This week on Up Close In Personnel with Alex Brown, UNT Tight Ends Coach Adrian Mayes joins us to break down what it takes to lead a recruiting department!
The first person to give me a shot in college football recruiting, Adrian to this day is one of my closest friends and mentors in the industry!
In this week's show, we take a deep dive into the mindset Adrian had when he led UH's recruiting efforts through the H-Town Takeover!
Starting off the show, we discussed what Adrian looked for when hiring interns. As he prepared for the role of director, he mentions that he studied the Ohio State and Alabama recruiting models for guidance.
What he looks for in hiring interns, is pretty simple and boils down to two points:
1. Look for people smarter than you
2. Find people with true passion and personality
As you'll notice throughout the rest of the show, Adrian takes pride in entrusting responsibility to his interns in order to create a real sense of ownership.
That brings us to the next big topic covered, which is creating a team atmosphere:
It all starts with ownership in what you're doing -taking pride in your work
And secondly, it takes accountability
Accountability, which is covered throughout this episode, is obviously enforced by the superior but needs to be reinforced by the individuals within the department. No different than a player-led team, you need your front line workers to hold each other to standards set by the supervisor.
When it comes to recruiting, there were also a lot of takeaways as it pertains to the evaluation process.
For Adrian, he is adamant about watching every player that a high school coaches sends his way.
There are no such things as diamonds in the rough anymore with the proliferation of film and exposure, but you can miss out on players if you don't take the time to sit down and watch them.
We also covered was the topic of intangibles and evaluating the learning capabilities of a given recruit.
You can't always take exceptions that fall below your desired measurables, but it is extremely important to keep an open mind for really good football players that just love the game. If you like the player enough on film, be thorough about what he can and can't do, and see if he has limitations that can be overcome.
In the words of Cincinnati Bengals DPP Duke Tobin,
"The art of scouting is what deficiencies do you accept? Everybody is looking for the same positives…"
With regards to assessing a recruit's ability to learn ball and pick up concepts, Adrian does a great job of explaining how he teaches a recruit a specific concept, asks the recruit to teach the concept back to him and watches closely how the recruit executes those actions. Is he taking notes? After listening and taking notes, how does he retain and regurgitate the information? How was he taught by his coaches? What concepts can he articulate back to the coach? Etc.
All this and more is covered on the show, and it was a ton of fun to hit that record button! Be sure to follow Adrian on Twitter at @CoachAMayes!
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Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/up-close-in-personnel-with-alex-brown/id1504584632
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