So we've got official visits for the 2025 class starting later this week?
What all is involved in an official visit?
Are tours of the facilities and meeting with coaches and players, all allowed on an official visit?
Are there limits on how many official visits a prospective student-athlete can take?
I’m not reading the NCAA handbook, which is authoritative, but I can tell you my understanding of it.
First of all, official visits are for 48 hours. I’m unclear on what happens if they go beyond that, but they’re not supposed to. The school can pay for airfare and lodging for the prospective student athlete and one other person. Usually the guardian. A key part of the visit is a tour of the facilities age coaches, but also it pretty much always includes visits with academia and the administration. If there’s a specific college the athlete is interested in, tour of their facilities and some kind of conversation with a representative - up to and including the dean of the college in some cases - is arranged.
There is a limit to how many meals can be provided to the student athlete + 1 (I believe it’s two per day), but the enforcement mechanism for that is a bit blurry. Depending of the level of resources the school has, there’s often some kind of goody bag at the hotel room when they check in.
From there visits can be wildly different depending on schedules, availability, and resources. For example, Liberty University has a surprising budget available for recruiting, because they see success in athletics as an outgrowth of their mission as a school.
The one I know about the most is the University of Texas, but philosophies, rules, and resources have changed a lot in the 50 years I’ve followed recruiting. In some ways the official visit has become more important than ever. In some ways it’s diminished in importance. But in most cases, the more over the top the visit ends up being, often the bigger the impression it makes, although that’s a generalization. Every person is different, so different things will appeal to each player. The best recruiting processes are about asking questions, finding out what’s important to the player, finding out what objections they have, and then appealing to their desires while answering their objections in the best way possible. Just like any sales process, really. Up to and including relationships.
The number one asset for any official recruiting visit is the current players. If they’re not onboard with what’s going on, regardless of the legitimacy of their personal complaints, they can sabotage a recruiting visit very easily. The coaches know this, so there’s a lot of pressure to say good things about the program regardless of a person’s true feelings. And of course, you try to have your most gung ho players around the recruit the most.
Someone is assigned to be the player’s host. The coaches are usually looking for the best match among a lot of criteria. But even with a host, there’s usually tons of interaction with the other players.
At some point, usually on the last day of the visit, but it doesn’t have to be, the head coach will sit down with the player and talk to them about their vision for the player, and try to gauge the player’s interest in coming to the school. In all sports there’s going to be some pressure to obtain a commitment if their a high priority target, whereas a low priority target the communication will be about why they should wait before they make a decision.
In football and men’s basketball it is entirely normal for players to take all five visits and then announce a commitment at a later date. Heck, it’s very normal for them to announce a commitment, then continue to take visits, or switch their commitment multiple times.
In volleyball, not so much. It wasn’t that long ago - just a few years, really - that players only took one official visit - to the school they had already committed to, sometimes YEARS before they could even take a visit. We hardly ever see switches, unless like Choboy last year there’s a coaching change.
If the official visit didn’t move the needle enough where you’re the clear leader for the player coming out of it, it’s unlikely you’re getting them. And being the clear leader usually means getting a commitment during the official visit or a relatively short time afterwards.
It should be noted Stanford is the exception to any of this because of the difficulty and necessity of gaining admittance. And Nebraska’s John Cook places a priority on getting recruiting wrapped up prior to the start of the year, so official visits are used more as a reward for players who have already committed than an integral part of the recruiting process. Which is how everyone used to be, frankly.
Also, football utilizes unofficial visits as a recruiting weapon way more than any other sport. There’s a lot of money spent against NCAA regulations on getting kids to campus multiple times outside the official visit. Started by Alabama back in the late aughts, it’s so ubiquitous now it’s silly. I don’t know if any other sport that places as much a priority on unofficial visits as football.
Also, as has been discussed before, for most sports attending camps is vital, both in terms of a coaching staff being able to recruit a player, but also for the player to show interest and make themselves be seen as someone the staff should recruit. I would say men’s basketball is an exception. The AAU/summer team relationships are way more importaht in men’s basketball, so camps are simply not the same kind of recruiting tool there.
But official visits are still vital and game changing.
That was almost certainly more than you wanted, but I hope it was somewhat helpful.
