Episode #111: John Comerford on Recruiting

🎙️ Challenging the Status Quo in College Recruiting with Dr. John Comerford 

What does true leadership in college recruiting look like? In Part 2 of Matt Rogers’ conversation with Dr. John Comerford, President of Otterbein University, the focus shifts from affordability to athletics.

Dr. Comerford shares his vision for recruiting with clarity and conviction—setting expectations for his coaches to recruit with integrity, to look beyond athletic talent, and to bring in students who will thrive in the classroom, in competition, and in life. He isn’t afraid to go against the norm or push back on the status quo if it means fighting for his community, supporting his coaches, and helping families find a better path to college.

For parents, student-athletes, and coaches alike, this episode offers a powerful look at what real leadership in college athletics should be.

👉 For more resources on recruiting, coaching, and leadership, visit CoachMattRogers.com
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Welcome back to The Significant Recruiting Podcast. I'm your host, Matt Rogers. Today's episode is part two of my conversation with Dr. John Erford, president of Otterbein University in Westerville, Ohio. In part one, he challenged us to rethink everything we believe about the cost of college. In part two, we turn to the world of college athletics, specifically recruiting and what he expects from his coaches. What struck me most in this conversation is how Dr. Erford approaches recruiting with the same conviction he brings to higher education. He believes recruiting should be rooted in honesty, integrity, and alignment with the mission of the institution. He sets clear expectations for his coaches to recruit, not just talented athletes, but the right people, students of character who will exceed in the classroom, in competition and in the community for parents, student athletes, and coaches alike. This is an eye-opening discussion on what leadership at the very top expects when it comes to the recruiting process. Before we dive in, make sure you've subscribed to our weekly newsletter so you never miss any content, podcasts, blogs, and recruiting tips that can help your family or your program. You can sign up and find all my books, classes and resources@coachmattrogers.com. Now let's get to it. Here's part two of my conversation with Dr. John Erford. John, so great to see you again. This is what we call the Significant recruiting podcast, so it's a little different than what we did before. And I know as the president, you're not out there necessarily doing a lot of recruiting, even though you're recruiting alumni and benefactors and things like that. So you are a big time recruiter, maybe the most important recruiter on your campus. Do any of your coaches use you for recruiting? Yeah, so we do visit days. Yeah. And several coaches, not all the coaches have me come in and do a little welcome at a visit day. I also go out of my way. Here's a little secret, and I think every CA campus has a version of this. You can tell a campus tour at Otterbine because the visiting student is carrying a red bag. We give 'em a red bag as soon as they get to campus and you watch for red bags on campus. I love that. That's so smart. I know, right? So I beeline over anytime I see a a red bag, vater, I know the coaches. And so I can see a coach is walking somebody around, right? And so I always walk up, meet the student, always introduce myself to the parents. But I always try to engage the student in conversation. And then what I know is happening in these, whether they're athletes or not, when I do that with a tour group or do that on a visit day, then the coach or the tour guide uses that as an example of our great community here. See, even the president can walk up and say hi to you and whatever. That's what INE is. I become the symbol of that. Yeah. And yeah I love to be engaged in it. That's great. When you talk about numbers with your athletic director, and I'm sure you have regular conversations with your ad or whoever your VP is overseeing that, what do roster sizes mean to you in terms of max and min? We, we have the full spectrum in our country. We have coaches, we have presidents that say, we're gonna milk athletics for all we've got. We're gonna, we're gonna fill beds, and if we have to have 40 kids on a basketball roster, we're gonna do it. And then we have presidents to say, I want healthy rosters. I want coaches to figure out what they need to be healthy and successful. Where do you stand with that? So I want a positive student experience. And so if you get too big and you don't adequately resource it, like with the JV program and assistant coaches and whatever else to give a positive student athlete experience, you're gonna end up with a retention problem and eventually a reputational problem in that program. Yeah. And so you might have the short term boost of, we got 10 more students this last fall. But then a year later when they haven't had a good experience, they haven't had any playing time, they haven't any attention from the coach. They haven't had a JV game to play. They're gonna leave. Yeah. And that's gonna be bad for your school and bad for your program in the long term. So it's finding that sweet spot. The other thing I would throw out is in terms of roster sizes, I like an even predictability. I don't like the, Hey, we're gonna get 80 football players this year, but then we're gonna be too big, so we're only gonna get 40 the next year. That creates these swings in enrollment. That's not good for the institution. We need a predictable roster size. The last thing I'll say, Matt, is, and this is, we're in the middle of this at Otterbein, and not everyone loves it, but we're working on it. I am pushing us towards a budgeting model for athletics that is a per student athlete model. Thank you. I wanna, it doesn't make any sense to push coaches to recruit more student athletes and not give them resources to support those athletes in the same way. It doesn't make any sense that if your number of athletes have dropped by 50 athletes, you should need less budget now to support your student athletes. Exactly. You go up or down with the number of students that you're serving on those rosters, and so that incentive structure has been lacking here and I think a lot of schools, and I would like to get us there. I love it. I will beat that drum for you all day long. And I teach coaches this. I go, if your athletic director and your president