Necessity is the Mother of Invention
Chicagoland training facility on cutting edge of football recruiting technology
The country has proven to be disagreeable on the topic of the coronavirus pandemic.
Live with it or diffuse it? One could ask this question to 10 passersby and receive split polling numbers.
No one can disagree on the impact the virus has had on the economy. Many small businesses, once thriving in a robust consumption environment, are holding on for dear life in hopes of recovery. Others are attempting to do more than just survive, re-discovering how the old parable—necessity is the mother of invention—can be repurposed into a 2020 mission statement.
When invention meets demand, that’s when true innovation occurs.
In 1994, Elias Karras started a personal fitness business out of his car. By the end of 2019, his company, EFT Sports Performance, had two locations in Chicagoland. EFT had something even a Google search could not usurp—reputation and word-of-mouth.
Young athletes from all over the North Shore and surrounding suburbs inhabited EFT’s Highland Park location in the off-season to get stronger and faster for their respective sports.
“I’m sending my kid to EFT this winter,” parents would invariably say when asked about the next phase of the son or daughter’s athletic development.
A steady steam of corporate clientele added consistent income for Karras and EFT.
In March, the coronavirus pandemic swept the country. And seemingly overnight, small businesses such as EFT, not considered ‘essential’, lost almost all of their revenue.
“I lost high school contracts and corporate accounts are not bringing employees back,” Karras said. “Three months of no revenue so you add that up. I’m just trying to survive this thing.”
Karras did receive a loan through a government assistance program for small businesses. He received enough money to keep his Highland Park facility open.
On June 1, Karras re-opened the building in Highland Park. Public health guidelines forced him and his staff to get creative with how they trained athletes but they were back training athletes again. Demand for his highly-personal, functional-movement centric workouts had not subsided.
“These kids hadn’t played football since November. You can’t go 12 months not doing anything,” Karras said.
Pre-pandemic, Karras regularly hosted combine-style events. Hundreds of athletes flocked to his facility, making use of the 2500 square feet of astro turf to show off their skill sets to eager college coaches. With the virus, public health guidelines forbid large gatherings. Karras had to change his approach and invent something new. By doing so, he may have found a unique model to market high school football players to colleges.
Malachi McNeal is a 6-foot, 220-pound linebacker out of Warren. An all-area performer as a junior on a Class 8A state runner-up team in 2019, McNeal had lofty ambitions going into the spring and summer of 2020.
Camps. Showcases. Visits to college campuses, all efforts geared towards one outcome—multiple scholarship offers. But the coronavirus pandemic wiped out everything. There would be none of the in-person evaluations critical for ‘21 grad recruits.
“It was kind of a struggle with recruitment as everyone was like ‘you are a kid we want to see at camp. We want to see how you are against other kids,’” McNeal said. “That’s the tricky part with the (virus) thing.”
McNeal had worked out at EFT with Warren Blue Devil teammates in the past. Soon after EFT re-opened in early June, Karras asked McNeal if he wanted to be filmed going through a series of football-specific exercises, the same type of exercises he’d be doing if attending a physical camp. He enthusiastically agreed.
The first few seconds of the video show McNeal standing on a scale. The camera zooms in on the number shown: 221 (pounds). The result is written in loud white font. Next, McNeal stands under a height measurement gadget (it reads 6’, 1/8”).
Over the next two minutes, McNeal hand length is measured, his vertical jump recorded as are multiple combine-style drills and a 40-yard dash run.
Karras dubbed the venture a ‘virtual camp.’
“It’s a customized, personalized video profile of the athlete. It has their actual skills and shows them moving at the position they are projected to be at the next level,” Karras said.
A team of videographers and editors turn the footage around in a few days.
McNeal said it took some time to film the exercises as getting the measurements exactly right is essential.
“We had to re-film a few times because it has to be so specific, just to show we didn’t cheat it,” McNeal said.
When recruiting a high school player, there is no more valuable currency to a college coach than verifiable information. That’s why in person camps are irreplaceable. How does a player respond to our coaching? How does he look on our field, using our equipment? Coaches are constantly in search of instant feedback they can process and use for evaluation. The eyes, when only a few feet away from a recruit, are to be trusted more confidently than when viewing the same recruit work out via a laptop.
Since early March, college coaches are operating at a recruiting deficit. No summer camps, no recruits allowed on campus. That dead period is likely to be throughout the rest of 2020.
“We can’t have kids on campus and show them around, It’s very tough,” Brent Bassham said, co-offensive coordinator at Colgate University.
Bassham recruits Midwestern states Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan and Minnesota for Colgate. Unable to travel, his evaluation of recruits is all online—Zoom calls, Twitter DM’s, text messages and video. Lots of video.
He is skeptical of online camps as the information presented is often not authentic.
“If he runs a 40 yard dash, maybe its not 40? If you get creative, you can skew tests,” Baasham said. “You can put a five pound weight in your pocket. There are ways around that stuff.”
But Baasham admits there is value in the ‘virtual camp’ style format done through EFT.
“It’s good to actually see and visualize it. If you are questioning someone’s height and weight then on a scale you can see how much they weigh, how tall they are. There are some good things about that,” Bassham said.
McNeal posted his virtual camp video on July 2. Within days, he received offers from Fordham and North Dakota State.
He said coaches at those schools told him the video made a difference in them offering McNeal.
“They liked me (before) but the video pushed them over the top,” McNeal said. “The video is a game-changer because we couldn’t have a (live) camp.”
Christian Eubanks, a junior at Carmel Catholic (Mundelein, IL) has never participated in a college camp or combine.
While he has yet to be recruited by colleges beyond letters and emails, he said the virtual camp is another means with which he can get noticed and separate himself from other recruits. .
“It's was fun and a different experience for me. Coaches can see my measurements and how fast I move my feet,” Eubanks said, a 6-foot, 180-pound Waukegan resident.
In Illinois, high school football will not be played until March 2021. By then, it will be a year and a half since the end of the 2019 season. That’s a long time for an athlete with college ambitions to not participate in a live game.
The gap between seasons does not diminish the supply and demand industry of college recruiting. Players still want to play at the highest levels and athletic departments need product. Whether college football is played in 2020 or punts until 2021 does not change this dynamic.
Karras is starting to emerge from the revenue hole created by coronavirus pandemic. He said feedback on his virtual camp from college coaches is promising as is from recruiting insiders Edgy Tim, 24/7 Sports and Clint Cosgrove of National Preps.
The experience of the last five months has solidified his resolve to continue to innovate and by doing so, provide a much-needed service in the marketplace.
“The biggest thing is still high school football. There is nothing for these guys to report on so they can’t go anywhere and see anyone. Recruiting is a year round thing so if they miss out on stuff, the coaches don’t get to see them,” Karras said. “By getting these videos out, it’s helping coaches at all levels. It’s an extra tool in the war chest for the kids.”