BYU football: Advantages that the Cougars have in recruiting

National Signing Day is less than one month away. With so many recruits still deciding where they should go, it often can come down to the small details that can sway a recruit to come to BYU football over others

College Football National Signing Day is right around the corner. This year, in particular, there are a lot of questions this year for a BYU football team coming off a 4-9 season.

But there are many names still going around that the Cougars are trying to land. Many of these players such as Tennessee Pututau and Chris Olave have offers from both BYU football and rival Utah.

There is no argument that Utah definitely has some advantages over BYU in recruiting. Being in a P5 conference is one example of an advantage. Others include being coached by bowl game master Kyle Whittingham (11-1) and being located in Salt Lake City. But just because the Utes have a lot going for them, it doesn’t mean BYU football doesn’t have unique and appealing things to offer to a recruit.

Here are some of them.

*Reader’s Note: Under no circumstances is this piece meant to disparage any recruit who spurns BYU to head elsewhere. Every recruit is a young man who has to select a university and football program that he feels will help him be the most successful. In the end, a recruit’s happiness is always most important.*

A secure future

A lot of players like to think they will make it to the NFL. However, the reality of it is, most players will not make it that far.

This means that most will have to do, as the NCAA commercials constantly say, “Go pro in something other than sports.” The average BYU graduate with 10 years of experience in their field makes $106,600 per year according to payscale.com.

A Utah graduate with the same experience averages $97,500 – $9,100 less per year. In fact, only Stanford, UCLA and USC are ranked higher than BYU between FBS schools west of the Rocky Mountains.

The reality of sports is that many athletes come from high income families or really low income families. Middle class kids are actually the least likely to play in college football. So for the high income kids, statistically many of them excel in the classroom and would like to have a high level college education (according to the Washington Post). Low income kids generally do not do as well in school, however may love the opportunity to go to a school where they can have more opportunities in the future.

Education matters, and I believe that most parents would want to encourage their kids to go to a good academic school, perhaps even over a football school. So even though the kids may not be thinking about their future as much, the parents are. And they have a lot of influence in where kids go.