Auburn Assistant Football Coach Understands How To Recruit

Auburn coach defines a winning recruiting philosophy

Not every college football coach truly understands how to maximize recruiting opportunities.

For the Auburn Tigers, newly hired defensive tackles coach Vontrell King-Williams does understand. The following quote from yesterday's interview is hard to place into finite terms for its significance.

"(Former Auburn assistant) Jeremy Garrett was probably one of the guys that used the relational piece," said King-Williams of the former Auburn coach. "And that's really, you know, how I describe my recruiting style."

That quote brings up an important recruiting topic. Prospects usually pick a school for a reason many fans may not quite understand. Fans generally follow one school. They are generally unyielding in their love for that institution and even sometimes struggle to figure out why recruits pick a school other than the one he or she follow. Prospects evaluate the situation differently.

When recruits are picking a school to attend, it's about relationships first and foremost. This is what I tell people all the time, and it's the quickest way I know how to define to a fan which school will likely land a prospect:

"'It's not about the logo on the polo a college coach is wearing, it's about the person wearing the logo on the polo.'"

There is another way to think about that quote. It's one thing for recruits to really like Auburn, Georgia, or Florida. It takes another level of confidence to go there for three-to-five years. That's where relationships come into play.

When recruits make their final decisions, each prospect picks a coach or coaches at the school, not the school itself, far more often than not. For the Tigers, King-Williams already understands the value of building relationships during each recruitment as evidenced by the video below:

Just sitting down with King-Williams and getting to know him yesterday is prime evidence that he will do quite well with recruiting top talent to the Plains. King-Williams understands how to recruit.