Five Minutes Is All It Takes — Your Kid's Recruiting Reality Check
Do you know how long it takes to evaluate whether a player is recruitable. Five minutes. Probably less.
Five minutes includes the time to find them. What about all the camps, the showcases, the highlight videos, the social media presence? What about the politics, the connections, the who-you-know game?
Here’s the truth: we live in 2026. The internet exists. Information is everywhere. Give me a player’s name and I can tell you in five minutes whether any college coach anywhere is going to be interested enough to pick up the phone. I didn’t say what level. I didn’t say how much scholarship or NIL money. Not whether they’ll make an offer — that takes real evaluation. But whether they’ll even bother to find out more.
This isn’t 1984. Coaches don’t need to rely on word-of-mouth or wait for a player to show up at their camp. They can watch film online. They can check stats. They can see what level of competition a kid plays against. They can look at measurables. Five minutes of honest research tells them everything they need to know to decide if it’s worth their time to dig deeper. And all they need is a name.
The problem is that parents think recruiting is about exposure. They think it’s political. They think their kid just needs to be seen by the right person at the right time. And look, you’re not entirely wrong — politics exist, connections matter, timing can be everything. But that’s not the barrier you think it is.
The barrier is that your kid isn’t good enough yet. Or they’re good enough but playing against competition that doesn’t matter. Or they’re talented but no one has taught them how to actually play basketball. Or, or, or… These are a few of the things that show up in five minutes of research.
I’ve had parents tell me their kid is being overlooked because they don’t play for the right AAU program. Then 5 minutes of a workout or 45 seconds of a highlight video and I know the issue. I’ve had families convinced their son is getting blackballed because he had a disagreement with a coach, and maybe that happened, but that’s not why he isn’t getting recruited.
The five-minute test isn’t about being mean. It’s about being honest. College coaches have limited time and almost unlimited options. They’re not going to spend hours evaluating a player who doesn’t pass basic thresholds. Neither should you.
Here’s what shows up in five minutes: Do they look like a college basketball player when they’re on the court? Are they playing against legitimate competition? What are their verifiable stats? What holes do they have in their game?
These aren’t trick questions. They’re baseline qualifications. If your kid doesn’t pass the five-minute test, no amount of exposure is going to fix that. No camp is going to create recruiting interest. No highlight video is going to convince a coach to overlook fundamental deficiencies.
But here’s the good news: if you can identify what’s missing in five minutes, you can also identify what needs to be fixed. Maybe it’s skills. Maybe it’s strength. Maybe it’s competition level. Maybe it’s all of the above.
The five-minute test isn’t the end of the conversation — it’s the beginning. It tells you where you actually stand and what you actually need to work on. It cuts through all the noise and gets to the real work.
Most families spend years chasing exposure when they should spend months fixing the things that would make exposure matter. The five-minute test shows you the difference.
So ask yourself: if a college coach spent five minutes researching your kid right now, would they want to spend five more?
Aram runs Hoops College, a basketball training program in Charlotte. The program is the offer that follows from the argument. → hoopscollege.com