High-school football recruitment timeline

There might be some information in this thread I started a while back that could help you.

http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=277933&highlight=football

If he's good, he should have been sending tape to schools and know that recruiters are interested. Definitely by junior year should there be some schools singling him out ... that process isn't quite clear to me either.

If you want a good (YA fiction) book (or rather trilogy) about high school sports and recruiting read, The Dairy Queen by Catherine Gilbert Murdock. The MC starts getting recruited for basketball in the third book, but her brothers already play college football, soooo it might help.

The rules haven't changed significantly since then, just some tweaks. There weren't quite as many scouting services then but not many players slipped through the cracks, no matter where they played.

If he played for a small school, he would have had a difficult time getting a scholarship from any top school, as accomplishments there were against lesser talent. Quite frankly, I'd concentrate more on him 'walking on' at a school he wanted to go to, detailing on how he got someone, not connected with the college, to pay his experiences for the first year and his struggle to get admitted as a regular student.

You probably found what the NCAA permits now ... just go with that as VERY few people would pick up on the minutia of the changes.

Not exactly answering your question but some food for thought:

http://www.collegesportsscholarships.com/ncaa-recruiting-rules-contact-visits.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Means