Rivals Recruits
What Rivals Recruits is, who it is for, and how athletes are evaluated.
Rivals Recruits is designed to expand the recruiting radar by giving more athletes the opportunity to be seen, professionally evaluated and discovered. It brings Rivals’ nearly 30 years of recruiting expertise to a much larger universe of athletes across every level of college sports.
There is far more talent worth evaluating than the traditional recruiting ecosystem has historically been able to cover. In football alone, more than 1 million boys participate in high school football, while Rivals has typically carried approximately 6,600 star-rated prospects across the senior, junior and sophomore classes at any one time. Rivals Recruits allows us to evaluate deeper into the talent pool and help identify athletes who may ultimately compete at the FBS, FCS, Division II, NAIA, Division III and other levels.
Traditionally, national recruiting services have concentrated their resources primarily on prospects projected to play at the highest levels of college football. That represents only a small fraction of the total high school athlete population.
No. One of the primary purposes of Rivals Recruits is to broaden the recruiting conversation beyond the relatively small number of athletes traditionally identified as FBS prospects. There are opportunities for athletes throughout FBS, FCS, Division II, NAIA, Division III and other levels of college athletics, and Rivals Recruits is designed to help uncover talent throughout that ecosystem.
No. Ratings, rankings and stars are earned, never bought. An athlete can purchase access to the Rivals Recruits evaluation process, but payment does not guarantee a rating, ranking, star designation or any specific evaluation outcome.
Opportunity can be expanded. Standards cannot.
No on both counts. The same Rivals scouting organization and evaluation standards are used across the platform. The scouts evaluating Rivals Recruits athletes are part of the same team that evaluates and ranks many of the nation’s top blue-chip prospects. Rivals Recruits expands who can enter the evaluation process. It does not create a separate standard or lower the bar.
The goal is to find more athletes who meet those standards, not to change the standards to accommodate more athletes.
Athletes who distinguish themselves through the evaluation process can gain greater visibility across the Rivals ecosystem. Rivals combines trusted scouting with one of the largest audiences in college sports and recruiting, providing meaningful exposure for athletes who earn recognition.
Football is currently the clearest example of the opportunity because of the enormous number of high school athletes and the relatively small percentage traditionally evaluated nationally. But the mission is broader: identify more athletes, evaluate more talent and create more opportunities across sports, including basketball and other sports as Rivals Recruits expands.
Rivals has spent nearly 30 years evaluating, ranking and covering elite high school athletes and college recruiting. Rivals Recruits builds on that history rather than creating a new evaluation brand or methodology from scratch. The expertise, standards and reputation behind traditional Rivals recruiting are the foundation of Rivals Recruits.
At its core, Rivals Recruits is an evaluation and discovery platform. Its purpose is to help athletes get evaluated and become more visible while helping college programs discover talent deeper in the athlete population.
The goal is simple: evaluate more athletes, discover more talent and create more opportunities. And do it with the integrity of Rivals at the center and the reach to ensure athletes who earn recognition receive the exposure they have earned.