Pete Golding reveals his recruiting pitch at Alabama, how it's changed in a NIL world

Alabama defensive coordinator Pete Golding is known as a strong recruiter. Especially with Nick Saban’s resume to pull out of his back pocket. However, as with all aspects of college athletics, the recruiting world is changing in a major way with the Transfer Portal and NIL happenings over the last couple years.

Golding is willing to adapt but does sort of long for the old days of relationship-driven recruiting. At the end of the day, though, he still thinks this is the best sales pitch in college football:

“Hey I work for the greatest coach of all time at the University of Alabama. What the hell’s wrong with you?”

Golding jokes, but then got more serious, looking at the big picture of what recruiting used to be vs. what it is now. Here were some of his comments from a recent press conference:

“Obviously recruiting has changed a little bit over the years. Used to be about: hey, who had the bets relationship? Who was willing to out-work everybody else? Who was the guy that was going to help them make a decision? And why can we do it better than anybody else?”

Some of those values still matter to certain recruits, per Golding. But for the vast majority, other priorities have taken hold.

“Alright, well, it’s like that to some degree for some guys. But for most, let’s be honest, it’s not. Alright, does that make sense? So then at that point, now all they wanna know is what’s in it for me? So its…hey, you get to learn under the leadership of the best coach to ever do it. Here’s the strength and conditioning aspect of how to make you better. So now, to me, you’re using more: what do I have to enhance their experience as a student athlete for them to get what they want? And that’s the NFL.”

So for Golding and the ‘Bama staff, the question remains: How do they weave their normal recruiting pitch into explaining what they can do for a kid in the new era.

“In the process, how do you use the University of Alabama as best you can, Nick Saban, to market your name and likeness, to allow you to make money while you’re enrolled as a student athlete. And I think the University of Alabama, more importantly, Nick Saban, allows young people the ability to do that better here than anywhere else.”

So Pete Golding still believes Alabama offers the most in every facet of recruiting.

“If you got a good product in anything that you do, normally that’s easier to sell. So you gotta develop relationships, still gotta identify everybody right and give them what they need. That’s a piece of it. It’s my responsibility to provide the information to them. Hopefully, we have better stuff than anybody else and are best suited for them.”