Rivals is charging high school football players $499 to be evaluated. It's causing an uproar

What's another $500 on the long, expensive road from youth sports to collegiate athlete?For some, it's "predatory" -- how former NFL player Chris Long described it. To others, it's another avenue toward a college football scholarship. For others still, it blurs a line: How can a website that covers, evaluates and ranks recruits now charge money for the privilege of being listed among them?To the man asking parents to pay $500 to have their son be evaluated by his company, it's closing an obvious gap between the stars and the hidden gems.That's the price tag, $499 to be precise, that Rivals, one of the most recognizable and longest-running sites covering college football recruiting, put on a new program that would allow any football player who hasn't been formally evaluated to be assessed by Rivals scouts, with a full written report. (There's currently a promotion discounting the cost to $399.) The program, called Rivals Recruits, set off a frenzy of largely negative reactions.Former Heisman Trophy winner and Fox broadcaster Robert Griffin III called it a "massive money grab." Nathan McPeek, head coach at Frederick Douglass High School in Lexington, Ky., was one of many who weighed in and then told The Athletic that it's not unreasonable for players who feel as if they are under-recruited."I do understand that a lot of kids that are signing up for it feel like maybe they need a little more exposure or a more true talent evaluation," said McPeek, who was a four-year starting tackle at Marshall from 2000 to 2003.As for college football's general managers and front office staffers? They were similarly put off."Sad," said a Power 4 assistant general manager speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.Rivals co-founder Shannon Terry, one of the pioneers in the coverage of college football recruiting, disagrees."Thirty years I have spent my professional adulthood putting everything I have into building something of great value and great service for the whole ecosystem," he said.To Terry, who created Rivals in 2000 and reacquired it under the On3 umbrella in April 2025, this program is destined to help underserved programs and recruits alike find each other. It "is that conduit, where those kids that are kicking butt in high school games but they're not perfect and they don't have a bunch of offers," Terry said. "This is the place for us to showcase those and those that want to level up and take it."The new "On the Radar" platform allows players and their parents to create a profile page -- which operates like a traditional recruiting profile page, but is more robust -- for themselves in hopes of being noticed by college coaches at any level. It comes at a cost: $29.99 for the first year and renewing at $59.99 thereafter, with inclusions for site subscriptions under the On3.com umbrella.The $499 offer is a separate one that, if purchased, complements the player profile with an in-depth evaluation. Terry believes this endeavor can serve a different constituency -- players who aren't likely to have star ratings or rankings, those who may not even play in the FBS. And, he says, scores of parents have approached him either in person or online to ask him whether or not there's a service tailored to the high school football athlete who is talented enough to play college football, but not necessarily for the established Power 4 elites.There was, according to Terry, a resource gap. Do coaching staffs see that gap? And do players graded as lower-level collegiate prospects see that gap, too?There's been a ton of interest in Rivals Recruits, and I wanted to address some topics around the product.This service primarily targets FCS and below athletes. Rivals Recruits is a product we have been building for a couple of years, and we see a huge need for it in the-- Shannon Terry (@ShannonTerry) September 24, 2026A parent of a high school player, who asked to remain anonymous so he wouldn't damage his son's potential recruiting prospects, called the new Rivals personal scouting evaluation "very comprehensive." Rivals evaluators spent "a ton of time" on his son's film and interviewed the player's high school coach to learn more about the player's skills and personality. The evaluation of his son's current talent level, the parent explained, was "spot-on."The one gripe the parent had was that the evaluators didn't have the most up-to-date height and weight for the player, which, in turn, the parent believes hurt the player's overall recruiting score in the system.As for whether or not the process has helped his son raise his recruiting profile to schools nationwide, the parent said that remains to be seen."To be honest, I don't know if the Rivals process has helped him or not," the parent said.One player in the 2027 class who also asked to remain anonymous so he would not impact his own recruiting process said he spent his own money on the evaluation because it was his senior year and he has only a few Division III offers. His goal is to play at the FBS or FCS level and said having as much knowledge about his own game could help him during the recruiting process.The player emphasized he knew the process wasn't "going to make me a four- or five-star recruit overnight," adding: "They were definitely 100 percent honest. They ranked me a G5. Which is still FBS, which is enough for me."Once a player pays for a personal evaluation, Rivals scouts wait to receive the player's position, height and weight, highlight clips, academic information and contact information for their high school coach. Every evaluation features a background interview with the coach. Terry said it takes up to two weeks for the scout to build a full personal scouting report with a detailed film breakdown and a grade from 1 to 10 on 10 different