For a high school player striving to play college football, the path to an offer is clear: play for your high school in the fall, play basketball and/or lift weights in the winter, run track in the spring and hit the camp circuit in the summer. There's room in there for 7-on-7 and the various Rivals/Elite 11 events, but when push meets shove college coaches are going to default to the most reliable information at their disposal: high school game tape, verified track times, and live evaluations at camps and practices.
Now, though, one executive is attempting to disrupt the recruiting process in an attempt to make football recruiting more like basketball and baseball.
Brian Woods, the former president of the USFL, is starting a new spring football league -- this one aimed at high schoolers.
The Prep Super League would launch teams in major metros across the nation, playing six games from mid April to the end of May, in an attempt to attract attention to high school juniors and sophomores.
"If you look at 7-on-7, you look at these camps, at the end of the day, none of them are 11-on-11 football," Woods told the Associated Press. "None of them are going to give a quarterback, for instance, in a 7-on-7 situation, a live pass rush. So, if you're looking to evaluate players in an actual football context, that's what this league is about."
Of course, one would say a "live pass rush" in an "actual football context" is what the high school season is all about.
Players would pay a "development fee" to help fund the league, but could earn that money back through NIL deals. It remains to be seen how that would help players in states where high schoolers are barred from entering into NIL deals (such as Texas, Arizona, Ohio and Florida... all states where the Prep Super League plans to have teams) would remain eligible to compete for their high school teams.
The league would stream games through an app.
The league plans to have teams in Atlanta, Cleveland, Dallas, Houston, New Jersey, New Orleans, Los Angeles, Miami, Phoenix, San Diego, San Francisco and Tampa.
Asked how he would evaluate players from a potential high school "super league," one Power 5 coach told FootballScoop, "We can't go to 7-on-7 games, so not sure how we could go see this. I am for guys playing basketball, running track and playing baseball in the spring."
As always, stay tuned to The Scoop for the latest.