During the beginning of my sons senior year in college my son and I decided to find out about registering for the NCAA College Sports Clearing House so that he would be eligible to play football in college, we were not getting any guidance from his HS so went out on our own, while doing a search online we came across the aforementioned company and going by the name and the website thought that we had found the correct place, us being new to all this filled out the registration form and submitted payment, not knowing that they were not the NCAA eligibility center which changed it's name form the NCAA College Clearing House because of companies like this one.
During my sons senior year in college we received no contact from any colleges and even though my son has been a starting quarterback for 3 years and starting free safety for one year just assumed no colleges were interested him, my son was very heartbroken and discouraged, and we just decided to settle on a school and then see if we can try out once he was there.
This was done and within a month of him getting to the school the coach saw his highlight tape and wanted him to play immediately, this is when we found out that we were not registered with the NCAA eligibility center and still my son can't play until his sophmore year because since we were not aware of the requirements by the eligibility center my son took an accounting math that they don't count as a math to play, this was disconcerting because my son had more credits then he needed to graduate and only took that math just because he was interested in accounting if we would have know which we would have because they would have contacted us about the classes we had to take we would have took the correct math.
I completely understand that my ignorance plays apart here, however I feel that this company is taking advantage of people's ignorance and now after my son has graduated they send us a email asking us to give them feedback on the services that they provided, I feel they didn't send this email earlier because they know it would have alerted us to the fact that we were not registered when we signed up with them, they know that we have not used their service because we have never even logged into their site because we were not aware that is what we were supposed to do.
I just want it to be made mandatory that they be more clear on their site that they are not the eligibility center just a company providing a service to help you get registered even though all that needs to be done to be registered can't be done by them only by the student and the students parents, so I paid for something I didn't even know I was getting and I found out I would have had to do the work myself anyway. But ultimately my son suffered because he felt by the end of the school year that he was not good enough after all his years of playing football.
My son received no interest from colleges to play football during his freshman year in college, however after being at his current college less than a month the coach viewed his tape and had him play and wanted to him to play on his team immediately only because we were not registered with the correct eligibility center he can't play this year, he has to wait until his sophmore year. I understand that my might not have been contacted by colleges to play its a very competitive field, however, because of their misrepresentation he was not even considered which was a very emotional hardship for him, the thought of all his hard work on the field was not even considered for a look.
We found out much latter that the colleges could not look or consider him to play for them because he was not registered with the eligibility center, even though we were under the impression that we were. The company was aware that we signed up with them and not once did they contact us during my sons senior year to inquire if he was happy with their services which would have alerted us to the fact that we were not registered correctly. I just want there to be some place on the application that states signing up for this service is not registering with the NCAA eligibility center before you make your payment because that would alert consumers to what they are really registering for.
