Football recruiting is not a generic version of college recruiting with helmets on. It operates on its own calendar, under its own scholarship structure, with an evaluation system built around film and camps that no other sport replicates at scale. A family that understands soccer recruiting, or basketball recruiting, or even how the generic process works, still needs to relearn a significant amount when their athlete plays football.
The sport also has more levels than most families account for. There isn't just "D1 football." There's FBS — the Power Four and Group of Five conferences — and there's FCS, the second tier of D1. Below that, D2. Below that, D3. Each level operates with different scholarship rules, different recruiting timelines, and different expectations about when and how coaches will make contact. Applying FBS recruiting logic to a D2 situation will cause families to miss opportunities they didn't know existed.
Three things separate football recruiting from nearly every other college sport.
Recruiting is heavily film-driven. Football coaches are evaluating dozens to hundreds of recruits at any given time. They cannot attend every prospect's games the way a soccer or volleyball coach might. Film does what in-person scouting cannot: it lets a coach evaluate footwork, read progressions, react to blocks, and assess football IQ in a medium they can pause, rewind, and watch a second time. An athlete who plays well but has no quality film is invisible. An athlete with strong film at a lower-profile program can attract coaches who never would have seen them in person.
Position groups recruit on different timelines. A D1 FBS offensive line prospect and a D1 FBS quarterback are not recruiting at the same pace. High-demand positions — quarterbacks, elite pass rushers, shutdown cornerbacks — get evaluated and offered earlier. Linemen who project to develop are evaluated on athletic tools and technique. Skill positions need in-game production. Understanding how coaches at your target level evaluate your athlete's specific position is not optional background knowledge — it directly shapes when to expect attention and from whom.
The signing period structure creates hard deadlines. Football has two national signing periods: the early signing period in mid-December and the traditional National Signing Day in early February. Families who haven't done the work before December of senior year face real pressure. D2 and D3 operate with more flexibility, but the cultural force of national signing day creates a psychological clock even in divisions where the formal deadline isn't as rigid.
Football recruiting compresses fast at the top and extends long at the bottom. Both things are true simultaneously, and the level you're targeting determines which clock you're on.
Freshman and sophomore year: Most athletes in most divisions don't have meaningful coach contact this early. The exception is elite FBS prospects — offensive linemen and skill players who are already projecting as four- or five-star recruits at major programs. For families targeting FBS but not at the elite level, this is preparation time: build the film library, compete at camps, establish the baseline athletic profile coaches will evaluate later.
Summer between sophomore and junior year: This is the critical evaluation window for FBS recruiting. Elite programs host camps in June and July where coaches can evaluate prospects in person. A strong camp performance at a Power Four school can generate an offer within 48 hours. Families with FBS aspirations who haven't created camp opportunities during this window are behind — not fatally, but meaningfully.
Junior year (fall): FBS programs extend most of their offers in September through November of junior year. Contact windows open formally, and coaches who've been watching a prospect begin making direct contact. FCS programs ramp up evaluations. D2 programs begin serious contact. If your athlete is getting phone calls and visits from coaches during junior fall, the process is working. If you're not, this is the time to recalibrate the target list — not wait for D1 interest to materialize on its own.
Junior year (spring): Official visits for seniors, unofficial visits for juniors. Athletes extend their target list based on actual interest received. Junior athletes who haven't committed yet continue sending film and attending camps. FCS and D2 programs continue recruiting heavily.
Senior year: For athletes who haven't signed in December, the recruiting process continues through spring. D3 programs actively recruit seniors well into April. Many D2 programs fill late spots. Senior year is not too late — it's just the wrong year to be targeting FBS.
| Level | Active evaluation window | Typical offer timing | What drives the timeline |
|---|
| FBS (Power Four) | Summer before junior year | Junior fall | Camp performance, ranking systems, film |
| FBS (Group of Five) | Junior year | Junior fall–spring | Film, camp performance, FBS interest level |
| FCS | Junior year | Junior fall through senior spring | Film, camp exposure, D1 interest signals |
| D2 | Junior–senior year | Junior spring through senior fall | Film, coach contacts, interest from other programs |
| D3 | Senior year | Senior fall through spring | Film, direct outreach, academic fit |
FBS vs. FCS vs. D2 vs. D3: scholarship realities
The scholarship structure in football is the most complex of any college sport, and most families collapse it into "D1 scholarships" without understanding the four very different systems underneath that label.
