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| Georgetown coach Mike Neuberger uses his Front Rush app to message recruits. |
"For our coaches, especially when on the road, I think (the) mobile device is the lifeblood for what they do," said Ryan Steinberg, Maryland assistant director of football operations.
By incorporating mobile technologies, coaches are streamlining the paperwork-heavy recruitment process and efficiently executing coaching tasks. Prospective players are emailed, highlight reels are watched and plays are reviewed. And it's all done via coaches' -- like Georgetown wide receivers coach Michael Neuberger's -- mobile devices.
Coach says recruiting app is most 'useful' mobile-device function
At small, Division II programs, scouting and recruiting duties often fall to full-time coaches. As Georgetown's new wide receivers coach, recruiting high school players is a significant aspect of Neuberger's job.
Neuberger utilizes the Hoyas' recruitment app by Front Rush, calling it the most "useful" function of his iPhone.
Using the app, Neuberger tracks how many times a recruit has opened an email. He can also check if the prospective player has clicked on links within the message and if he has downloaded attached files. With this tracking information, Neuberger said coaches gauge the prospect's interest.
Georgetown's app also features questionnaires that athletes complete.
"It gives us very quick and easy access to see how much information a [recruit] has given to us and what holes we need to fill in," Neuberger said.
Mobile recruitment apps promote NCAA compliance
Similar to Front Rush, Maryland coaches access their ACS recruiting app on their personal smartphones.
"The positive is that you're going to really eliminate any violations," Steinberg said because the app alerts coaches to possible infractions of NCAA regulations like text messaging prospective student athletes.
Yet, Central Michigan University compliance coordinator Elise Paulson, said, "The most problematic issue with coaches' use of mobile devices is that the NCAA rules do not evolve as fast as the technology does. Until new bylaws, interpretations or educational columns are published, monitoring and rule interpretation is left up to the discretion of each institution and conference."
Mobile devices keep recruiters in constant contact
In a single day, Neuberger receives 60-70 emails from third-party recruiting websites, prospective players, their parents and high school coaches.
"You're constantly in contact because of the technologies," Steinberg said. "You never really get a day off."
"It honestly never stops, and that is a good and a bad thing," Steinberg said.
Coaches analyze game film, share playbook on mobile devices
Terps coaches, Steinberg said, review game footage on the iPads issued to them last March as they travel back from games, "as opposed to waiting until they get back on the campus."
At Georgetown, coaches even share game footage with their players to view either online or on their own mobile devices.
Maryland coaches also created an electronic playbook to view on their devices, said Neuberger, formerly an offensive line assistant for the Terps. Once a hefty packet distributed at team meetings, the playbook was instantly emailed as a PDF attachment to players for their review over spring break in 2010.
In addition to quickly distributing the electronic playbook, coaches could access it anywhere they went without lugging around a hard copy. And it eliminated labor and resources needed to put a paper version together.
Plus, like other industries are moving toward green practices, Neuberger quipped, "We weren't killing a bunch of trees printing off these playbooks."
