YouTube videos give prospects a boost

"I feel like this is the future of college football recruiting," Tucker coach Franklin Stephens said. "Putting the film on YouTube is more efficient and cost effective than mailing out a ton of DVDs. Now all you have to do is e-mail the link of the YouTube video directly to the colleges."

Clips of high school football games is nothing new on YouTube, with more than 70,000 videos posted on the Web site. However, showcasing a particular player's skills is not nearly as common. The best thing about it? Putting the highlight video on YouTube cost nothing, perks of the free membership.

"I never expected it to blow up like that [with views]; I was a little surprised," Vaughters said.

His family stumbled into the trend by accident. James was one of the top players as a sophomore last year for Tucker, which won the Georgia Class AAAA championship. His father wanted to send DVDs to proud family members across the country.

"Once I started getting involved in the process and thinking about expenses, I thought it might be easier to put it up on YouTube, and then provide the link to them through e-mail so they could enjoy it at their leisure," Jonathan Vaughters said.

The elder Vaughters mentioned the idea to Stephens, who liked it. He was in the process of mailing out DVDs of Tucker players to more than 200 colleges. Stephens ships out tapes four to five times per year at the cost of around $2,500.

"With the coaches I knew personally, I sent them text messages to let them know about YouTube," Stephens said. "With other colleges, the ones that don't come around our school as often, I let them know about it in e-mails.

"I heard back from Stanford pretty quickly. They watched YouTube and loved it. They wanted to know about his grades and transcript, and then they offered."

Stephens said he will likely adjust his marketing strategy at Tucker, which is one of the state's top producers of college talent. He will still mail out DVDs, but maybe not as frequently. He will also have copies of video posted on YouTube.

"It's just a quicker and faster way to do things," Stephens said. "Sometimes it gets frustrating when a college says they can't find the DVD you mailed them, but then again they get bombarded with them. This way, if they really want to see a player and don't have the DVD, they can do it instantly ..."

How did Vaughters get so many YouTube views?

It was posted a few times in recruiting blogs. With Vaughters getting early offers from national powerhouses such as Florida, Alabama and Ohio State, his father suspects a lot of interest from inquiring fans from those teams.

"There are a lot of people that follow recruiting and maybe can't make it to one of Tucker's games, so this is their way of checking him out," Jonathan said.

Watch it: Check out James Vaughters' YouTube video: