An inside look at college football recruiting with SIU's Jack Halperin
- Tom Weber
- Aug 3
- 10 min read
CARBONDALE, Ill. — Jack Halperin was 14 years old when got hooked on the NFL Draft. He used to play football video games, doing franchise simulations and trying to build a team.
The 26-year-old director of player personnel & recruiting for SIU turned his football passion into a career centered around roster-building, talent acquisition and resource management.
The Lincoln, Neb. native spent two years working in personnel for Villanova prior to joining Southern in 2024. He is Saluki Football’s first point of contact in the recruiting process and works closely with head coach Nick Hill and the staff on all aspects of player personnel. Halperin gave StrongDawgs an inside look at his job in today’s ever-changing college football landscape.
What’s your job description at SIU?
My job is to organize everything that happens in our recruiting efforts from identification, to evaluation, to visits, to commitments and signings. I keep track of our compliance and financial aid, anything that we have to do to award the scholarships, keep track of how far along we are, who's graduating, how much everybody costs, help create a game plan for the next class of how many I think we can take. And that's an ever-changing target. I help coaches evaluate players through video and in-person and plan itineraries for when they visit campus.
People say that the world of college football is crazy nowadays, but I see it as my job to be prepared for the unexpected. I see that my job is to understand exactly how our roster is laid out, so that when things come up, I've already thought about how this impacts the team as a whole. What are our strengths and limitations? Sometimes, it’s as simple as, hey, if we lose a running back, we replace him with a running back. Sometimes, it’s we lost a wide receiver, but we don't need another receiver — maybe we need an offensive lineman or defensive lineman. So, it's about working with the coaches, and specifically with Coach Hill on how they see the roster and determining where the resources we have left are best used. Because even the best plans go up in smoke sometimes.
What do you see as your primary role on the staff?
It’s all about how do we get the best product on the field. I need to be able to answer as many questions as I can for the rest of the staff because this is what I do every day. I’m not worried about planning for practices or games every day. Whenever Coach Mac (McLeran) is watching a player or Coach (Larry) Warner, what is he looking for? Am I using the same criteria they are? Is the staff using the same words with each other? Whether it's how we're evaluating ourselves, how we're evaluating others, it's all about consistently balancing that entire process and emphasizing that the better we communicate and work together as a staff the better results we will have.
How do you manage differing opinions about a particular prospect?
At its core, recruiting is still about finding the right people for your program, finding people that want to be here. That goes for the portal, that goes for high school, for junior college players.
I try and balance the conviction versus the consensus, because I believe in both. It's good to independently make your own assessments on individual players and come together and be like, all right, where did we stack these guys? But then I also believe that if we're all on the left, and one person's on the right, and they're convicted that, “hey, the spot on the right is the right place to be.” Alright, sometimes you got to listen to that and not just cancel the outlier. The goal is to not be wrong together and make the right decision by the end of the process.
What goes into creating a profile on a specific recruit?
I'm a very numbers-driven person at heart. When you're talking about a high school kid, my opinion that the film you can watch from your computer is probably about 30 percent of the evaluation. Then you've got another percentage that is empirical, like what numbers do we have to back up who he is? Have we verified his height and weight, how fast he is? Have we seen him in camp and have a number? Did he go to a different camp where we didn't see him, but we got the number? Does he have track times or jump times, any wrestling or basketball or something else? It’s all good context on who someone is athletically, but doesn’t necessarily make or break anyone.
Coach Hill believes seeing guys live is crucial, as do I. When somebody's been coaching a position for 10, 15 years, they've seen how body types develop. So they can go look at a body type in-person and they can understand how he's more likely to fill out. You never know for sure, but over time you see the trends and getting to see guys in-person matters a lot. It’s easier to watch someone’s movement patterns in-person to get an even better feel for the caliber of athlete.
Now we've got the film, we've got the in-person viewings. We've seen them work out, we've seen some numbers, and then it's about finding the right people. And I'm not saying we have to go find a whole class of 4.0 (GPA) kids. What are the reviews from high school coaches, trainers? Do we know a family friend? All of the boxes start to get checked to where you get more comfortable with the person. I think that getting the people right is the most important part because that’s how you build a culture.
Everybody's a projection. Even the guys that you bring in from the transfer portal are a level of projection. If somebody's had four shoulder surgeries, even if they've been a good player, you have to factor that in. Sometimes, all it takes is a bad knee injury in high school and they're not the same player. Sometimes that allows us to get good players that slip through the cracks because bigger schools don't want to take a shot on a major injury, but we are comfortable with it and can be patient. Every situation is different.
Finally, it’s about getting them on campus. It's about finding out who they really are as people. With the transfer portal, people say you’re speed-dating with those guys because you go from learning their name to trying to get them signed sometimes within a week. With the high school kids, you generally have a bit more time to figure it out.
