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Rivals, a leading recruiting services website, garnered attention last week in high school and college circles when it publicly introduced a new feature that would create a major ripple in the industry.
“Get on the Radar. Be recruited,” the tagline reads for Rivals Recruits, a paid service that promises a chance for increased exposure, and potentially more interest from college programs.
The recruiting site is offering services at multiple levels, starting at $29.99 to claim a profile and begin building a personal portfolio. At its peak, the service costs $399 for an evaluation from one of the site’s scouts and consideration to be ranked in the website’s official database.
Rivals’s announcement of the program on Sept. 24 was met with immediate backlash on social media.
“Feels predatory,” former NFL player Chris Long posted on X.
“This is a MASSIVE MONEY GRAB taking advantage of parents and kids,” 2011 Heisman Trophy winner and current Fox Sports college analyst Robert Griffin III added. “[Rivals] should be ashamed of themselves.”
Rivals and similar websites like 247Sports and ESPN have published recruiting rankings for decades, assigning prospects star ratings (typically on a scale between two and five stars), while serving as the metric the public uses to evaluate college programs’ recruiting success. But Rivals’s latest development prompts a larger question: what is the value of a recruiting profile, or ranking, in the present day?
The company is set to test that question.
Rivals Responds
Rivals founder and owner Shannon Terry rejects the idea that the service takes advantage of families, and dismisses much of the online criticism as coming from competitors and people who “don’t like us.”
“No one’s forced to do anything, and our pricing is fully up front,” Terry tells Front Office Sports. “There’s no mystery box and see what happens later. If you want to claim your profile, if you want to order an evaluation, they’re there. There’s nothing more to it, nothing less. Or don’t do anything.”
The evaluation was originally announced at $499 with a temporary 20% discount, but Terry tells FOS that $399 is the official price. He says the evaluations are done by scouts, not AI, and most of the cost goes toward paying them for their time. He adds that he hopes to eventually lower the price. “I certainly don’t want to lose money on it today,” he says. “But we’re a business.”
Though the tool is positioned as an avenue for the under-recruited, Rivals has faced accusations of promoting it to players who are already established and have offers. Others have alleged a potential referral bonus for employees who can garner evaluation orders from their shared links.
“There’s no salespeople. We’re not reaching out. We’re not building a sales arm to do this,” Terry says of the claims Rivals has targeted established prospects. Still, Terry confirms that every employee, regardless of position, receives compensation “directly and indirectly tied to reach and awareness.”
Under Rivals’s new “On the Radar” program, scouts continue to evaluate top prospects. They also create scouting reports for players who aren’t considered at least a three-star prospect, but still have the potential to play collegiately at some level. Once the prospects are evaluated, Rivals’s scouts will list players who stand out with a grade—not a star ranking—on a scale of 0–100, reflecting their projected potential. For example, 70–74 indicates a Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) designation, while 75–84 is considered a Group of 6-level prospect.
“Most kids nationally are [non-Division I prospects],” Terry says. “Now we have the platform that allows them to tell their story with tools necessary to do it. We have a platform that both grades them for no cost, and if they really want to dig in and learn more, they can go through it.”
The grades are free if a player receives one organically. Then, if that player would like to take ownership of that profile and update it as they see fit, they can “claim the profile” through verification with their parents for $29.99 in the first year and $59.99 in subsequent years.
If the family wants to be evaluated in the same way that a blue-chip prospect is, they pay the $399 price. The evaluation is private unless the family chooses to make it publicly available on the profile. Evaluations include verifying a player’s height and weight, a film breakdown, interviews with the athlete’s high school coach and more.
One Atlanta-area high school coach, in Georgia’s highest classification, acknowledges that the price point may turn some families off. But he also pointed to NIL (name, image, and likeness) as a potential moving factor: Becoming a star-rated player is a potentially valuable byproduct of the evaluation.
“I think they’re wanting to see how far parents are willing to go for an evaluation to secure NIL,” he said. “High/low risk for a bigger reward in NIL.”
What’s a Ranking Worth?
One Power 4 position coach likens this concept to another platform he used while coaching at the Division II and NAIA level, called Next College Student Athlete [NCSA], which allows athletes to create online profiles featuring highlight videos, academic transcripts, stats, and athletic achievements. The platform isn’t regularly used at the highest level of college football, due to a large amount of resources devoted to recruiting and scouting. But the coach told FOS he could see Rivals’s expanded platform as a useful tool at lower levels, even if it’s just in the discovery stage.
Still, many coaches contend that there’s no greater evaluation than their own, whether that’s watching player tape or in-person at their own camps during the summer. As one Group of 6 support staffer tells FOS: “I’ve never heard of going solely off of a database.”
Georgia State quarterbacks coach Ryan Williams was among a group of college coaches who spoke out against the idea. “Waste of money,” he said via his X account. “We don’t recruit based on Rivals rankings.”
Georgia State quarterbacks coach Ryan Williams was among a group of college coaches who spoke out against the idea. “Waste of money,” he said via his X account. “We don’t recruit based on Rivals rankings.
Coaches seem split, depending on the level, on how much recruiting services matter. Many see them as useful, but no longer essential, especially with so much information readily available through school-run camps, in-house scouting departments, and other platforms like Hudl and MaxPreps.
Terry pushes back on the idea that coaches don’t rely on his company’s work.
“[Coaches] live on it,” he says. “They reach out to every scout we have … That’s been the norm from the start. For everyone that says publicly they have no interest in rankings—O.K. The facts are all of those coaches are looking for more information and we’ve been a supplier of that.”
Another Power 4 assistant coach tells FOS that he agrees that coaches use the platforms and that he expects they will continue doing so, as long as they remain free for coaches to use.
Rivals initially launched the ‘On the Radar’ platform in November 2025, and the paid evaluation tool followed in July. Terry estimates there are about 300 profiles that are currently public.
“We’re not getting thousands of people trying to be evaluated,” Terry says. “It’s a handful or so coming in; there’s only eight scouts that are active today.” Terry says Rivals has scouts ready to hire should the demand surpass the current supply.
Terry estimated that Rivals star-rated around 6,600 athletes last year, a fraction of players nationally. That scarcity is a part of what has given star ratings value over the years; the open question is whether selling evaluations dilutes it.
Last week’s public push sparked backlash, but the plan to scale this new platform has continued. Terry emphasizes that it’s intended for athletes who aren’t already attracting attention.
“Depends on who you are,” Terry says. “Are you being seen? The Jeremiah Smiths of the world, they don’t even turn on the computer. But there are a lot of athletes that aren’t getting noticed, they need guidance too … You can walk on at a D-I program, or you can go get a full scholarship [at a lower-level school]. Those are big decisions.”
The Atlanta-area high school coach pointed out that in some ways this system has existed under the table for years. Coaches and/or parents lobbying for scouts to attend games or camps to write articles that could sway rankings has been commonplace. Now, there’s a way to bring that practice above board.
“They’re pretty much saying, ‘O.K., for years we’ve done it this way for a superior group of individuals. Let’s put it out there for the public and see how much we can make,’” the coach said.
