COACH'S VIEW: INDIANS LOOK AHEAD TO FINAL GAME, RECRUITING WARS

With our final game of the season Saturday afternoon at Tennessee State in Nashville, I would like to take this opportunity to tell you a little about the recruiting process that is so important in any collegiate sport.

Football is different than basketball and other sports because there is no early signing period for high school players.

Under NCAA rules, we can have contact with high school seniors between Nov. 26 and Dec. 16. This means we can visit the players at school or in their homes. We can also bring them to campus for official visits.

From Dec. 16 until Jan. 15 is a dead period for football recruiting, which can begin again on Jan. 15 and continue until another dead period beginning on Feb. 5. The signing date for high school players begins on Feb. 7.

During the contact periods, you can see an athlete once a week and you can call your prospects every day.

The evaluation period for high school seniors began in September and runs until Nov. 20, but we are allowed to evaluate on only six days during that period and we are restricted to one evaluation per school. During the season, on six selected days we had the opportunity to visit schools and watch games or practices. We are also allowed to call athletes once a week during the evaluation period.

We invited players in our area to our games. You may have seen some of the prospects on the sideline during warmups prior to our games. Once the games began the prospects had to be in the stands.

We have made our evaluations in our surrounding areas that include St. Louis and Memphis and we have watched tape on players from all over the nation. We want to concentrate on our local area, but we want the best players regardless of where they come from.

Right now we know 90 percent of the players we want to talk to when the contact period begins, but we are always on the lookout for other good players.

Another important aspect of recruiting is for junior college players. The early signing date for junior college players is Dec. 18. This means that a junior college player who signs and meets eligibility standards can transfer to Southeast for the second semester and have the opportunity to compete in spring drills with our current players. This gives those players a leg up on transfers who come in for fall drills.

Once the contact period begins, we will be concentrating on junior college players in Kansas, Texas and California.

There is also the opportunity to pick up Division I-A transfers who can transfer down one time without losing a year of eligibility. A I-A transfer who is academically eligible at his current school can transfer to a I-AA school and be eligible next season.

Under NCAA rules, Division I-AA schools are able to sign 30 players each year but are restricted to 63 players total. In Division I-A, they can bring in only 25 new players per year but have a total of 85 scholarships. This sounds strange, but the difference is that in I-AA you can give partial scholarships while I-A schools can give only full scholarships.

I feel good about where we are in the recruiting process for this year. We had a good recruiting class last year and we need to follow up with another good class. As a coaching staff, we are better prepared to know what athletes we need to compete in the Ohio Valley Conference because we have competed against all the teams and know what to expect.

A win in our final game at Tennessee State Saturday would certainly give us even more confidence going into the recruiting wars.

Tim Billings is the head football coach at Southeast Missouri State University