Recruiting fair offers a second chance to find a college match for Class of 2012 athletes

On national signing day a few weeks back, about 100 Tampa Bay area seniors inked their signatures on letters of intent to play collegiate football. Photographers snapped pictures, family members ate cake and recruiting services issued their final rankings and signed off on the Class of 2012.

For many, though, that just marked the beginning of this year’s recruiting process.

“In Division III, there’s no signing day,” said Vince Kehres, the defensive coordinator for 10-time D-III champion Mount Union, located in Alliance, Ohio. “Signing day comes and goes, and you scratch a lot of guys off your list. You don’t gain many guys usually, so we’re still very actively recruiting.”

And so Mount Union, along with about 50 other schools mainly at the Division III or NAIA level (save for a few D-II programs), will descend upon Jefferson High School for a two-day recruiting fair Saturday and Sunday. The colleges will connect with an equal number of high schools from Hillsborough and the surrounding counties and, by the time summer workouts start, at least 100 more student-athletes will have found a place to play college football.

“It allows all these smaller schools to come down and thoroughly recruit Florida and be able to afford to do it,” said Brian Thornton, the former coach at East Bay who helped run the fair for 10 years. “We get all the schools together for them in one spot, and they can visit 40-50 high schools in one weekend, which, under normal recruiting procedures, you could never do.”

While Florida is a hotbed for prep football talent, it also lacks an adequate number of small colleges. Currently, there are no Division II, III or junior college programs in the state (Florida Tech will start D-II play in 2013), and only three NAIA schools offer football. Compare that with Ohio (10 Division II, 21 Division III programs) or North Carolina (14 D-IIs, four D-IIIs).

The mismatch has drawn schools from as far north as North Dakota and as far west as Arizona to the fair in years past.

“In Florida, the talent level is as good as it is anywhere in the country, hands down,” said C.J. Goss, the associate head coach and defensive coordinator for Methodist University in Fayetteville, N.C. “If you aren’t going to Miami or one of these big-time schools, there just aren’t a lot of smaller schools down there. And Florida has gotten flooded because now everyone in the country goes down to recruit the players.”

The Hillsborough County fair is just one of many throughout the state. Former county athletic director Vernon Kohrn started this one in 1998 at Brandon because he saw the success coaches in Polk County had with theirs. About 13 schools came that first year, and it grew steadily while at East Bay and will be at Jefferson for the first time this weekend. Colleges are not required to preregister, and Hillsborough County athletic accountant Terri Jefferson said the department expects about 60 this weekend.

“It’s one-stop shopping,” said longtime Hillsborough coach Earl Garcia. “The colleges can come down here and basically spend maybe three weeks here and cover the entire state. And it’s a great opportunity for kids that would otherwise not have an opportunity to be exposed.”

The sheer amount of colleges and players can be overwhelming, both Kehres and Goss said. Milikin, a Division III school in Illinois, attended for four years and came away with a handful of “very talented” players each year before ultimately deciding against returning three years ago and decided to focus on recruiting its in-state players, coach Patrick Etherton said. There are two D-II, 19 D-III and six NAIA programs in Illinois.

“The amount of colleges was almost overwhelming for talking with kids, it was such a, kind of a rat race,” he said. “You’d go to the gym, set up, and there’d be a gym full of other colleges, and we just thought time-wise, and the amount of kids that we got out of there, it didn’t make sense.

“And it was hard once we got them here to get them to stay. A lot of coaches all over the place have been through the same thing, especially in the Midwest where it’s cold. In football season, they’re fine, but then winter and the spring when it’s cold, they get homesick.”

Preparing seniors to leave Florida for more northern destinations is a challenge.

“Ninety-nine percent of them haven’t the slightest idea what they’re getting into,” Garcia said. “A lot of times, it’s a cultural shock when you go to Amherst or somewhere where the stadium is smaller than what we have at Hillsborough. And the school enrollment is about the same. They’re expecting ESPN, and they’re not getting it. You have to educate your kids so that they’re not disappointed.”

The small colleges are prepared for disheartened prospects. With time and an on-campus visit, though, many start to warm to the title of “student-athlete.”

“A lot of the guys we come down looking for, they’re discouraged initially, and then they see our facilities, they see that we’re a pretty competitive program, and then they come on campus and it gives them a second wind to come in and play college football,” Goss said.

“We’ve gotten a lot of very good players who, because of different situations and through the recruiting process, didn’t get recruited by bigger schools. And they found a home at Methodist. They come in, they play four good years of football and walk out with a college degree.”

Laura Keeley can be reached at lkeeley@tampabay.com