“Exposure” events: Legit vs Bogus

Just like when you’re walking down the beach, there is good exposure and bad exposure.

I’ll be upfront here, I HATE the word exposure because of what it’s become. There are a lot of organizations out there today that are taking advantage of the word “exposure” and running events or programs that claim to provide exposure (or opportunity) for players, but they are simply selling fear. Fear of THE UNKNOWN because the process is so confusing it’s easy to make people believe they are missing out or being left behind.

Legit exposure - There are several AAU events and camps over the course of every spring and summer that college coaches flock to. Depending on which one we’re talking about, nearly every school in the country could be there. I’m not going to give a convincing two thumbs up to these because they are not good exposure for everyone in attendance. But coaches are there, and players definitely have the opportunity to be seen. The organizations running them put on a quality event and it’s beneficial to a lot of players. If you or your teams focus is to attend for the competition because your too young to get recruited, then I can certainly celebrate that.

Legit exposure - College Elite Camps have become a great way to be seen by coaches. They are a much more targeted approach because you are going to a college who is putting on the camp. The coaches of that school are actually running the camp and working with you which is genius and gives you a guaranteed opportunity for them to see you play. The positive is that you have first hand interaction with the coaches, the negative is that it’s only one school. So in order to take advantage of this opportunity, you have to be selective about what camps you go to. You can’t go 100 different camps. There’s a few things to be aware of here… some schools run invite only camps and only invite their top 20 recruits so you may not get in… some schools use it as a money maker for their program so they invite 300 kids and it becomes watered down. Most are somewhere in between so it is a good situation. One other note, several of the Ivy League schools run their elite camp and invite all the high academic D3 schools to come watch as well. This is perfect for a player who dreams of a D1 spot on an Ivy League roster, but would be happy to attend a high academic with a great basketball program.

Bogus Exposure - This is hard to define because it’s such a wide spectrum of junk. A better approach is to be highly skeptical and possibly avoid any camp, tournament, team, event, coach, etc that offers and especially promises:

• Rankings. College coaches laugh at these, don’t get caught up.
• Scholarships. A scholarship offer is a long process that involves more than the person telling you they will get you one.
• “College coaches will be in attendance”. This line is so vague, it could be two coaches from D6 schools in Antarctica.
• “Getting seen”. If you ever hear this out of someone’s mouth, please ask them politely… “seen by who and for what purpose”.  If they say to be ranked, see bullet #1.
• Games will be live-streamed for college coaches. This is so hard to prove how many coaches or what coaches? This is a fantastic feature for grandma, but not sure how many college coaches are tuning in.
• Exposure for players 15U and younger. No college coaches are paying attention at that age so don’t let them fool you.

I could keep adding to this list but I think you get the idea.

As I said in the beginning, like walking on the beach, there’s the good kind and the bad kind of exposure. Beware of that bad kind because boy is it ugly.