College recruiting

In college athletics in the USA, recruiting is the term used for the process whereby college coaches add prospective student athletes to their roster each off-season.

In college athletics in the United States, recruiting is a process typically culminating in a coach extending an athletic scholarship offer to a player who is about to graduate from high school or a junior college. There are instances, mostly at lower division universities, where no athletic scholarship can be awarded and the player pays for tuition, housing, and textbook costs out of pocket or from financial aid. During this recruiting process, schools must comply with rules that uphold the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s underlying principles of fairness and integrity. These rules or bylaws define who may be involved in the recruiting process, when recruiting may occur and the conditions under which recruiting may be conducted. Recruiting rules seek, as much as possible, to control intrusions into the lives of prospective student-athletes. The NCAA defines recruiting as “any solicitation of prospective student-athletes or their parents by an institutional staff member or by a representative of the institution’s athletics interests for the purpose of securing a prospective student-athlete’s enrollment and ultimate participation in the institution’s intercollegiate athletics program."