Athletic ability is only part of your value.
Academics, character, work ethic, communication, preparation, financial readiness, and community responsibility all affect how a university evaluates you.
Founder & Philosophy
Why Playing the Recruiting Game™ Exists
PTRG was created to help student-athletes understand a process that too often remains confusing until it is already affecting scholarships, college choices, finances, and the direction of a young person's life.
The purpose is not simply to help an athlete get recruited. The purpose is to prepare the student-athlete to become qualified, understand their value, make informed decisions, and arrive at college prepared to succeed on the field, in the classroom, and in the community.
Glenn Stoutt — Founder, Playing the Recruiting Game™Helping the next generation turn athletic opportunity into educational opportunity and a foundation for life.
Where PTRG really began
I learned this process by taking my own son through it from beginning to end.
Playing the Recruiting Game™ did not begin as a collection of recruiting information gathered from the Internet. It grew out of the experience of personally navigating the college recruiting process with my own son.
26
College Offers
20 offers at quarterback and 6 offers at free safety.
Those 26 offers were the result of working through the process: identifying schools, researching programs, communicating with coaches, understanding what coaches were evaluating, dealing with academics and admissions, examining financial opportunities, comparing schools, asking questions, building relationships, and learning how the different parts of a university recruiting decision fit together.
Along the way, I learned things that families are unlikely to discover simply by searching for recruiting information. Some of the most valuable lessons came from actually being inside the process—talking with coaches, counselors, admissions personnel, financial-aid professionals, and the people whose decisions ultimately affect whether a student-athlete can be recruited, admitted, funded, and enrolled.
That firsthand knowledge is one of the things that sets PTRG apart.
Published recruiting rules can be researched. PTRG also teaches the practical knowledge that came from navigating the process, learning what questions to ask, recognizing what was not obvious, and discovering what mattered when real recruiting decisions were being made.
I then took those experiences directly to college coaches and asked them what they look for, what they ask for, what slows the process down, and what information helps them make a decision faster and with less friction.
That combination—firsthand recruiting experience and direct input from the people making college recruiting decisions—became the foundation of the PTRG methodology, the Qualified Student-Athlete standard, the Recruiting Triangle™, and the companion Qualified Recruiting Resume.
The Academy teaches the student-athlete how to become qualified. The recruiting résumé then organizes the evidence of that qualification into one coach-defined package.
The PTRG philosophy
The scholarship matters. The person matters more.
Athletic ability can create access to opportunity, but the larger objective is to teach a young person how to recognize, evaluate, negotiate, protect, and use that opportunity intelligently.
Preparation removes friction.
A prepared student-athlete anticipates what coaches, administration, and finance need and organizes the information before the university has to chase it down.
Money must be understood before it is negotiated.
Scholarships, grants, aid, NIL, institutional benefits, taxes, debt, and real out-of-pocket costs all belong in the decision.
The right college fit is bigger than football or any other sport.
Academics, climate, distance, travel, housing, coaching, teammates, campus life, finances, and life after sport all matter.
The student-athlete must learn to make decisions.
PTRG teaches research, communication, negotiation, accountability, judgment, and self-advocacy so the athlete does not become dependent on someone else to manage every important choice.
The tools should outlast the final game.
The recruiting process is the vehicle. The real destination is a young person better prepared for education, money, work, relationships, contracts, and life.
The Qualified Student-Athlete
The standard PTRG is designed to build.
Ready to compete on the field.Prepared athletically, physically, and mentally.
Ready to perform in the classroom.Academically qualified and responsible for the educational opportunity.
Ready to serve in the community.Character, leadership, responsibility, and representation matter.
Ready to make informed decisions.Money, recruiting, NIL, transfer, contracts, and long-term choices are understood.
PTRG Qualified Coaches
The system is designed to strengthen coaches, not compete with them.
PTRG is not intended to make every student-athlete dependent on the founder. The Academy can also qualify coaches to guide student-athletes and families through the PTRG process with consistency and confidence.
PTRG Academy™
The educational system that teaches the complete recruiting methodology.
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PTRG Qualified Coach
A coach trained to guide student-athletes through the process and help them apply what they learn.
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Founder-Level Support
An additional resource for unusual circumstances, major decisions, financial questions, offer evaluation, or advanced case review.
If a student-athlete is already working with a PTRG Qualified Coach, founder-level consulting supports that relationship rather than replacing it.
The coach remains an important part of the process. Founder consultation can be used as a higher-level resource when additional experience or strategic review is needed.
For families who want me personally involved
Work directly with the person who lived the process that became PTRG™.
PTRG Qualified Coaches are trained to guide student-athletes and their families through the system. The Academy is designed so that a family does not have to depend on me personally in order to use the PTRG process successfully.
But some families may want an additional level of guidance from the person who personally took his own son through the entire recruiting process—a journey that produced 26 college offers, 20 at quarterback and 6 at free safety—and then turned what he learned into the methodology taught throughout PTRG.
Founder consulting applies that firsthand experience to the specific student-athlete, family, school list, coach relationship, offer, financial package, NIL issue, transfer decision, or recruiting circumstance in front of them.
My role is not to replace the athlete's PTRG Qualified Coach or do the recruiting work for the student-athlete. It is to help the family interpret what is happening, recognize what may not be obvious, prepare for important conversations and decisions, ask better questions, evaluate opportunities, and correctly apply the PTRG system when those decisions matter most.
Founder consulting can include:
- Qualified Player Profile and recruiting résumé review.
- Ultimate School List strategy and refinement.
- Coach communication preparation and review.
- Campus visit preparation and post-visit evaluation.
- Offer comparison and financial-package review.
- Recruiting-interest evaluation and next-step strategy.
- NIL, agent, transfer, and financial-readiness case review.
- Support for a PTRG Qualified Coach on a complex athlete case.
The larger mission
Build the athlete. Educate the person. Expand the possibilities.
PTRG exists to help young people see more clearly what is possible, understand how to prepare for opportunity, and carry the tools they learn here into the rest of their lives.