isn't pushing it, you need to push it because that is your that's your leverage that you can say. Every year I have 20 kids in my roster. Every single year I'm putting 20 kids in the classroom and we're retaining 90% on the team and we're, and at least, or 70% are retained on the team and 90% are staying on campus. So even some of those kids that don't, decide they're not good enough or don't wanna play, they're staying here. So I love that incentive. How does that work with assistant, full-time assistant coaches for you? So we have not had that model, but in theory, if you can create the incentive through a funding per athlete sort of approach to incentivize a coach to grow that roster, then you would have a full JV program in my mind with the support of an assistant coach to deal with those numbers. It has never made sense to me, and this will be controversial when I say it. Way we place assistant coaches in athletics. There's no rhyme or reason to it. We often don't have a full-time assistant in baseball or softball, even though they tend to have larger rosters, but by God we always have one in basketball. Like I, it just let's rationalize this a little bit. Yeah. And actually get that help where the students are, as opposed to everyone else does it this way now let's think about where we have student athletes in need of more support and have the incentives in place to make that happen. Yeah, absolutely. And if coaches are smart about it and saying, okay, if I need 20 kids on my basketball roster, I need 22, and I get a full-time assistant. And if we can maintain that, that's right. Who's not gonna work towards that? And coaches are competitive. Matt put a mark on the wall. Yes. Let a mark towards it and give them a reason to get there. I love it. I love it. Let's do it. You be the model and I'll preach it to anybody that'll listen. If I can get that past everyone here, I'll let you know. Two quick questions for you and then I'm gonna let you go. And I know you gotta go to another meeting. Quick piece of advice for a parent going through the college experience and it could be any direction you want to go. What did they need to understand about their child wanting to play in college and what they need to be thinking about? Yeah, and I just have a, I have a college freshman who just started last week. So I just went, did all these college, he's not he was an athlete in high school, wasn't interested in playing in college, but still my, what I beat is match. You don't go to a school because all your friends are going there. You don't go to a school because your boyfriend or girlfriend is going there. You don't go to a school because you always see him play on Saturday, on tv. You go to a school that is a match for you, and it's not just because it feels good and you had a good tour guide. Do they have a program that's a match for you? Do they have faculty that are gonna know your name? Do they have the right financial aid? So you're not gonna pay through the nose for something that's not meaningfully different than something that could have been half that cost? Thank you. Like it's a match thing as opposed to a group think that we often get. I did a little aside when I was in graduate school. I was on Illumina Foundation grant and we did research on student migration patterns in Western states, which is just as exciting as it sounds, Matt. But I did a meta analysis of all the research about how students pick their colleges and the answer of 50, 60 years of research is there is no rhyme or reason, right? It's because they had a nice tour guide on a sunny day and it felt like home. And that's not a reason to make a life decision. That's true. Like where and the equivalent of consumer reports, like if you're gonna buy a car, I read Consumer Reports First is US News and these other magazines where their criteria are not individualized to you. They're ranking minivans and sports cars and SUVs on the same list. And you've gotta aside, do I want a sports car or a minivan or an SUV? You've gotta know what you want first before you go to some list. And often they don't know what they want and what they need first. I agree. I love it. And it's what I preach and there's gonna be a book showing up and you won't know where it came from, but I'll send it to you and you tell me your thoughts when you get it. Oh, great. Same question. For the student athlete that mom and dad is making them listen to these three minutes of this podcast, what does the student athlete need to understand about their journey? Student athletes, I would say student is before athlete for a reason, right? We love that you wanna play this sport. We want you on our team. We want you to represent a school, and it's gonna be a big part of your experience, but you don't want to go to a school to play football or to play basketball or to play softball, right? You want to go to a school because that's where you want to get educated. That's where you want to connect. That's where you want to have your life transformed, and as a bonus, you get to play this sport. And at least that's the D three mentality. And it may not be in the other divisions, but I think knowing that very few people end up going pro, having first things first is really what's gonna matter? Fantastic. I love the conversation. I wish it was longer if my technological skills weren't so poor. We did great. Matt, but good luck with everything and I'll look forward to future conversations. Likewise Matt. I'm glad to know you and thanks for inviting me. That wraps up part two of my conversation with Dr. John Erford, president of Otterbein University. What stands out most about Dr. Comerford is that he's not afraid to go against the norm or push back on the status quo. He's willing to fight for what's right for his community, for his coaches, and for families who simply want an easier path to get their kids to college. That kind of conviction is what makes his leadership resonate so strongly with me. If you're a parent or a student athlete, I hope this conversation gave you a clearer picture of what true leadership looks like in college recruiting. And if you're a coach, it's a reminder that the standards you set and the values you live impact far more than your team's record. For more resources on recruiting, coaching, and leadership, visit coach matt rogers.com and don't forget to subscribe to our weekly newsletter. See you never miss an episode, a blog, or the latest recruiting help. Until next time, stay focused, stay humble, and keep chasing significance.