skill sections. They're also given a grade on what level the scout believes they can play at, from D-III all the way up to the FBS.Terry said players can choose whether to make their personal evaluations public. They're given that option in case they don't agree with the evaluation and don't want that information accessible by anyone. So far, Terry said, he's had positive and negative feedback from parents.It's worth noting that recruiting sites like Rivals, 247Sports and On3 function primarily as a consumer product for fans. College football coaches and front offices pay attention to player star ratings and team rankings, even if many say they don't. But teams conduct their own evaluations of high school recruits and typically don't base their evaluations on the content of these sites.College personnel, scouting and recruiting staffs can range from single digits to more than 20 staffers, when including both full-timers and students or volunteers. The more well-resourced a program is, the more prospects its staff can evaluate. Schools can also routinely spend thousands on proprietary recruiting services that do everything from providing film and verified measurables of prospects to managing communications with them or tracking their social media.But college football programs foot the bill for all of this. The only thing they'll charge a prospect for is a fee to participate in a summer camp, which typically runs around $40 and includes a T-shirt for the recruit, as well as a chance to compete in front of that school's staff (and perhaps other schools that attend).The biggest hangup and criticism of the Rivals program is the cost. Why charge players (or their families) hundreds for something the recruiting websites have been doing for years for free? Recruits who end up on the site have never paid for profile pages or evaluations. A Power 4 general manager, who, like all staffers contacted for this story, requested anonymity in exchange for his candor, said there is "zero reason" to charge players or their families for this and suggested that if anything, Rivals should charge the college football programs instead.When asked whether Rivals entertained the offer of charging this service to lower-level schools to help out their own recruiting processes, he said in an ideal world that would be the case, but Rivals doesn't have the manpower to handle that number of high school players. Right now the site has eight full-time scouts available for these evaluations.Terry said he hopes the price point can someday be lowered, but he emphasized that the product "costs us real money to produce. I think we could get it down to a hundred bucks, but it is what it is, if you're going to hire somebody to go in and do a workup."Will it help these players field more attention from schools of their caliber?A Group of 6 general manager said he doesn't think many staffs truly depend on recruiting websites like Rivals or 247Sports to find recruits. Most colleges already subscribe to non-public recruiting services that assist them in prospect identification."Our prospect lists go way beyond theirs," the G6 GM said.But not everyone completely dismissed the idea."There's definitely a scouting gap that exists where it's harder to find in-depth recruiting data for non-FBS talent," an FCS general manager said. "But at the same time, with social media as it currently stands, if there are good players out there, teams find them."Recruits of all levels and class years Please don't do this to yourself https://t.co/jJ2C2qg4cn-- Mitch Leppke (@CoachLeppke) September 24, 2026Mitch Leppke, who is entering his third season as the defensive coordinator at McPherson College (NAIA), weighed in on social media last week with a message to players: "Please don't do this to yourself."Some view this as just another added cost in the youth sports industry that continues to gouge the bank accounts of parents trying to see if their kids can fulfill a dream of playing college sports. Many high school football players no longer just have to pony up for gear each fall. There are offseason added costs that include 7-on-7 camps, workouts with private positional coaches and football camps hosted by schools and recruiting sites themselves. Others see the new enterprise as a recruiting site exploring an alternate revenue stream.Other detractors have claimed that this new platform clouds the already blurred lines of editorial responsibility if On3 is covering recruiting and Rivals is charging athletes for evaluations. Terry reiterated that money and influence cannot sway a scout's ranking of a player and impact the star value."People don't come to us and say, 'Hey, we'll pay you this to rank our kid three stars or four stars,'" Terry said.But at least to some players, the Rivals package is another shot to get your name out there in the recruiting sphere, regardless of the cost. The player who spoke to The Athletic said that, with it being his last few months of high school, he wanted to give himself every possible chance to be seen."If you're someone like me who believes you can be a D-I prospect but haven't gotten the recognition yet, then sure it's worth it," he said. "At least now I know that I don't go D-I, then at least I took every possible avenue to try and get there."But McPeek said that if one of his players asked him for his opinion on it, he would advise them to spend that amount of money elsewhere. Right now, it's the reality of youth football in America. Paying for anything from individual training coaches or speed experts to nutrition plans has trickled down to the high school level."I've never had a kid who signed a D-I scholarship during my coaching career where the parents didn't invest something extra," McPeek said. "Football is a year-round sport now. We've created that."This article originally appeared in The Athletic.