40 percent of recruitment expenses. Last year, football accounted for just 26 percent of recruiting expenses. Men's basketball is just behind, accounting for 22 percent. Tech's recruiting classes in football, the sport with the highest revenue, appear to correlate with on-field performance, regardless of how much money is spent. Scout.com ranks football-recruiting classes. In the 2002-03 season, prior to the spending increase, Tech's football team recorded a 10-4 record and finished ranked 21st in the nation. Its recruiting class was also ranked 21st.
The following season, with the spending increase in effect, Tech's recruiting class was unranked, once again similar to the football team, which finished with an 8-5 record.
Subsequent years remained true to the trend. Seasons in which Tech played in a BCS bowl: 2004-05 and 2007-08, yielded top-20 recruiting classes. Seasons without BCS Bowls did not.
Recruiting spending has not dipped below $693,116 since Tech's entrance to the ACC. However, profits are not taking a hit. Football revenue has skyrocketed from $14.9 million in 2002 to $40.6 million in 2007.
Tech is actually getting more for its money than other major schools' athletic departments.
Tennessee spent more money on recruiting than any other school in the country in 2006-07. It was the only school to eclipse $2 million in recruiting expenses.
Scout.com ranked its recruiting class fourth in the country. Tennessee now faces a season without a bowl game and its revenues will take a hit because of it.
South Florida is on the other end of the spectrum. It spends less on recruiting than any other school with a BCS conference football team.
However, in 2007 it recorded the 48th best football recruiting class in the country. That was ahead of Kansas State, the fifth biggest spender in that year.
Of the schools in the 2007 Scout football recruiting top-25 class, only four spent less.
FOOTBALL RECRUTING : A MAZE OF REGULATIONS
Freshman Jarrett Boykin has caught a touchdown pass in each of the final two regular season games while Dyrell Roberts has shown a special teams spark with his breakaway speed in the open field. With all the new talent on the field for the Hokies, it is easy to forget about the highly acclaimed recruiting class that makes up most of the scout team.
Ryan Williams, a freshman running back who was redshirted in mid-September, was ranked as high as the No. 2 player in the commonwealth behind Florida State commit E.J. Manuel. Rivals.com rated him as the No. 3 running back in the country.
Williams made it clear that all of the surrounding hype did not go to his head. "I really don't believe in the rankings," Williams said. "They just don't give the players a fair chance."
Williams, despite an impressive highlight reel, was riddled with injuries throughout his high school career at Stonewall Jackson. In fact, he only played five games during his senior season.
"I never even got to play a whole season. I had a torn meniscus and problems with hip pointers," he said. Despite the ailments, he was a top prospect for Division I programs thanks to his 1,574 yards, 10-yard-per-carry average and 22 touchdowns in his junior year. Williams' versatility attracted scouts from Notre Dame, Boston College, Clemson and other big name schools, but it was the atmosphere at Tech that captured his attention.
"I just felt so comfortable here," he said. "Everybody made it clear how much they wanted me, and I got along really well with the players. I knew from the beginning that I was going to Virginia Tech."
It is not unusual for Tech to land highly ranked athletes. According to recruiting coordinator Jim Cavanaugh, there are multiple reasons why the staff is so successful in attracting high-prospect players. "First off," Cavanaugh said, "our recruiting staff is a very seasoned group. Every one of my recruiters has at least 10 years of recruiting experience. They really know their stuff." Collegiate football coaches are prohibited from contacting players until their junior seasons, during which the rules to which they must adhere are quite strict. Only during May of an athlete's junior year can a coach contact him over the phone, and there can be no more than a single phone call. Following this initial contact, phone calls are then prohibited until September of the player's senior season. The player may call the coach of any school at his own expense beginning his sophomore year. With so many guidelines attached to recruiting out of high school, an emphasis is placed on other aspects of the university which may draw in athletes.
"We have very nice facilities here, and the veteran players are always welcoming, regardless of a new player's ranking," Cavanaugh said.
As Williams, Cavanaugh believes that pre-college rankings sometimes fail to capture an athlete's true talent.
"You just never know for sure," he said.
TENNIS LOOKS ABROAD
The men's tennis team at Tech is diverse to say the least, considering that seven of the 12 players are from a foreign country. There are two common explanations for why these players chose Tech. Either they knew someone from their native country who was involved with the team at the time of their decision or they were playing in one of the big international tournaments where they were noticed by head coach Jim Thompson. Talent from overseas includes Pedro Graber, a junior from Santiago, Chile; Nicolas Delgado de Robles, a senior from Madrid, Spain; Luka Somen, a freshman from Karlovac, Croatia; and Corrado Degli Incerti Tocci, a freshman from Reggio Emilia, Italy. Each has a different story about deciding on Tech and what attracted him to Blacksburg from halfway around the globe.
"Coach (Thompson) talked to me when I was playing in a tournament in Germany," Graber said.
This was the first time that he had met Thompson, and from this visit he would later decide that he wanted to be part of the program.
Delgado de Robles first found out about Tech through a friend, Albert Larregola, who was playing on the team.
