AUSTIN, Texas, August 2, 2022 – Eccker Sports, an information company for high school athletics, is partnering with Recruit Route, a Bedford Agency brand and expert in college recruiting, to jointly educate, guide, and equip high school coaches, student-athletes, and parents who are navigating the complicated world of college sports recruitment and Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL).

NIL has been called the most disruptive concept in the sports market in 40 years and has quickly thrown high school coaches, administrators, student-athletes and their families into highly challenging territory. According to experts, lack of education and resources on the high school level is a significant issue that could lead to exploitation and mistakes, especially in recruiting. Eccker Sports and Recruit Route are working together to mitigate those issues.

Through its platform and relationships in college athletics, Recruit Route helps high school coaches, student-athletes, transfers and parents become educated and empowered to manage the process of college sports recruiting and NIL. Their four ready-to-use solutions: Recruit Route, Recruit Route Elite, Transfer Route, and Teams Route include access to over 80,000 college coaches’ emails, one-on-one training, recruiting checklists, academic eligibility tools, and expert-hosted virtual learning sessions. 

“Being able to complement our NIL Education platform, Coach Assist, with Recruit Route’s best-in-class recruiting education and empowerment solutions and services was a no-brainer,” said Randy Eccker, Founder and CEO, Eccker Sports. “Working closely with Recruit Route allows us to meet the needs of our shared clients and provide tremendous value as they look to improve their probability of success, both in meeting a huge need for college sports recruiting education, empowerment, academic eligibility and knowledge transfer in the ever-changing world of college sports recruiting.” 

With more than 60 years of experience in the sports industry, Eccker Sports has developed a comprehensive NIL education platform that includes a video curriculum of six module courses online that will educate users on the history of NIL, key terms and concepts, and best practices. Additionally, the Eccker Sports resource hub offers the most detailed library of NIL information for the high school market, including articles, state laws, abstracts, summaries, bylaws, interpretations, as well as college and universities policies and procedures. Coach Assist provides high school coaches NIL presentation templates, one pagers and other tools to help them educate their communities. Finally, the company is building a network of legal, financial and tax experts to help families build and execute an effective NIL strategy.

“The Recruit Route strategy has always been to connect with the best in this industry to help provide the best tools and support for student-athletes, and in the area of NIL education the team at Eccker Sports is truly top-notch,” said Bryan Bedford, CEO, Bedford Agency and Recruit Route. “We are very excited to partner with Eccker Sports. Together, we can transform college sports recruiting and NIL to help high school coaches feel empowered and educated, and ultimately help lead them to success in supporting student-athletes and parents.”

As part of the agreement, the Eccker Sports and Recruit Route solutions will be made available through both companies’ content libraries, adding tremendous value to both client bases and offering even more support and equipping tools to coaches, student-athletes, and their families. Eccker Sports’ educational services are already available to all high schools in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee and Texas. 

About Eccker Sports

Eccker Sports is an information platform serving student-athletes, coaches, parents, and administrators navigating the disruption of NIL issues and opportunities coming to high school sports. They bring 60-plus years of experience mainstreaming new innovations in sports to help high schools guide, inform and protect their student-athletes on their NIL journeys. Their goal is to help schools create successful programs for their students rather than to represent any individual student in the NIL marketplace.

About Bedford Agency 

The Bedford Agency provides actionable insight and expertise for companies, coaches, student-athletes, and families navigating the world of Sports Business, College Sports Recruiting and Name, Image and Likeness process. A family-owned Christ-centered business that is uniquely positioned to offer expertise, strategic consulting, educational content, and technology to transform the college recruiting process like never before. It’s rich foundation includes a history around college recruiting, camps, consulting and events. In 2021 the Bedford Agency launched it’s first set of brands Recruit Route, Recruit Route Elite, Transfer Route. In 2022, it launched Teams Route a turnkey offering to help high school and club coaches and their entire programs managed & become educated on recruiting and NIL.

Media Contacts

Eccker Sports

Ryan Baumgartner

Phone: + 1 (816) 835-1868
Email: Ryan@ecckersports.com

Recruit Route
Ashley Pries

Phone: +1 (559) 908-9559
Email: ashpries4@gmail.com

Recently our CEO, Bryan Bedford sat down with the folks at Ten12 Podcast (which covers the Big 12 Conference and College Sports in general) to talk all things college recruiting. We hope you enjoy this interview during the second half off the podcast!

https://podcasts.apple.com/cl/podcast/ten12-podcast/id1449739823

The Bedford Agency a college sports recruiting company is once again hiring summer interns for 2022! The Bedford Agency provides actionable insight and expertise for student-athletes and families navigating the College Sports Recruiting and Name, Image and Likeness process! We are uniquely positioned to offer expertise, educational content and technology to transform the college recruiting process like never before via our Recruit Route brands. Our rich foundation includes a history around college recruiting, camps, consulting and events. In 2021 we also launched our first set of brands Recruit Route, Recruit Route Elite, Transfer Route. In 2022, we launched Teams Route a turnkey offering to help high school and club coaches and their entire programs managed & become educated on recruiting and NIL. Our summer intern program is designed to take all of our products and services listed above to the next level!

What You’ll do as an Intern:

Our interns will be working on Business to Consumer and Business to Business projects in the world of Sports, Recruiting and NIL. You aren’t coming here to fetch Starbucks coffee. You will be doing real work. Each intern will work in a virtual group setting and have individual project responsibility in a variety of areas interest including Graphic Design, Social Media, Customer Success, Business Development, Product Design, Marketing and more. In previous years our interns have gone on to work at places like Walt Disney Inc, and Sinclair Broadcast to name a couple.

