National Signing Day is tomorrow. Always scheduled for the first Wednesday of February every year, it marks the first day that a high school senior can sign a binding National Intent Letter with a college football team and school that is a member of the NCAA. The day marks the culmination of a lot of hard work and dedication from student athletes and their parents. As parents of high school athletes many of you see first hand how competitive the recruiting process can be. Let’s face it for many players and parents alike it is a “learn as you go” experience.  In my opinion, I believe in starting early and learning as much as you can in those four short years of high school.

There are close to 900 schools in the country that play football with one-third of those schools playing Division I football. Most of these 900 schools can provide some type of scholarship even it’s a partial scholarship. Some of the smaller schools can provide a great opportunity for kids to get an education while playing football. Many of these smaller schools have smaller recruiting budgets which opens the door for the player and parent to be more proactive. If these schools cannot easily “find you” due to limited recruiting resources, why not give yourself the best opportunity to be easily found? A scholarship is a scholarship, right?

PlayNextLevel offers a great service to players and coaches to create a profile and upload videos throughout your high school career. Created by Alex Mortensen back in 2007, PlayNextLevel allows high school and junior college players to showcase their skills to college coaches across the country. This service provides a ton of educational resources to the player that now has the power to promote themselves via PlayNextLevel. Mortensen leverages his experience as a former college quarterback and current NFL free agent with his knowledge of technology to provide a potent platform that streamlines the recruiting process for all parties involved. I should also mention that Alex is the son of award-winning journalist, Chris Mortensen of ESPN. I recently had the opportunity to speak with Alex regarding his service…