Honesty and trust are key for WVU and Brown in recruiting
West Virginia head coach Neal Brown keeps it simple when it comes to recruiting.
Brown, who just wrapped up his fifth season atop the Mountaineers football program, makes sure that he has honest conversations with recruits and is unabashedly himself at all times. Now that approach won’t be for everyone, but Brown has discovered over time that it works far more often than not.
“A lot of times playing time is all about trust. The coach has to trust the player to get the most out of the player, the player has to trust the coach,” he said.
Often in recruiting coaches will recruit a player differently than they coach. And by that, it means that during the process coaches will often be extra positive and avoid difficult conversations.
That isn’t the case when it comes to coaching and if things flip once a player arrives on campus after being treated a certain way it can lead to issues.
“I would have a hard time trusting that individual. For me and this is what I try to talk to our staff about is being the same person recruiting as you are coaching them,” Brown said.
There’s no benefit in not being that way because recruits are going to find out one way or the other whether that’s once they arrive on campus or beforehand. And with the rise of the transfer portal, it makes forming relationships key at every step of the way.
“There’s so much information now you aren’t going to trick them. In one direct message they can communicate with everybody on your team so you’re not hiding anything,” Brown said.
That makes being upfront with players paramount and if you keep that approach it will work out far more than it won’t over time on the recruiting trail.
“You’re going to get the ones you’re supposed to get,” Brown said.
And even if you don’t get players the first time around, the transfer portal has opened more opportunities to land recruits down the line. That means that ending things the right way the first time is critical when the process reopens.
To show how much it’s changed, in the past teams would basically flush the recruiting database for each cycle after signing day but now that not only stays open but is actively updated.
And when a player does enter the most impactful metric is whether they have a previous relationship with a school or whether they had been on campus.
“You have a much better chance in the portal recruiting process because it happens so fast. The portal opens, official visits and then yes or no,” Brown said.
But that open line of communication and trust is a critical component to the recruiting process perhaps now more than ever.
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