HANOVER — Coady Keller asked himself a simple question at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
How do we bring Dartmouth College to recruits through a computer screen?
The recruiting coordinator for Big Green football started to make a list of things that the program uses to sell potential recruits: a tour of the campus and Hanover, interactions with players, professors and alumni; conversations with the coaching staff.
What’s resulted has been an effort to bring all of that to recruits and their families virtually. Some of it is done through recordings that prospects are able to watch on their own time; other Zoom calls are scheduled for recruits to interact with current student-athletes in real time.
The feeling of watching a football game at Memorial Field or walking on the Dartmouth green can never be replicated, but if Keller can fall just shy of accomplishing that, then he’s done his job.
“I don’t think you’re ever going to be able to recreate it 100%,” he said in a phone interview in late January. “But if we get to the point where our recruits are 98% in and all they need to do is to step foot on campus, we’ve done our job. I think you’re always going to miss that. Now, a lot of our kids understand they’re not going to get to campus (because of COVID-19).”
Just like so much else, COVID-19 upended the world of college athletics recruiting. The NCAA has instituted a dead period since last March that doesn’t allow for in-person recruiting activities. The period is set to expire on April 15 for all Division I schools, meaning Big Green coach Buddy Teevens has had to recruit most, if not all, of his players for the class of 2025 virtually.
“I’ve been doing this for a long period of time and never anything quite like this,” said Teevens, who owns a 105-93-2 all-time record at Dartmouth and has been in the coaching ranks since the late 1970s. “You can’t leave campus; you can’t have people on campus to view your facilities. Thankfully, Zoom and other technology have stepped in and has been fairly effective for us.
“The thing you miss, obviously, is the interpersonal connection. Normally, I’d be visiting 90 to 120 homes, where you can sit in a living room and see how a young guy interacts with his family. Generally, you swing by the field and talk with the faculty, other students, lunch ladies, the janitor. Just to get a sense what Joey’s like. That’s all absent.”
The biggest measuring stick for any recruit at Dartmouth is academics. Teevens said that the Big Green keeps a database that will reach up to 30,000 names in any given recruiting cycle but is then whittled down after factoring in who is potentially admissible into the college.
From there, the coaching staff is split into eight different pockets across the country, evaluating talent and looking at film. If a player impresses, the position coach passes it on to the coordinator to see how he fits into the Big Green’s scheme. Teevens has the final say on whether a player is offered an admissions slot.
One of the largest problems from the standpoint of assessing athletes this year has been the absence of camps and clinics that are held in the early summer. Teevens’ staff typically attends camps held at Northwestern, Stanford, Rice, SMU, Virginia and Boston College to check out prospects and possibly find unnoticed players.
Another COVID-induced problem is just seeing a possible recruit interact with his family and friends, something Teevens likes to view. Trying to put Teevens in front of many families, albeit virtually, has been crucial this year for Keller and Dino Cauteruccio, Dartmouth’s director of football operations.
“You’d be hard-pressed to find a better person to speak about Dartmouth then Coach Teevens,” Cauteruccio said. “Our best success is Coach in a room with a family. Right, just Coach T talking Dartmouth and any concerns the family might have. And even if it’s on Zoom, he has a special skill set that he’s able to get what’s he saying across, even if there’s a lot of physical distance.”
Last February, Teevens met with Keller and Cauteruccio to discuss how Dartmouth could expand its recruiting reach. The answer was simple: social media.
Since then, Keller and Parker Thurston, the program’s video coordinator, have spent long hours creating content for the Big Green’s Twitter and Instagram accounts.
The dividends have shown, too. Keller said interest in the school has been high, and SkullSparks, a company that focuses on college teams’ digital strategy, ranks Dartmouth 11th of 127 teams in the FCS in 2020 for interactions on social media accounts.
Still, for all the gadgets and gizmos that come with college football recruiting, it all comes back to the product on the field.
The college’s athletic department is tied for first in the nation in graduation success rate. Dartmouth won the 2019 Ancient Eight title. And Teevens can guarantee families possibly the safest playing experience in college football with no-tackle practices.
The Big Green will add 30 players this year, Teevens said, as the Ivies allow for 120 players over a four-year period. His next challenge will be putting together the class of 2026, which might be even harder than this year since some states didn’t play football last fall.
“I’m cautiously optimistic,” Teevens said of playing football this autumn. “This COVID thing has taken so many dips and turns, unanticipated consequences, that you can’t say with certainty, but that’s what we plan to do. Will we be able to have spring practice? I don’t know, but the flexibility in the Dartmouth plan, we’re in a winter quarter and we still have a month before the institution makes a call.
“I’m an optimist, and I hope we’re lining up next fall. That’s what the plan is.”
Pete Nakos can be reached at pnakos@vnews.com.