"I was living in Madrid and we would talk online," Delgado de Robles said.
Delgado de Robles initially met Thompson while playing a tournament in Florida and though he had never visited Tech's campus, he made his decision to commit. Somen also had a tie to the team as a former player at Tech lives in his hometown and told him about the school. He met Thompson playing in an event in Florida as well, but he had already signed to play at Tech prior to meeting Thompson directly or ever visiting Tech's campus. Tocci was a friend of a family in which the husband and wife were both assistant coaches here at Tech and they informed Tocci on what playing in Blacksburg would be like.
"She talked with the coaches about me, and then the coach sent me an e-mail," Tocci said.
After initial contact, the two met up in person while Thompson was on vacation in Italy. All of these players could agree that having so many foreign players on the team made it much easier to adjust. Thompson was very proud of the way Tech's tennis team handles their foreign recruiting.
"The Internet has certainly made the world a lot smaller," he said. "It makes it easier to find out information on these guys."
The coach and his associate, Jimmy Borendame, are responsible for the bulk of the recruiting, so when it comes down to finding these guys and getting them here, it falls squarely on their shoulders.
Thompson's associate coach handles most of the research and finding the players, while Thompson gets more involved with recruitment trips to tournaments. Thompson says their two major tournaments for finding international players are the Eddie Herr, which takes place in Florida the weekend after Thanksgiving, and the Orange Bowl, which takes place in Florida the following week. Though Thompson goes outside of the U.S. for tournaments, as when he met Graber in Germany, this is not as common.
"When we went to Germany, that was an exception. We don't go every year, but it was a very successful trip; we got Pedro out of that."
The coaches use their recruiting budget, which varies from year to year, to pay for these trips, and as long as they stay within their budget they don't have to pay out-of-pocket. The foreign recruitment process falls under the same rules as normal NCAA recruiting in the U.S. One of the toughest parts is that the foreign players not only have to score the NCAA minimum on their SAT but also have to score a certain percentage on the TOEFL (test of English as a foreign language), which proves to be another hurdle.
NETTING FOREIGN PROSPECTS
Men's soccer head coach Oliver Weiss has continually looked to international players for success on the field. Weiss, who was born and raised in Germany, currently has seven international players on his roster, including three from his native country and three from Ghana. All six were new editions to this year's team (with the exception of German redshirt senior defenseman Alexander Baden who sat out the season after sustaining an injury) and have had an immediate impact on a team that lost nine of its 11 starters from last season's squad. Ghana, in particular, has been a tremendous source of talent for Weiss in recent years. Patrick Nyarko, arguably the most skilled player in the program's history and leader of last season's national semifinal team, was one of the first recruits Weiss brought over from the country.
"Last season's finish would've been very difficult to obtain had I not had international recruiting," Weiss said. "On average, we had about five international players in the starting lineup."
Nyarko left Tech as a junior at the end of last year and currently plays for the Chicago Fire in Major League Soccer. Weiss doesn't fly overseas for just anybody, though. He has standards that the player must meet first before he buys that plane ticket.
"I look for good academic kids with very good soccer skills," he said. "After I see the academics, age and what level of play the player's at, then I might get interested in visiting and watching how he plays on the field."
Finding the right international players, which would seem like a daunting task, actually comes easy for Weiss thanks to the Internet.
"Seventy percent of the time, they contact me first," Weiss said. "They either hear about me going over there or hear about how our team has done. I'm recruiting an English kid right now because he looked up Tech and how we did last season. They sometimes hear about me from other players or friends who have come here before them."
That's not to say the recruitment process isn't a difficult one. Weiss is bombarded by promising prospects every day.
"On a given day, I'll get 25 e-mails a day from recruits," he said. "Six or seven of them are always international. I look at every recruit who contacts me, or I forward him or her to one of my assistants. Because they're coming from all over the world, they come at all times of the day and night. It can be quite a distraction sometimes."
If the players don't come to him, Weiss gets information from one of his various connections in other countries.
"Thirty percent of the time I get a tip from my coaching friends that I have in various countries who tell me that a kid is good academically and would be a good fit for the environment that I provide for them over here," Weiss said.
Weiss has mainly recruited from Ghana and Germany in the past but plans to branch out more in the future.
"I'd like to go to Mexico," he said. "The world is shrinking. Mexico, India, Pakistan -- who cares where you're from? The world is becoming a much smaller place in general thanks to technology. My recruiting boundaries are no longer Southwest Virginia or the East Coast. There are none now."
The number of international players that Weiss has on his roster is not uncommon in Division I.
"We're right in the middle of Division I in terms of number of international players on our roster," Weiss said. "We have the most or second-most international players in the ACC, but in the country I'd say we fall into the 50th percentile. Last season we had only 14 or 15 percent of international players on our roster."
Weiss said that his developing program is not yet at the point where it can obtain or even contend for the top U.S. recruits, however -- one of the biggest reasons the coach makes several trips overseas.
"Can we do great things with only U.S. or Virginia kids? Absolutely," Weiss said. "But getting those kids to come to Virginia Tech when they're at the top of their game is a challenge."