I played 4 years of NCAA Tennis (best time of my life), this has nothing to do with football, but here are some tips in order to help your son choose a NCAA school:
1) Go somewhere where you are going to play, it always boggles my mind when I see somebody go to a school and they never participate in a game. There are a zillion schools to choose from for football, no reason at all to go somewhere and never hit the field. Why would anybody go to a school and sit on the bench? Are you really a "student athlete" if you never play? Oh and a coach will never say "Welcome to our football program, I look forward to never seeing you play". During the recruiting process everybody is great and everybody plays, it is all rainbows and butterflies.
2) When visiting a school (if that is possible) try to go "off the grid" and get the unsanitized version of what is going on. In other words have a talk with "the real students" and try to get the gist of what it is really like there. On official recruiting visits the coach/coaches (and most of time the players) will make everything sound fantastic.
3) Try to track down former players (that were there for 4 years) and ask them what it was really like.
4) Even for football read the "fine print" on the scholarship contract. Make damn sure what the coach says and what the contract says is the same. Sometimes one thinks they are "getting a full ride scholarship" and they ain't.
5) Let your son talk to the coaching staff, administrators, etc, etc. Or to put it another way, if your a parent stay the fuck out of it, let him decide. As for parents, coaches will kiss your ass during the recruiting process, tell you how great your son is, blah blah blah, you know all that stuff. That is pretty much the only time you should speak with them, when the coaches reach out to you. So to recap, stay out of it, let the athlete deal with it, not the parent.
6) This sounds obvious but you'll be shocked how many times this happens. Make sure the school has what your son wants to study (if he's undecided then it is a non issue). Many times a kid goes to a school and then after one year he discovers his school doesn't have what he wants to study, and bam he transfers.
7) This one is a bit difficult but try to find out how often "practice" takes place. And don't even bother with the NCAA rules, almost everybody breaks that rule no matter the sport. I don't care how much you love football, if you have zero time for a social life because all you do is study and practice your experience will suck. Again, this one is tough to find out, but with some digging you can get an answer. I can only speak from my tennis experience and I'd guess it would be worse in football, but there were not many "off days" from August to May when I was at school. Let's put it this way, there are "official practices" then the "unofficial practices", you want to have some time for a social life at school, if not, it will suck.
Hope that helps:0008
