How AI has infiltrated the college football recruiting landscape

You’re a high school football recruit in need of exposure, so you flood the inboxes of recruiting departments around the country with highlight clips. The hope is to catch the attention of some overworked staffer who might pass it along to a personnel director or position coach.

Depending on where you send it, there’s a chance you won’t even be evaluated by a human.

“We have some alums … they built out an (AI) agent that watches film,” said a personnel staffer at a Power 4 program. “They have our grades. It’s watched hundreds of hours of film to train itself for watching a kid’s highlights and giving him an initial grade. … And if they have a good enough grade, we’ll dig into them more.”

The use of AI isn’t reserved just for Power 4 programs with Power 4 money. Some Group of 6 schools might use less sophisticated (and less expensive) tools, but if they help with efficiency, it’s a success.

“How can we use AI to generate a better list so instead of watching 5,000 kids — who I have no clue who’s good enough, who’s not — we filter it down to 1,000?” a Group of 6 general manager said. “AI can sort through it, and instead of us sorting through 5,000, just give us the top 500 that we should be paying attention to, and that’ll save us time so we’re evaluating the right ones and not evaluating everyone.”

Of course, there’s a quality control element to this. The P4 staffer said it took some time to mold and shape the AI agent before it was proficient at assessing film. The G6 general manager said you have to be very selective with what you want AI to look for.

“I think some people, their version of AI is getting it to give them all the answers, and that’s 100 percent wrong,” he said. “It needs to be used as a filter.”

The filters can include 40 times, broad jump distance and production metrics based on the level of competition, among many other things.

To no surprise, there are still plenty of skeptics. One P4 personnel director questioned how AI can quantify movement skills, body type, change of direction, lateral mobility and stiffness.

“All those different things that go into it — you’re going to rely on a computer to do it? That would scare me,” he said.

There’s also the c-word: culture.

“At this point, we’re so big into the character and makeup,” he said, “and AI is just not going to help you with that. What are you going to do, type ‘intelligent’ into a cell column? And it’ll filter all the intelligent players? I don’t know. There’s a human nature to this.”

A second P4 staffer wasn’t quite as dismissive, but didn’t seem eager to utilize AI on a day-to-day basis.

“At the end of the day, it can never fully replace real evaluation, and even watching the film never replaces live evaluation,” he said.

While many are clearly skeptical of AI’s ability to properly study film, there’s no doubting its efficiency in another important area of the recruiting landscape: graphic design.

Find something a recruit is interested in and a picture of him, and AI can produce a (relatively) slick graphic pretty quickly. Theoretically, that could help lighten the load for creative departments that are already bogged down with more detailed recruiting graphics, videos and photo shoots.

“That’s always a fun way to use it and engage kids for sure,” a P4 staffer said. “We just do quick things we think of on there and send it to the kids. Nothing super in depth.”

On the negative side, doctored recruiting film is also becoming a thing. The following tweet made the rounds earlier this year because the plays were generated by AI, yet looked realistic.

NEW: Football recruits are figuring out how to use AI to fabricate FAKE highlight plays.

All these plays were generated by artificial intelligence.

This will completely SHAKE up the football world 🤯 pic.twitter.com/ZxJ9AUJKXF

— College Transfer Portal (@CollegeFBPortal) February 27, 2026

“I haven’t seen one yet, at least I haven’t identified one yet,” the P4 personnel director said with a laugh. “It’s going to happen. I got super scared. If that becomes a thing, oh, we’re in trouble.”

Staffers maintain that recruits have actually manipulated highlights for years, before AI, and there are tells, such as watching to see if the referees or people in the stands are sped up. In one of the clips in the post above, there is an “11-yard” line (instead of 10) on the field.

Artificial intelligence, like humans, is still prone to mistakes. But it’ll be fascinating to track its use in college football as the technology — and the opinions around it — change.

“The future of AI is modeling and team building,” the G6 GM said. “As I go into the portal and I need a third running back, I’m going to want AI to help me generate a model for what I’m looking for. If I’ve got two 220-pound backs who are bruisers, don’t give me a list of every running back in the country, give me a list of scat backs, give me a list of return guys, give me a list of all the guys who can catch the ball out of the backfield.”

In the end, though, recruiting is still about relationships and convincing a 17- or 18-year-old to attend your school.

“You’ve got (a five-star prospect),” the P4 personnel director said, “and my 6-year-old niece could turn on the tape and tell you he could play football really well. The hard part is going and recruiting him, and I don’t think AI is helping you much in the recruiting world.”