How has the lure of money in the transfer portal changed recruiting the last few years?
(Laughs) We're aware that there’s some kids on our team right now, that if they have the season that we think they're going to have, the chances that we keep them are very small. You're gonna lose players. That's a given. But the thought of losing games doesn't stop us from trying to win games, so I don't think the thought of losing players should stop us from trying to get the best players. Good players win football games. Good players make our jobs much easier. The thing I think about all the time is, are we doing everything that we can to add the best players we can?
Sometimes, other schools are able to offer more money. Sometimes, a kid or parent brings up money immediately on a visit, and I would say that's a sign they're not going to be a fit here. You're not going to get rich playing football here. That's just something that you have to accept, but we can do our best to make sure you're comfortable while you’re here, to where you're not having to stress about the little things. The example I like to give is, you shouldn't be having to go stress about going to the grocery store to go pick up some chicken or ground beef. We're not giving you life-changing money, but we're hopefully able to help our guys to where they can be comfortable living.
If we have somebody with two years left to play and he becomes a First-Team All-Conference player in the Missouri Valley — we'll see you at Oklahoma. More than ever, I think you need to bring in good players out of high school specifically, because those are the guys who are going to be the cheapest for you. Can you develop them and can you retain them? Because those are going to be the guys that are the most likely to stay.
You’re expecting some guys to leave every year, some certainly because of money. It’s then about being able to replace them with good players from the portal or having a younger guy already in your program step up and take a larger role. I think the overall change to the portal has made it more important to always be adding the right players to your team.
How much advance scouting of players at other colleges takes place to prep for the portal?
There's a reason why bigger schools have armies of staff, because they can get it down to a granular level to the point where it's like, hey, one guy watches Missouri Valley football, keep tabs on every player in the Missouri Valley, and they split it up and scout every conference. I try to do some previewing, too. If I feel like we’re going to need a certain position, I’ll watch some low FCS or DII guys. Everybody's looking for the guys that were productive at lower levels that you think can translate to higher levels.
What makes it unique for us is that players we evaluated and liked out of high school who went to a bigger FBS school could enter and drop down to us. Especially with kids who are from Illinois or say three hours away from Carbondale, we knew who they were coming out of high school and can rely on those evaluations to help us move faster, and sometimes even have a relationship started. Not to say that every kid who comes from say Alabama is going to be good because they came from a big-brand program.
There's differing philosophies about what you can do in the portal. Some people believe you can build up your entire team through the portal. Some believe you can build up selective rooms in the portal, and others you have to go through high school. I view the portal as a hole-plugger. You build a roster around high school guys, and then you plug in the holes in the portal as they come. But once again, plans rarely go as you hope.
When it comes time to make an offer, how do you spell that out to a player?
Some teams, when they're pitching a player, they include their scholarship totals as part of the pitch. Like, if the scholarship is worth $30,000 and they're going to give them $10,000 on top, they pitch it as $40,000. We don't do that. We keep them separate, because you've got to be completely honest with every player on your roster.
What’s an example of a recruiting pitch to a player who might consider dropping down from FBS to FCS?
We try to pitch all the time that you can go to the bottom of the FBS and fight to go 6-6 and to a bowl game that people don’t really care much about, or come here and compete in the playoffs for a national championship. The top teams in our league and in the FCS are as good or better than FBS schools, so in no way are you choosing an easier league. You can also choose to mess up your weeks by playing on Wednesday nights in the FBS. There's nothing worse than a six-hour bus ride at 11:30 at night and then you're not allowed to get excused for class the next day. It's not fun. It messes your week up and going out to practice at 3 o'clock on a Saturday afternoon, it wrecks your weekend. You don't feel like you’re getting any days off.
Presumably, this year’s roster is set? Are you already planning the 2026 roster?
Nothing is ever set in stone. We have a walk-on tryout day every fall, and that could impact who gets added to the team, but it may not. Throughout the summer we pay attention to names that may still be left over, or keep an eye out if anything changes. Things do happen, but it’s more of solutions finding us than us finding solutions.
For 2026, I started making plans for that roster this summer. I’m communicating with the coordinators and position coaches about what I think we have space for with high school freshmen so everyone can attack accordingly. As far as how revenue sharing is going to affect our plans, I know the administration is having conversations about how the new rules will affect us. I’ve worked on some contingency plans depending on how things go to make sure that we are ready for whatever presents itself. We have to keep the aggressive mindset with building the roster and adding talent.
What advice would you give to a player who is considering entering the portal?
We know that guys think about it, and some are even getting contacted. The most important part is just to communicate with the head coach, your position coach, and be open about it. I’ve seen some situations where the player and head coach have agreed to a situation like “hey, I'm gonna go in to test the portal for a week. And from that week, you’ll either know if I'm gone or coming back.” If it's done the right way, you can still preserve the relationship. The current locker room and how they feel about you as a teammate also has an impact.
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