How Athletics Complicates the College Search

By Melvin Schucker on Friday, October 8, 2010

I have no clue where I want to go to college. 

People come up to me all the time and ask where I’m going to college or where I’m going to play, but I just tell them I have no clue.

It’s complicated because I’m trying really hard to get a scholarship to play college football. I almost feel embarrassed sometimes because in some peoples' eyes, if you're going to play college ball you usually already have a scholarship offer, but I don’t.

I have a few schools pretty interested, but I’m still waiting for my first offer.

It gets stressful sometimes not knowing where I’ll be next year. Every day I check the mail for colleges sending me info, coaches sending letters or e-mails. I actually started getting letters from coaches during my sophomore year; now I have more than 1,000 letters. 

Among those letters were invites to come watch games, and I accepted many of them. So far I have visited the campuses of Ole Miss, Arkansas State and Tulsa. I will be visiting UCA soon. I do my best to learn about each school so if I do get a athletic scholarship offer from them, I won’t not oblivious about their school (there’s a tip for all of you out there visiting campuses, but are waiting on scholarships to determine your choice).

I really don’t have a favorite either, so everything is kind of confusing about who I really want to play for; I can see myself playing for all of them. If I don’t get an offer, I will walk on somewhere to play, but I don’t know where I would walk on either.

Unless you are getting a lot of scholarship offers, the recruiting process is not very fun. At first when I started getting letters it was fun, but now it’s complicated because it’s hard to figure out how interested everybody really is and where I feel comfortable. I really like being asked to come watch teams play, though. Within the next few years, hopefully you will see me playing football for some team somewhere. For now, I’ll just do my best to have fun and remember my senior year and senior football season.