College football recruiting is a season that never ends

As the popularity of college football has soared over the last dozen years, feeding the legions of loyal fans new and innovative information about their teams has spawned a beast today whose thirst almost seems unquenchable.

What started in the 1990s with magazines and 1-900 call-in numbers has become a powerful, expansive, fast-paced and still-growing outlet to follow the molding and shaping of the more than 100 NCAA Division I programs nationwide.

Major college football recruiting is riding a popularity wave the likes of which has never been seen.

Served up a perfect medium when the Internet became a thread of daily life, the demand for major college football recruiting information has steadily increased on almost a yearly basis for the last decade.

"Recruiting databases built in the late 1990s on the Internet created a product that was easily accessible and cheap, bringing an interesting product to a much broader base."

Cheap, accessible and providing new information ... what more could a modern-day passionate college football fan want?

The vehicle was the Internet. And like the famous line from the movie "Field of Dreams" asserted, "If you build it, they will come."

After the collision between the recruiting of Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) players and the web, the aftershocks of the initial explosion are still being felt today.

The consumer is driving the market. And serious college football fans are purchasing Smartphone apps, clicking for online subscriptions and trolling a variety of websites for inside information at a rate some might find alarming.

"In my opinion, the key is to give fans what they want," said JC Shurburtt, the national recruiting director for 247Sports, the new kid on the block. "I think we make a mistake industrywide. We are too ego-driven by breaking news or scooping the other guy.

"While it’s always important to compete, and if you aren’t competitive you will fail quickly doing this stuff, it’s paramount in today’s climate to focus on your readers and fans."

And whether it’s alarming or not, the demand for unique and fresh information clearly exists.

"I think the key is the same as any market: Deliver a consistent, well-respected, timely and interesting product," Kennedy said. "And keep getting better. More features, more interaction, etc." 

It all started in the early stages of the 2000s with Scout and Rivals — a pair of outlets already dabbling in the business of major college football recruiting before the Internet boom.

Once this duo went virtual, the sky has been the limit. More outlets have emerged, more content is available, more writers have jobs, more information is available on a daily basis from recruits courtesy of social media ... more, more, more.

"I think there is a ceiling to it, but I’m just not sure where it is. I compare recruiting to two of my other early hobbies," Kennedy said. "When I was in high school watching the NFL draft in 1988, I was one of the crazy ones who taped it and watched it over and over. Now it’s a four-day event.

"In the early ‘90s, a few of us would comb boxscores from newspapers to calculate our fantasy football teams. Now everyone and his grandmother has a team. When I first started covering recruiting, I had to explain to my close friends what I did for a living because they didn’t understand. Now their wives ask me where a kid might be leaning."