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Held live · Thursday, August 13 · 7:00 PM EDT

The Recruiting & NIL Blueprint Workshop

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Find out exactly where your athlete stands — in 90 minutes, instead of in the spring of senior year.

You did what you were told. Good grades, club team, camps, film. Then somebody mentions "core courses" and you realise there is an entire second transcript you have never seen — and that it is the only one college coaches are allowed to care about.

No eligibility. No recruiting. No NIL.

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It ran live on Thursday, August 13 · 7:00 PM EDT. Everyone who attended receives the full recording by email. Not on the list? Leave your details and you will hear first when the next edition is scheduled.

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Taught live by

J.B. Gerald

Former D1 recruiter · Founder, PlayEligible

Madieu Williams

9-season NFL veteran · 2010 Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year

Christian Benjamin

Brand & NIL · Founder, Story MKTG

01The part nobody explains

Your transcript GPA is not the GPA the NCAA uses.

“The coach was interested.”

Then the transcript came back and two of his core courses were not on the approved list. The interest stopped. Nobody called to explain why.

“She had the film.”

Her transcript said 3.0. Her NCAA core GPA was 2.1, because six of the classes carrying that 3.0 were not core courses and never counted. Three programs moved on before anyone told her those were two different numbers.

“He was going to get NIL money.”

NIL runs through eligibility. He was not eligible, so there was no roster spot, and with no roster spot there was no deal.

Every one of these was preventable. In every one, the family found out too late to change it.

02Before you decide

Six things almost no family finds out in time.

Two different numbers

Your transcript GPA is not your NCAA GPA.

The NCAA rebuilds it from sixteen specific approved courses, unweighted, ignoring plus and minus. A 3.0 transcript and a 2.1 core GPA sit together all the time — and most families never see the second number until somebody else does.

10 of 16

Most of it is decided before senior year starts.

Ten of the sixteen core courses have to be finished before twelfth grade. The decisions that determine eligibility get made in eighth, ninth and tenth grade, in a counselor's office, during course selection.

Retired in 2023

The rule most families are still being taught no longer exists.

The NCAA abolished the sliding scale on 1 August 2023. NCAA Division I and II initial eligibility no longer uses an SAT/ACT sliding scale: academic certification is based on required NCAA-approved core courses, core-course GPA (2.30 for D1, 2.20 for D2), Division I timing rules, graduation, and Eligibility Center review. A great deal of the recruiting advice online still teaches the old rule, which means families are chasing a number that stopped mattering.

Weighting ignored

Your AP bump does not exist to the NCAA.

They take your best sixteen core courses on a flat 4.0 scale. The weighted GPA your school prints, the one on the honour roll letter, is not the one being evaluated.

School by school

A class only counts if it is on YOUR school's approved list.

The same course title counts at one high school and not at another. Which is why "she is taking Algebra II" is not the same statement as "that counts".

No single number

D3 has no NCAA GPA minimum at all.

Every family assumes one threshold exists everywhere. D3 admission standards are set by each college, NAIA runs its own rules, and JUCO is different again — so "am I eligible" has four different answers.

None of this is secret. It is all published, and all of it is checkable — which is exactly the problem. It is knowable, and almost nobody knows it in time.

03What you'll learn

Ninety minutes with the people who actually build the board.

  • How a recruiting board actually gets cut

    The academic red flags that remove an athlete before anybody tells the family they were being considered. This is the part that is not published anywhere.

  • How to read your athlete's real core GPA

    Which of their classes count, which do not, and how to check it yourself instead of hoping.

  • The rules as they stand today

    Sixteen core courses, ten before senior year, 2.30 for D1 and 2.20 for D2 — and what changed in 2023, because most of what you have read is older than that.

  • Where test scores actually matter

    No longer an NCAA requirement for D1 or D2, and still decisive for admission and scholarship money. Knowing which job the score is doing changes how you spend the year.

  • How NIL works, and why eligibility gates it

    What makes an athlete marketable, what the rules permit, and why an ineligible athlete has nothing to sell.

  • What to do if you are already behind

    Credit recovery, course substitution, retesting windows, and an honest read on how much time is left.

  • How to talk to college coaches

    What to send, when, and what gets a reply instead of a delete.

  • Live Q&A on your athlete's actual situation

    Bring the real transcript. That is the part a blog post cannot do.

04Who you're learning from

A former D1 recruiter, a nine-season NFL veteran, and the man who builds athlete brands.

J.B. Gerald

J.B. Gerald

Former D1 recruiter · Founder, PlayEligible

J.B. has sat on the side of the table families never see. He built recruiting boards — the shortlist of athletes a program is actually pursuing — as a graduate assistant under Joe Paterno at Penn State, then at Illinois, then as wide receivers coach and recruiting coordinator at New Mexico. At Syracuse he ran high school relations, the job of deciding which prospects are real and which are being sold. He has also spent years inside schools as a teacher and a coach, which is the half of this most recruiters have never seen. He can tell you which academic red flag takes a name off that shortlist, when in the year it happens, and why nobody calls the family to explain.

