Often times colleges will request game film to help in the recruiting process. Generally this will be done by coaches that are not able to go out and have a live player evaluation.
What they are looking for is a few games worth of material so they can evaluate your competitveness, athletic ability and basketball skills.
What they don't want to see is a highlight tape. You can spend lots of dollars in getting a highlight tape together along with interviews, etc. Most coaches don't want to watch that.
We do sometime like to see you fail then we can see how you deal with adversity. Do you keep playing hard when you get a bad call from a referee? How do you respond if your team is struggling? If your shot isn't falling do you continue to compete?
As far as getting the tape to the coaches, it isn't very beneficial to cold send your video. What I mean by this is when an athlete sends out a recruiting highlight video to a college coach without a request. If you cold send a tape, chances are slim that the coach will be watching it. In many cases, the tape will end up in the garbage and you will not hear anything from the coach. I do not recommend cold sending a highlight video.
It is better to make contact with the school and coach first. Let them know about yourself and your abilities. You want to change the dynamic so that instead of receiving another video from someone they have never heard of, they are asking the secretary if the tape of you has arrived. Presentation makes a huge difference!
The following is an excerpt from an article regarding video and the athletic recruiting process from the website Recruiting-101.com.
When talking about the athletic recruiting process for all sports,
there is no doubt in my mind that highlight and game videos are a very essential part to getting that elusive scholarship. If college coaches
feel you may be scholarship worthy, they will nitpick every second of these videos. And even if you do all that you can to just show your highlights or only send certain full game tape, the video does not lie.
I recently had a chance to see a recruiting letter that was sent by a Division I college that requested video. Even though this was not a major school, the line that stuck out to me is simply that video does not lie. What did they mean by this? They meant that if they get their hands on your video and have a chance to take a look at it, they can tell rather quickly if you can play at their level or not. With athletic highlights, there are no smoke and mirrors that can turn a Division III player to a Division I scholarship athlete.
What this also means is that no matter where you look to produce a highlight video, all the interviews and special effects will not mean anything. I have seen so many different athletes spend hundreds and thousands of dollars on highlight videos to add stuff that does not factor in. Yes, the video may be more of a keepsake in the future but what you have to ask yourself is will this help me get a scholarship?
Is adding an interview of me on the highlight video going to help me get a scholarship? No, it won’t help at all. You can give the greatest speech ever known on the video but that doesn’t mean college coaches will come rushing to the door with offers. That is why they call them highlight videos. They are not asking you to send a highlight video plus an in-depth interview.
In most situations, coaches don’t have the time to even waste watching the interview portion.
