It takes a staff full of little-known hard workers to make recruiting work
If you think recruiting is easy work, think again. It’s not a matter of one, two or even a whole cast of assistant coaches looking over film, shooting the breeze and deciding whose social media direct messages to slide into.
There’s a bigger, broader and less public operation that includes a lot of people who put in countless hours of work.
UK director of football recruiting operations Dan Berezowitz credited athletics director Mitch Barnhart with allowing Mark Stoops and his staff to bring in “a bunch of guys that want to work.”
“I’ve got student guys and G.A.’s and part-time guys in the recruiting office. I mean, I get an email almost every day from a student that wants to be involved in some manner and learn and recruit,” Berezowitz told CatsIllustrated.com. “I mean, we’ve had two graphics guys back to back go work for BCS schools full time.”
One of those, Clay Bollinger, is now a graduate assistant with Clemson's athletics department working in communications.
“I’ve got students. I’ve got three student guys doing graphics and video and social media and a guy doing it as a part time employee,” Berezowitz said. “We’re just grinding away and doing what we can do, and we’re competing, and I think we’re successful in what we’re doing right now and kids are learning and training and we’ve got guys that are going on and getting jobs as young coaches and G.A.’s.”
Berezowitz said the students, part-timers and employees that help him out ultimately want to work in recruiting, player personnel or graphic design roles. There might not have always been a big market for that, when there were fewer staff members inside a football program and the sport’s arms race was in a more primitive state. But things have changed.
“College football staffs are going in a whole different direction with off field type positions, (so) you don’t have to necessarily be on the field coaching to have an impact in the program,” Berezowitz said. “So that’s where we’re working to train guys and give guys experience and you’ve got a lot of guys, a lot of student guys that love to come to work every day.
“So you’ve got, you know, a bunch of guys that are working hard and working in unison to reach one goal which is to have the best recruiting class and hopefully have us the best product on the field,” he said.