At Md. Film Festival, Small-College Coaches Seek Football Recruits
By Eli Saslow
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
Eric Knight had already memorized every play of the game unfolding in front of him, but he still felt nervous.
It had been two days since Knight, the Potomac (Md.) High School football coach, stood on the sideline at M&T Bank Stadium and directed his players to victory in the Maryland 2A championship game. Now, surrounded by college coaches in a small meeting room at the University of Maryland, Knight showed tape of that same game in an effort to direct his players to something he considered equally important: college football futures.
For the second time in three days, Potomac's 38-3 win over South Carroll left its audience transfixed. Six college coaches watched and whistled. They scribbled notes furiously. They shook their heads in disbelief.
"So many guys stand out," said Frank Fusco, an assistant coach at Division I-AA Wagner College in Staten Island, N.Y. "It's hard to remember who I like best."
That proved a common dilemma Monday at the Maryland Film Festival, an annual recruiting extravaganza coaches credit with launching hundreds of college football careers.
Unusual a decade ago, festivals such as these now dominate the small-college recruiting process. College coaches said they attend as many as eight similar conventions during a three-week stretch in December. Prince George's County and Northern Virginia also host events, though the Maryland Film Festival stands out as the area's largest.
About 50 area high schools showed off videotape at the football offices at Byrd Stadium, and 45 Division I-AA, II and III college coaches representing 39 colleges milled about and found players they liked. They sometimes struggled, though, to keep everybody straight.
In an era when Division I-A football recruiters rely on meticulously calculated sprint times and weightlifting totals, small colleges still lean heavily on chance. At the Maryland Film Festival, coaches sorted through film on hundreds of senior players they knew little about. Most coaches hoped to find -- and remember -- about 10 players worth pursuing.
"You just want to show them something they're going to like," said Knight, the Potomac coach. "They see so many players that you've got to catch their attention. You've got to give them a perfect fit."
Said Gary Lanham, the recruiting coordinator at Fairmont State: "It's like getting that one needle in a haystack."
It's a hunt so daunting Lanham brought three other Fairmont State assistants with him to College Park. The small West Virginia school had discovered eight recruits at the Maryland Film Festival in the past four years, and Lanham hoped to find two or three again this time. With four coaches, he said, Fairmont State had at least a chance to spot the best talent displayed.
The Maryland football offices had been divided into a dizzying maze of televisions and projection screens. Each room in the complex provided a temporary, eight-hour home to high schools from certain counties -- Howard, Baltimore, Anne Arundel, Montgomery and Prince George's, to name a few. About five high school coaches worked out of each room, some eager to show off as many as 15 seniors.
"Everywhere you turn," Lanham said, "you hear about 10 college prospects."
A designated snack room provided a slight respite -- and the fuel necessary for such a search. The Maryland Football Coaches Association, the organizer of the event, brought chips, pizza, pretzels and trail mix. And five 30-packs of Miller Lite.
Each high school coach had arrived with a presentation designed to make his players stand out, but the coaches' methods varied greatly. Glenelg Coach John Davis brought a state-of-the-art Landro Play Organizer that showed digitized clips of Gladiators' games dating from 2003. The Landro clips played on a 10-foot projection screen, making three of the prospects Davis tried to pitch -- Trey Crayton, Stephen Bullard and Evan Key -- loom larger than life.
Across the hall, Gaithersburg Coach Kreg Kephart showed VHS tapes of his players on a small television. Sitting next to him, Monmouth University assistant coach Christopher Damian strained to watch -- and evaluate -- Robert Dugan, a 6-foot-5, 310-pound lineman who, at this moment, was too small to find on the screen.
After Kephart showed game footage of Dugan blocking, the coach fast forwarded to footage of Dugan running agility drills on the track.
"Now I see what you're talking about," Damian said, nodding his head. "This kid can move. I think he might be worth a second look."
Kephart smiled. He had achieved the ultimate success at a recruiting convention: a chance for his player to be evaluated more thoroughly. Almost never, coaches said, do film festival interactions cement a player's college future. Instead, they lead to second encounters, usually in-the-flesh visits that allow for better evaluation.
Cornell assistant Zac Roper planned for his Maryland Film Festival trip to last three days. On Monday at the festival, he hoped to identify as many as 10 potential players. Yesterday and today, he planned to go from one school to the next and visit those players, collecting scouting videos and transcripts to bring back with him to Ithaca, N.Y.
"Nobody really finishes the deal here, but this is where it starts," Roper said. "Instead of trying to go like crazy and talk to 10 different schools in a day, you can come here, see 50 schools, and then narrow it down. This makes our lives a lot easier."
What started about 15 years ago as a small meet-and-greet in a local Days Inn swelled, on Monday, to a mass that overflowed rooms and spilled into hallways. Four years ago, the Maryland Film Festival used five rooms in College Park. This year, the University of Maryland gave it nine, and that sometimes seemed like too little. At 4 p.m. Monday, the Prince George's County room hosted only three high schools -- Potomac, Gwynn Park, and DeMatha -- but more than 10 college coaches sometimes crowded near the door.
The event's magnitude caught at least one high school coach off guard. DeMatha's Bill McGregor, who prides himself on recruiting preparedness, arrived at College Park with four assistants and a large box filled with transcripts and DVDs. He initially thought, he said later, that he might have brought too much.
But before McGregor could even enter the Prince George's room Monday, five college coaches had surrounded him and his basket. Within an hour, all of the transcripts for two players disappeared.
"I guess I'm going to have to go back to school to get more," McGregor said. "Everybody here is scrambling for players. It's all a little hectic."
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