Dear football recruit:  Now that you’ve accepted my scholarship offer, there’s something I want you to know before you attend your first college football practice: I’m not your friend and fan, anymore. I’m just your football coach. The "friend and fan" part might emerge again, sometime in the future. But first and foremost, my job is to win football games.

That will cause some noticeable changes in our relationship.

For starters, I’m no longer going to spend my days showering you with praise and compliments. Instead, I’ll be testing your physical and mental toughness in ways you can’t even imagine. I need to see if you can live up to all the hype that I and others have thrown your way for the past year or so. I need to find out whether you’re worth all the time, effort, phone calls, emails, IMs and visits that I’ve invested in you.

Here’s another dose of reality: Remember when I told you that you were one of our top recruits? Well, my fellow coaches and I said the same thing to the 22 other new players in your recruiting class. In fact, we said the same thing to all 93 guys on our roster, when we were recruiting them. That’s why they’re here – because we convinced them that we wanted them. Do you really think they’d have come here if we had told them they were among roughly 2,500 high schoolers on our initial recruiting list?

We weren’t lying to them. They really were our "top recruits." They weren’t our only recruits, by any means. But they definitely were our "top" ones. And if they had chosen to attend other schools, then some of our "other" recruits would have become "top" recruits. That’s how it works. We offer scholarships to the guys we want most, and if they say "No," we offer scholarships to the next guys we want most. And so on.

I want you to be clear on that. You’re here because we wanted you to be here. But we didn’t want you any more than we wanted any of your teammates. So don’t walk on the field thinking you’re some anointed star.

Which brings me to another important subject: playing time. When we met all those times at your high school and your house, I emphasized that we expected you to compete for a starting position right away as a freshman. I was sincere about that, but I’m starting to think that you and I interpret that statement a bit differently. You seem to be focusing on the words "starting position right away," but I was focusing on the word "compete." I wasn't making you a promise.  I was giving you an assignment.

Please don’t take any of this the wrong way. I’m glad you’re here and I really do think highly of you. But you’re on your own, now. Until you earn the respect of your coaches and teammates, my first loyalties belong to the upperclassmen ahead of you on the depth chart. What you’ve done in high school, close to home, against teenage competition -- they’ve done in college, often hundreds of miles from the security of family and friends, against grown men.

If you want what they’ve got, you have to earn it. Here’s how.

1. Respect everyone. Say "please" and "thank you" – not just to your coaches and teammates, but to the trainers, equipment managers, cafeteria workers … even to your classmates and professors.

2. Respect everything, too. Your playbook, equipment, locker and everything else that you wear and use during your athletic career were paid for with someone else’s money. They gave or loaned it to you out of the goodness of their heart, with total trust that you’d treat it like a gift. When you’re a rich professional sports star, you own what you buy, and you’re free to abuse it anyway you like. But right now, you only own what others buy for you.

3. Be on time. Better yet, be early -- for meetings, practice, workouts, even meals. Nothing frosts us coaches more than seeing a player strut his arrogant butt into a meeting six minutes late and act like nothing important could possibly happen until he got there. I have news for you: Something important did happen. You dropped off the depth chart.

4. Listen more than you talk. Even if rah-rah is your style (and I’m not saying that’s a bad thing), keep a lid on it until you’ve done something worthwhile to earn an audience. Every team needs a few mouthpieces, and you might just become one for this group. But there’s plenty of time for that. For the time being, concentrate on seeing, hearing, listening and learning. What you have to say isn’t nearly as important as what others have to say.

5. Questions and compliments count big. If you absolutely, positively must open your mouth and say something, make it a question or a compliment.  No one will complain if you're trying to learn or trying to make your teammates look good.

6. Finally, remember: You are what you do now, not what you did then. Nobody cares about your high school exploits. You’re living in the "now." Your reputation starts and ends with what you do on this field, with this team, at this school.

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