Before you freak and say, "Ryan... you're losing me with the Web 2.0 talk," give me a quick moment to explain.

Traditionally speaking (at least up until the 1980s), the college recruiting process carried a familiar face that didn't endure much change. The formula was pretty simple: make some plays on the field during your Junior and Senior season, and hope that a college coach was standing on the sideline taking note.

The advent of the VHS tape revolutionized high school player marketing, and for the first time made is possible for players to individually market their play-making abilities using video technology. In essence the coach could now analyze and re-analyze every single play from a players season. Did the player take some plays off? Did the player make plays EVERY single game? Was the player enthusiastic on every play? Sending out recruiting tapes soon became the norm and has been since, but the recruiting game is evolving once again. Get with it, or miss out!

After the dot com bust of 2000 (if you have not idea what I'm talking about Google "dot com bust"), the internet began to evolve from primarily a display-only medium to an interactive ecosystem characterized by websites with rich media - photos, videos, blogs, community message boards, social networks, etc. As millions and millions of people flocked Web 2.0 sites like Myspace and Facebook, the college recruiting game soon followed.

With so many high school student athletes striving to play college football, getting a high school player noticed by college coaches has become a difficult challenge, especially for prospects not considered "blue chippers" - most of whom are not. To stay ahead of the competition, players must market themselves on the internet, aside from simply sending coaches a couple highlight tapes and a transcript.

Here are a couple internet-age marketing tactics that will help differentiate a player and get them noticed by college coaches...

1) Upload your highlight videos and game film clips to video sharing sites like YouTube, Google Video, AOL Video, Yahoo Video, and MetaCafe.com. Make sure to list your name, contact info, school, coach, height, weight, 40 time, gpa, and player stats in the video description area. Include your name, highschool, and position in the "title" area. By including this information, when a coach searches your name "Player A" on Google, "Player A" will begin to appear in the search engine results, making it easier for coaches to gain access to your film and information.

2) Join the new high school player social networks that are popping up daily. Here you can post your athletic and academic information, which is accessible to coaches who are willing to pay for it. These sites are cute, but do not offer a guarantee for getting noticed, primarily because the market for these sites is fairly nascent, and hasn't matured with a couple big winners (like YouTube was for video). Also, these networks are closed websites and do not let search engines "crawl" or scan a players information, which ultimately makes this information unaccessible to search engines like Google. Some of the more popular networks are: blogger.com/Takkle, TruPreps.com, and HighSchoolPlayBook.com.

3) Comment on high school football message boards and forums, promoting your name and player information. By doing this, you can pull recruiters and avid high school football fans into a conversation about YOU! Leave a URL link on these message boards to your personal player website (see below). Some of these popular message boards can be found at Scout.com, CaliforniaPreps.com, and MaxPreps.com. These message board can be handy but should not be used as the primary method for marketing a high school player. Beware that you will probably have to pay a monthly fee to gain access to these sites - how annoying is that?

4) Create your own player website that markets your videos, photos, profile, athletic and academic information directly to college coaches and the world. It might look like "www.PlayerA.com." This is the most reliable way to bundle all of the necessary information a recruiter might need to target a player together into a one-stop shop. You can then email hundreds and hundreds of coaches your personal URL address for your website. Coaches can then simply click on your website link in their email inbox, and start learning about YOU! This is the most direct and effective method to utilize the internet to market a high school player to college coaches. You can even track which coaches opened your email! If they didn't, send it 10 more times. Coaches can access your site anytime they have access to the internet. Players also don't need to worry that they're getting overlooked because a coach misplaces their game tape in a hectic recruiting office (where there are 1000s of player DVDs and tapes).

I hope this information was helpful to all players who are looking to get recruited.

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Note that these are just some of the new methods to market players to college coaches. If you would like to stand out to college coaches and get recruited, my company GameBreaker Media eases the recruiting burden on players and their families by offering all inclusive player marketing packages that combine traditional and internet player marketing services. Get noticed today by contacting me at RyanMettee26@yahoo.com.