Trickle Down Recruiting

Trickle down recruiting happens every year throughout the country. What exactly is it? It's when there aren't enough recruitable prospects that fit the level of certain schools and it forces that same school to recruit a player that normally would be recruitable at a lower level. In normal terms, it's when a D1 school recruits what is normally a D2 player and when a D2 school recruits what is normally a D3 player.

Why does this happen?

You will see it a lot with schools that recruit at a state or regional level. Most of their athletes are from the state that the school is located or in the surrounding states. Knowing that there isn't as many as recruitable athletes in a certain class, schools will go after a player that fits perfectly into a lower level school.

I'll just throw an example of schools that are local. North Dakota State generally gets kids from the Upper Midwest. In the class of 2016 (I don't know this, it's all hypothetical) there is a limited amount of low major D1 players that are available. Since there is a very limited number of players that are recruitable, they will go after a kid that would normally go to MN-Duluth. Since, MN-Duluth can't get their "normal" prospect, they then go after a kid that would normally go to UW-Eau Claire.

In the grand scheme of things, the D3 school gets hit the most. Why? The prospects that they are normally looking for get decreased drastically. It also forces the D3 schools to get creative with their recruiting. By creative, I mean, go out of state and/or get junior college guys.

What happens next?

After about an year or two, the kids and their current coach realize (maybe it's just the kid) that there really isn't a role for the player on the current team. They realize that playing time won't be very easy to come by, especially after the next recruiting comes in and that now sophomore isn't the player that a few of the freshmen are.

These players then transfer down a level to where they originally fit. They end up being successful at that level and everyone ends up happy. Sometimes you'll see kids eventually transfer down two levels and realize the D3 level is exactly what they are looking for. The allure of the scholarship blinded their decision making skills during their recruitment.