That's all well and good, but I assure you that almost, if not all, of the parents paying for their kids to attend a for-profit training organization like NLN are doing so in the hopes that their kids can get a D1 scholarship.
I'm sure Joel could have been essentially a preferred walk-on at the same D2 school as his older brother with or without NLN. Joel wasn't working out with those guys, his parents weren't paying for him to work out with those guys, for him to go to a D2 school. Face it, NLN represents itself as the "path to D1" and their goal is to send as many kids to D1 as possible so they can put it on their brochures and on their website to get more parents to pay more money to train with them.
Look at the alumni on their website:
http://www.nextlevelnation.com/classgrads.html
It's all scholarship or big name guys, I don't see any D3 kids on there, or kids who aren't playing football in college but "relished the chance to see a college campus." They mention all their 4/5-star recruits, not the "guys who won't go on to play D1 or D2."
On the same website they talk about their "hand-selected" 7-on-7 team and trumpeting their 64-4 record in 7-on-7. If that's not an "All-Star" team I don't know what is. I see Joel is nowhere to be seen on their list of Class of 2012 athletes, guess they can't have someone going to St. Anselm ruin their image.
NLN is all about selling to parents that they can send their kids D1, even if they can't. It is unscrupulous at best and fraudulent at worst. Looking at their website you'd think every kid who ever went through their program was somewhere playing football on a scholarship.
Now they are stooping even lower, pandering to middle school kids and parents. If you look at their Class of 2016 page, it has which prep schools are interested in signing them. Any training organization that has to have a marketing director and a public relations director is clearly primarily in it for the money.
A lot more of the McDonogh kids train with a different personal trainer, who acts how a trainer should act, he stays in the background and doesn't put his name all over the kids successes. I doubt anyone on this board even knows his name, but he's worked with not just HS kids, but college athletes and pros as well.
NLN strives to get their name out all over the place, because they are a business first and a venture for helping kids second, more D1 kids= larger profits for them.
I have a great amount of respect for Lawrence Smith at Dunbar, as well as a great (if grudging) amount of respect for Biff Poggi. They have both spoken out against this, and I do as well. I believe Coach Smith used the phrase "preying on the weak" to describe these types of organizations. Obviously no one can stop NLN from operating, but I urge every coach out there to take a good look at the facts and make a decision: Is this really something you want your student-athletes involved in?
Like it or not, NLN represents the kind of "3rd party organizations" that the NCAA does not want having access to student-athletes. I don't want any rouge unregulated "trainers" having access to my players. Not because of my ego, but because that's when NCAA violations occur. I have no problem with my players going to a camp at UMD or Pitt or WVU or anywhere else, because I know the coaches there are going to be bound by NCAA rules, unlike the NLN coaches, the "all-star" 7-on-7 events, and the non-school sponsored combines. I don't want a young man losing out on his future because some greedy "trainer" overstepped his boundaries.
You may not like the ESPN Outside the Lines piece, but there is one condemning statement about NLN from Deontay McManus. He talks around Cory Robinson and if they ever talk about potential violations. McManus said they didn't, that Robinson said "just trust me, I wouldn't do anything to hurt you." If you're not willing to talk to a kid who asks about what constitutes an NCAA violation and what doesn't, you've probably either broken or are breaking the rules.
Originally Posted by eaglesinsider
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