Madieu Williams

Madieu Williams

9-season NFL veteran · 2010 Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year

Madieu played nine NFL seasons, and the league named him its 2010 Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year for what he did away from the field. He has spent the years since on the education side of the same problem: a $2 million gift to the University of Maryland to build a center for global health, a primary school funded in Sierra Leone, seats on the boards of two WCAC high schools and on the Board of Trustees at Bennett College. He has watched this process from inside the locker room and from inside the schools that send athletes there, which is why he knows what it actually asks of a family — and what is still standing once the recruiting stops.

Christian Benjamin

Christian Benjamin

Brand & NIL · Founder, Story MKTG

Christian builds the thing an athlete cannot buy back later: a name people already know. He is a partner with Chad "Ochocinco" Johnson in Eighty5 Cigars, and has worked with Terrell Owens, Dennis Rodman, Darrell Green and other Hall of Famers on how they are seen once the uniform comes off. He founded Story MKTG in Washington, D.C., is a partner to the NFLPA, and wrote MONDAY. He also played at Bowie State and in the arena league — which is why he talks about NIL as somebody who needed it before it existed, rather than as a consultant who read about it.

This is not for everybody.

This is for you if

  • Your athlete is in grades 8-12 and plays seriously
  • You want them recruited at any level — D1, D2, D3, NAIA or JUCO
  • You have heard "Eligibility Center" and are not certain what it does
  • You want to understand NIL before your athlete needs to
  • You would rather find out now than in the spring of senior year

This isn't for you if

  • You want a guaranteed scholarship — nobody can promise that, and anyone who does is selling you something
  • You want someone else to run it for you. This is a blueprint you execute, not a service we operate
  • Your athlete has already signed and enrolled

06Registration closed

This session has happened.

Tickets are no longer on sale for this edition.

Attendees receive the recording by email. Get first access to the next edition →

Not ready to decide? Start with the free check.

You do not have to buy anything to find out where your athlete stands. That number is free, and it is the same engine the paid product runs.

Send me the NCAA Core-Course Checklist — the sixteen units, what counts toward each, and the grade they should be done by. Free, one email, no pitch.

Or skip the email and run the free eligibility check — two minutes, no account.

The session gives you the blueprint. PlayEligible keeps you on it.

Every attendee gets free platform access — the core-course tracker, the eligibility audit, practice tests and the recruiting profile, in one place. General Admission and Family Pack include two months. VIP and Team include three.

See what that includes →

07Before you ask

The honest answers.

Can't I find this for free online?
Some of it, and a fair amount of what you'll find is out of date — plenty of sites still teach the sliding scale, which the NCAA retired in 2023. What you can't find anywhere is a former Division I recruiter telling you what happens on the other side of the table: which athletes come off a board, at what point, and why nobody calls to tell the family.
My athlete isn't being recruited yet. Is this too early?
It's the opposite. Ten of the sixteen core courses are locked in before senior year starts, so the decisions that determine eligibility get made in eighth, ninth and tenth grade — usually during course selection, by families who don't know that's what they're doing. Start early and you have options. Start senior year and you have damage control.
We're not a D1 family. Is this still relevant?
Yes, and it's most of the room. We cover D1, D2, D3, NAIA and JUCO, because the rules and the recruiting behaviour genuinely differ by level and almost nobody explains the differences in one place.
What if I can't attend live?
Every tier includes the full recording, sent within 48 hours. The time zone is not a reason to skip this.
Is this a sales pitch for the platform?
No. It's a 90-minute teaching session, and the session is the product. Attendees get free platform access as a bonus — two months on General Admission and Family, three on VIP and Team — but you'll get the full blueprint whether or not you ever open it.
Can my athlete attend with me?
Yes, and we'd rather they did — the parts about coach outreach land differently when the athlete hears them directly. If you want separate logins so everyone joins from their own device, that's what the Family Pack is for.
Do you guarantee my athlete gets recruited, or earns NIL money?
No — and be careful with anyone who does. Nobody can promise a scholarship or a deal, and a promise like that is the clearest sign you're being sold to. We teach you the system, what actually moves the needle, and what quietly disqualifies an athlete. The work is yours.
What's your refund policy?
Full refund up to 48 hours before the session, no questions asked — email hello@playeligible.com and it's done. Inside 48 hours we can't refund, because the VIP room is capped and a late cancellation is a seat nobody else could take. You'll still get the recording either way.

Thursday, August 13 · 7:00 PM EDT.

The families who figure this out early get options. The families who figure it out late get damage control.

This session has happened. Attendees get the recording by email; everyone else can be first to hear about the next edition.

Tell me about the next one →