Abstract
The purpose of this study was to examine the influential factors involved in Division III college football recruiting. Furthermore, both Division III college football players and coaches rated a variety of factors to determine if any discrepancies exist between what players and coaches rate as influential during the college-selection process. There is a considerable amount of research for college football recruiting and general college sports recruiting. However, most of the data in the current literature consists of studies that examined recruiting and the different choice factors from the perspectives of student-athletes choosing among Division I institutions. None of these studies include the perspectives of college coaches and what they determine to be influential factors for players during recruiting. An anonymous 6-point Likert Scale survey was created using a list of 27 pre-determined choice factors and then distributed via email to 246 Division III college football head coaches across the United States. In the emails, coaches were asked to participate in the study by sharing the attached survey with all members of their current football staff and player roster. For data analysis, a Mann-Whitney U test was done using SPSS software to compare the responses of the two groups. The players’ and coaches’ ratings of eight of the 27 choice factors were significantly different. Furthermore, the players appeared to place more value in academic-related factors whereas the coaches seemed to value athletic-related ones. This may indicate that a disconnect exists between what NCAA Division III college football players and coaches find important in the college-selection process.