By DAVID PURDUM
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 02/01/06
For highly touted running back Cameron Smith, the football recruiting process began his sophomore year at Meadowcreek. By the time he landed at Brookwood late in his junior season, Smith says he was well-versed in the NCAA academic regulations for incoming freshman athletes.

"I looked into it myself with some of the handbooks," he said, "and [former Meadowcreek] coach [George] Pugh and [Brookwood] coach [Mark] Crews helped me understand them better over a period of time."
 

Jason Getz/staff
(ENLARGE)
Cameron Smith isn't expected to be one of the athletes to sign a letter of intent today.
 
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Still, Smith isn't expected to be one of the nearly four dozen Gwinnett County athletes to sign football commitments on national signing day today. Considered a major college prospect, with apparent offers from Georgia, Virginia and California, he still is striving to meet NCAA academic standards.

Although coaches can push players on the field and reinforce the importance of academics, students have the final say in their future.

To be academically eligible for a scholarship to a Division I or II school, students must graduate from high school, complete a minimum of 14 core courses, earn at least a 2.0 grade-point average in those courses and produce a qualifying test score on the ACT or SAT.

For Division I applicants, the minimum test scores required are relative to the grade-point average. For example, if a student has a 2.0 GPA, he must score at least 1010 on the SAT or 86 on the ACT. With a GPA of 3.55 and higher, students need only a 400 on the SAT or 37 on the ACT. In Division II, no sliding scale exists. Students must meet the minimum 2.0 GPA and score at least a combined 820 on the SAT's verbal and math sections or 68 on the ACT.

"That's something we discuss from the day they enter school here," Dacula athletics director and football coach Kevin Maloof said. "It's a learning process that begins as ninth-graders. It's our intent by the time they are juniors that they realize what they have accomplished in the classroom. I've been fortunate that most of my kids have had the grades, but I've had one or two go the junior college route. There's a few that just don't ever figure it out."

At Buford, coach Jess Simpson organizes a spring meeting between graduating seniors and their families and seniors-to-be.

"We like to exchange stories on kids that have already gone through the recruiting process and the kids that are getting ready to go through it," Simpson said. "We also stress to the freshmen and 10th-graders that if they want to play sports in college that you can't wait until your junior or senior year to start working in the classroom. It's too late by then."

Buford has had 20 football players sign with Division I programs since 1995.