FBS football (Division I-A): 85 full-ride head count scholarships per program. This is football's exceptional case — 85 athletes receiving tuition, room, board, and books. No other sport at any level offers head count scholarships at this scale. The catch: 85 scholarships across FBS programs sound like a lot until you factor in that FBS rosters run 100 to 120 athletes. The athletes not on scholarship are walk-ons.
FCS football (Division I-AA): 63 equivalency scholarships per program. FCS is D1 football but operates under equivalency rules like most other sports — 63 scholarship equivalencies divided across a full roster, which typically means most athletes receive partial awards. A genuine FCS scholarship offer might be 25%, 50%, or a full ride depending on how the program is allocating its pool. Ask specifically: what percentage, and does it stack with academic aid?
D2 football: 36 equivalency scholarships per program. D2 has real scholarship money, but the pool is substantially smaller. Many D2 programs pair athletic aid with institutional merit aid to build competitive packages. A D2 offer of 30% athletic scholarship plus 15% academic merit can represent a genuinely good financial outcome, particularly compared to an FCS 20% offer at a higher-cost school.
D3 football: No athletic scholarships. D3 schools cannot offer athletic money by NCAA rule. What D3 coaches can do is advocate for recruits in admissions and support strong merit and need-based aid packages. At many selective D3 schools, a coach's backing meaningfully improves both admission odds and financial aid offers. Understand what the coach can actually influence before comparing a D3 option against D1 or D2 athletic aid.
Football evaluation runs on three inputs: film, in-person performance, and measurables. The weight of each varies by level.
Film is the foundation. College coaches receive thousands of recruiting inquiries. The filter is film. A highlight reel should lead with your three to five best plays — not the longest or most produced, but the most clearly visible demonstrations of your football ability. After the highlight, include full game film where coaches can see you across an entire game: how you handle failure, how you line up, how you move between plays. For offensive and defensive linemen especially, full game film matters more than highlight packages because technique is evaluated in the details, not the splash plays.
Camps and combines are where coaches evaluate in person, outside of game settings, in controlled environments where they can measure athleticism directly. For FBS programs, camps are the primary mechanism for evaluating prospects who haven't yet been discovered by the program. A family serious about FBS recruiting needs to prioritize attendance at college camps — not generic "recruiting showcases," but individual college camps where the coaching staff is evaluating prospects for their specific roster needs.
Measurables (height, weight, speed, strength) matter at every level but are filtered differently. Power Four programs have measurable thresholds below which most prospects won't receive serious interest regardless of film quality. FCS and D2 programs weight performance and football IQ more heavily relative to raw athleticism. Understanding the measurable profile of players currently on a program's roster gives you a clearer picture of whether you fit.
The bottom line
Football recruiting rewards families who understand the level they're actually targeting — and who don't let the FBS conversation crowd out the real opportunities at FCS, D2, and D3. The mistake isn't aiming high. It's running an FBS recruiting process for two years and then discovering in senior fall that FCS and D2 coaches have already filled their rosters.
Run both tracks at once. Keep pursuing FBS interest if the profile supports it, but actively recruit to FCS, D2, and D3 programs starting junior year. Send film. Contact position coaches directly — not just the head coach. Attend the right camps for your target level. Building a target list that spans realistic programs at multiple levels is the structural protection against waiting too long. For how to approach coaches directly, our guide to emailing a college coach covers what to include, who to address, and what coaches actually read. If your athlete is attending camps this year, our guide to whether football recruiting camps are worth it breaks down mega camps, prospect days, combines, and elite camps — and which format matters at each level. If you're evaluating whether NCSA is worth the investment for football specifically, our NCSA football review covers how the platform fits — and doesn't fit — football's Hudl-driven recruiting model. For the position-specific measurable benchmarks — 40-yard dash, bench press, vertical, and shuttle — that coaches expect at each division level, the football recruiting standards guide covers every position group from quarterbacks to specialists. When you're ready to research specific D1 programs, our guide to D1 colleges for football breaks down the FBS vs. FCS landscape by conference tier and recruiting profile. And if you're still working out what D1, D2, and D3 actually mean for scholarship money and program experience, the breakdown of what separates the divisions is worth reading before you build the list. For the NCAA's official recruiting calendar — contact periods, dead periods, evaluation periods, and how June camp season fits into the regulatory framework — our NCAA football recruiting calendar maps every period month by month. And for the complete entry-level guide to getting on a college football roster — from honest assessment through signing day — our how to play college football guide covers the full path. For families focused on Texas — which has the highest concentration of D1 football programs in the country — our guide to D1 football colleges in Texas maps every FBS and FCS program by conference and recruiting profile.