AGC #032 - Hard truths about college playing time

Every year in the college recruiting process, numerous recruits will ask a version of this question:

“How much playing time will I get?”

On the face of it, this isn’t an unreasonable query.

It’s the type of question recruits are advised to ask, to help ascertain whether they are a priority for the school they are talking to.

The problem is, it’s a completely unanswerable question.

I tell recruits this when it is brought up on calls and visits, but it comes up often enough that I figured the rationale is worth sharing with a wider audience.

Here are 4 hard truths about playing time in college:

Nobody can predict the future

If a coach is recruiting you, it’s reasonable for you to assume they believe you could make an impact on the field for their program.

They are, ultimately, trying to bring in better players than the ones they currently have.

Whether you will have an impact or not, is impossible to know two years ahead of time.

There are too many variables - starting with your future personal growth and development, and ending with where the team might be at when you arrive on campus.

If a coach confidently tells you how much playing time you’ll get if you commit to them, there’s a good chance they’re just telling you what you want to hear.

Coaches haven’t seen you in their team environment yet

During evaluations, coaches examine your potential to see if you are the right fit athletically, culturally, technically, and tactically for their team.

But they are ultimately taking a punt on everyone they commit to their program.

Some freshmen walk into the team environment and thrive from day one. Others take time to settle in and get going; some never fully find their feet.

Every coach has stories of players they thought would do amazing things on the field who never quite made it.

Every coach also has stories of players they worried might struggle to make an impact, but ended up playing a larger role than anticipated.

Ultimately, your playing time potential can’t be known until you set foot on campus and start practicing, to see how you stack up against that year’s team.

Scholarship, seniority, and titles shouldn’t matter

In the same way that being a walk-on doesn’t preclude you from getting playing time, being on scholarship doesn’t ensure you’ll get it either.

Similarly, the titles and accolades you earned in high school might have helped you get in the door, but it’s what you do next that’ll keep you in the building.

Furthermore, if you’re good enough, you’re old enough.

But being old enough doesn’t always mean you’re good enough.

Just as being a freshman doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll have to wait to see the field, being a sophomore or an upperclassman doesn’t automatically entitle you to playing time.

Playing time is earned, is never guaranteed, and needs to be fought for every day.

Coaches and players have different motivations

Would you prefer to be a starter on a team that always loses, or ride the bench for one that always wins?

Sport is rarely that binary, but even the most selfless humans would grapple with this question, because it’s normal to want the best for yourself.

It also speaks to the differences in motivations between players - whose playing time motivations will have an individualistic component - and coaches, whose job it is to look at the bigger picture.

You might have worked hard during the off-season.

You could have improved in all the areas you were asked to.

You could be the fittest you’ve ever been.

You could have done everything in your control to be in a position to get the playing time you crave.

And it still might not be enough for what the coach needs.

That is an unfortunate reality of performance sport.

College coaches - like all coaches in performance sport - are broadly tasked with doing two things: winning games, and providing a great student-athlete experience.

Ultimately, their job is to make the decisions they believe to be in the best interests of the program.

And that means making difficult choices with the best information they have available at the time, knowing it will negatively impact their players.

That’s why it’s important in your college search to find the coaches who will still care about you as a human, irrespective of whether you play no minutes or all the minutes.

As Gregg Popovich (above) famously put it, find the ones who will “tell you the truth and love you to death”.

Further reading on playing time / selections ⬇️