“My time working with the Bedford Agency taught me leadership qualities, independence, professionalism, and communication skills. Bryan helped me grow a network in the sports business industry, and was a great role model as both a boss, coworker and friend. He instilled in me a growth mindset for both work and everyday life. I’m grateful for the opportunity I had to intern with the Bedford Agency in 2021.”

-Emma Hennessey, 2021 Bedford Agency Intern

Who You are and What Skills You Need?

You are self-motivated, highly ambitious and have the desire to challenge the status quo. You are excited both by the high-level strategic thinking, as well as in-the-trenches execution. You take comfort with structuring ambiguity, turning it into a strategy, a business case and an execution plan.

You have strong written and verbal communication, strong presence in front of senior executives, strong analytical capability (e.g., Excel skills), strong PowerPoint capability, the ability to collaborate across functional groups, including engineering, sales, services, marketing, HR, finance, operations. 

The ability to manage and execute multiple tasks at the same time, prioritize them and manage time, teammates, peers effectively and are highly organized, strong project management and follow-through skills.

Strong desire to work in the Sports Business Industry a plus.

Application process:

Areas of internships: Graphic Design, Social Media, Customer Success, Business Development, Product Design, Marketing

Each Intern must submit a resume’, cover letter (include the area of interest per above) and letter of recommendation from an employer or professor. Application is due by is (EXTENDED) April 1, 2022 at 5pm central. Please send application to bryanpaulbedford@gmail.com C/o Bryan Bedford, CEO of the Bedford Agency.

Each prospective intern will then be scheduled for a screening interview the week of March 7-11 with selection following shortly thereafter.

Should we select you:

Bedford Agency internships are unpaid and will begin on June 1, 2022 and run through August 12, 2022. Expectation is each Bedford Agency intern will work between 10-15 hours per week in a virtual setting with world class collaboration technology.

For 25 years, Bryan Bedford has been a national, leading expert in the “high stakes” world of College Sports Recruiting and now Bedford has been added to the ENGAGE Talent team as a featured speaker on College Sports Recruiting, Transfer Portal and Name, Image and Likeness.

To book Bedford click here: https://www.letsengage.com/talent/bryan-bedford

Bedford’s knowledge for the College Sports Recruiting and NIL processes has made him a highly sought-after speaker to deliver his insights, helpful tips and data, empowering parents, athletes, and coaches across the nation through education.

News Summary:

• Bedford Agency unveils Teams Route to help educate & empower High School and Club Coaches as they manage the college recruiting and name, image, and likeness journey
• Teams Route product offers premium level of service with hands-on, customized approach with CEO, Bryan Bedford designed to help High School & Club programs in a turnkey way.

Oklahoma City, OK – Bedford Agency, a college sports recruiting company, announces today the expansion of a new set of products to help High School & Club Coaches and their student-athletes and families become educated, informed, and help guide these coaches and players/families as they navigate the college sports recruiting and name, image, and likeness (NIL) journey. 

Data from the NCAA shows that out of all high school student-athletes, less than 10% go on to play a sport in college while we also have roughly 25% of the current FBS college football athletes alone in the transfer portal. This combined with COVID, Super Seniors, Name, Image and Likeness and Title IX all existing together has made all of this as complicated as its ever been for High School and Club Coaches to help there student athletes and families.

Bedford Agency’s new product line, Teams Route, offers education and resources for these High School & Club Coaches while also providing their student athletes and their families an easy-to-consume set of tools, educational content and expert workshops. The offering combines a customized workshop format for coaches, a dedicated communication portal for coaching staffs with our staff plus digital learning and education, CRM-style tools for managing the recruiting communication process, and the ability to build out their personal micro-recruiting website for the programs student-athletes and families. In addition, Teams Route helps the coaches and student-athletes unlock access to over 50,000 college coaches’ emails, a digital recruiting checklist, and expert-hosted virtual learning sessions for recruits and their parents as part of our Recruit Route family of offerings. To find out more about Recruit Route visit http://www.recruit-route.com.

 “The Teams Route offering was specifically designed to address the needs of High School & Club coaches who are struggling with all the movement and education needed around recruiting, transfer portal, NIL and more. By combining our expert workshops for coaches, providing tools for coaches, student-athletes and families, plus offering regularly scheduled expert workshops on all things recruiting, we are filling a void that many programs have been asking for as the intersection of college sports recruiting and the name, image and likeness journey continues to evolve,” said Bryan Bedford, Chief Executive Officer, Bedford Agency. “Having the ability to educate and empower High School and Club Coaches while making this process simpler and more enjoyable for student-athletes and their families is a pleasure, and we’re excited for them start taking advantage of our offering today!”

About Bedford Agency

Bedford Agency provides actionable insight and expertise for student-athletes and families navigating the College Sports Recruiting process. We are uniquely positioned to offer expertise, educational content, and technology to transform the college recruiting process like never before with our products Recruit Route, Transfer Route and Recruit Route Elite. Bedford Agency was founded by CEO Bryan and Desiree Bedford.  Bryan has over 25-years of College Sports Recruiting Experience serving as Division I Recruiting Director at TCU and Division II Recruiting Director Southern Nazarene University as well as an executive at some of the leading sports video, recruiting evaluation and fortune 50 tech companies. 

For more information, please visit www.thebedfordagency.com or www.recruit-route.com