Institutional work among football recruiters in the Southeastern Conference: The marginalization of educational attainment

Previous research has found National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) Power-4 conference football programs operate within a football-centric institutional logic that prioritizes winning and revenue generation. The recruiting process and its various components (e.g. official visits, in-home visits, daily communication), which are conducted by recruiting staff members, expose recruits to accepted institutional behaviors. Based upon recent scholarship, it is hypothesized that these recruiting components contribute to high school football recruits largely abandoning their academic role and becoming engulfed in their athletic role. Accordingly, this study sought to explore the institutional work of Power-4 football recruiters – who coordinate and implement this recruiting process – which reflects an institution’s material practices, symbolic constructions, and organizing principles. To this end, researchers conducted a series of interviews with Southeastern Conference (SEC) (n = 4) football recruiters to examine whether their institutional work supported and/or maintained adherence to a dominant Power-4 conference football-centric institutional logic.