HISTORY
The guys that run sandiegoballers.com have a combined 20+ years in assembling highlight tapes and cutting up gamefilm. After years of helping players connect with colleges, our biggest obstacle was the time lag that it took to get player higlights to college coaches. Once the highlights did arrive, there was still the chance that they could get buried or lost on the receiving coach's end. coaches end.
Our second issue was the time constraints that a coach faces. We've been inside offices at places like USC, Penn State, and even smaller schools like App State and Robert Morris. The big schools recieve over 6,000 highlight reels a year, yet they only give out an average of 20 scholarships per year. A good coach can tell if a kid can play for him in 5 plays, a decent coach can tell in 15 plays. We post 20+ on sandiegoballers.com in most cases. 30+ kids have been recruited instantaneously after a single clip view. If only all of the guys on the site were eligible!! The clips create a sense of urgency and excitement for the recruiting coach.
We started putting up 2-minute condensed highlight clips on the site in the spring of 2006. When I say condensed, I mean condensed---we get 35 throws in under 2 minutes, watch Blake Sutton's clip on the JUCO tab for an example.
...Forward to the present day. A coach asks what kind of LB's we have in town for 2009, we shoot him an email linking every LB on the site that can play at his level. A Coach calls up to review a TE, and we can sit on the phone with the website pulled up, and discuss the merit's of a kids game. Often, we end up directing the college coach to the kids high school coach, where high school coach is ready to provide transcripts and give the college coach more insight.
All of the sudden there were other benefits we didn't forsee...
1) We saw coaches literally watching every kid on the site, and programming their GPS to quickly see as many of the kids they can as fast as possible. Coaches who recruit the area have a finite amount of time, and they are using the site as a checklist to help build out their prospect target lists, with over 200 kids on the sandiegoballers.com it is a great place to start. Having coaches from Saints, Oceanside, Pt Loma, Mission Bay, San Diego, Madison, El Cap, Lincoln and a host of other schools direct college recruiter's to the site, has simply exploded the traffic. Understand that YOUR high school coach doesn't have all day to cater to YOUR kid, the site allows him to easily showcase his kids with a minimum of effort.
2) Some college coaches are taking thumb drives and downloading the entire site while they sit idling in hotel rooms and airports. After downloading, one of our favorite Pac 10 coaches literally hooked his laptop up to the big screen in their coaching room, plugged in his thumb drive, and went thru each player in unison with the other coaches in the room on a player-by-player basis.
3) We have coaches from colleges calling us up and asking why there isn't tape on a certain guy, in a few of the cases we put together that tape and threw it up on the site. The site is not intended to legitimize players, but the coaches are liking the convenience of the one city/one site approach.
WHY THIS SITE IS WORKS
We don't charge the kids or the college for site access. We could make some nice money selling this site to 5 big colleges, but that won't help the kids in the end. The KIDS are what this site is about!! Big South, SWAC, and MAC coaches don't recruit San Diego enough to justify paying a fee, but they will use the site all day long if there is no charge. This site is simply a labor of love, I don't make my living off of this site or any other football related activities.
OTHER SERVICES
If you don't have a highlight tape, we can build one for you. We know what college coach's are looking for. This site was built with their direct input. If you need a highlight done, we can probably produce one for less than 1/5th what most people will charge you.
If you need help getting seen, packages are available. We have the coaching contacts in place. We also can give you a progress report. We can track who watched you, when they watched you, and how many times they viewed your highlight clip. A lot of the "recruiting services" have fancy websites and big promises, we don't---if anybody guarantees you anything, I would advise you to walk away. Most coaches won't bother to got to site that features only a handful of players, there is simply not the scale to warrant their time investment.
Understand that no amount of marketing is going to help a 5'11" 185lb. LB who runs a 4.9 forty play in the ACC. We can get you watched and get an opinion, the rest is up to your ability on the field and in the classroom. The Reggie Bush's and Tate Forcier's of the world can pull a scholarship offer by word of mouth alone, this site caters to kids that have IAA, NAIA and D2 ability as well. I personally have been to over 200 campuses, and that includes places Coastal Carolina, Robert Morris, Elon, Wofford, Akron, and Northern Illinois. Half of the D1 coaches we know, have come from place like the schools above.
After years of doing this, we can usually accurately gage what level a kid can play at. Parents and people close to a player often lack perspective when it comes to the talent level of their 'baller. We will let you know what we think for no charge.
TAKE A CLOSER LOOK
When you look at our site, you will see players from all over the city. We built clips for over half the kids for free. A lot of great players don't have the money, resources, and/or family support to get noticed---this is all on us. Most "services" simply set up shop in more lucrative areas of town, and overcharge people from schools with parents that can afford to pay. This site even has kids from Imperial County. We are good at finding talent, 26 kids in the 2008 Spanos All-Star game were on our site months before the roster's were announced.
*If you are a HIGH SCHOOL COACH and you would like your kids on the site, shoot us an email. We can put a system in place to help every college prospect your team, this include spot-shadows and DVD duplication. You'll notice that some kids have soph, junior, and senior clips up so a college can see kid progress through the years.
*If you are a BOOSTER CLUB, we could use a donation to keep the site running, it would be a great way to spotlight your players for a small cost.
HOW DO I GET ON THE WEBSITE??
If you are a player and you want to be on the sandiegoballers.com, mail us a DVD (preferred) or Tape Copy of your highlight and we'll see about putting your best plays on the site, shoot us an email info@sandiegoballers.com for our mailing address. We put your player up on the site for NO CHARGE. This is due to our belief every kid who can play football should have a fighting chance to pursue his dream at a higher level.
Understand the this is OUR website and WE call the shots... We don't put routine plays up on the site, and we won't put your kid up if he is not ready for prime-time--we try and help kids, not ruin their chances!! Some clips are longer than others... as some kids are just better than others. In some cases when we do clips on our end, we only have limited tape on a kid.