Former SMU defensive lineman Mickey Dollens will be signing copies of his book Saturday on the Boulevard (photo by Outskirts Press).

When Mickey Dollens was a little-known lineman on a sub-par high school team in the hamlet of Bartlesville, Okla., college coaches didn’t exactly beat a path to his door, hoping to land his signature on a national letter of intent.

“We didn’t do very well,” Dollens said. “My team finished 3-7 in my junior year, and we went 1-9 when I was a senior. I told myself, ‘if come out of this with a scholarship, I’m going to make it my priority to help others get recruited, too.’”

That’s exactly what Dollens is doing now with the publication of his book, Recruit Yourself, in which Dollens encourages high school players to promote themselves on-line and in social media in order to get the attention of college coaches. More and more coaches communicate with recruits through e-mail and social media, so this book lays out a plan that teaches players how to use Facebook, YouTube and Twitter to connect and basically recruit themselves to the college coaches.

“It’s really the first of its kind, the first to incorporate social media as a large theme of the recruiting process,” Dollens said. “More and more coaches see players through social media, so if players can figure out a way to get themselves, their names, their highlights in front of college coaches, their chances of being recruited goes up. There are services out there that charge families a lot of money to put a player on-line, but some players don’t have the money to pay those services, or don’t have parents or high school coaches who know how to support them. There are a lot of websites out there that are charging players and parents quite a bit of money to host videos, and it’s wasting money to do that.

“What I have done in this book is to help them form a strategy. I instruct kids on how to find which coaches to connect to at different schools, and how to find them on Facebook or Twitter, because every coach has these social mediums now. From there, the book tells them how to set up a YouTube channel, and how to display a highlight film and statistics. That’s half the battle right there.”

Dollens said that the strategy his book shares can help players well beyond the football field and the recruiting process.

“These are things the players can do themselves for free … and by doing it for free, they not only save money, but it also sends out a message to the coaches that the kid doesn’t rely on others — their coaches and parents,” Dollens said. “It tells the college coaches that these are kids who are problem solvers, guys who set a goal and figure out a way to reach that goal.

“The focus is on football, but I make the point in the first chapter that it can apply to other sports and other aspects of life — to a job, even to dating. When you think about it, it shows that you can put forth or best foot, and you come off as valuable for a scholarship, for a job position or some other role. This goes way beyond sports.”

Defensive lineman Mickey Dollens ended up at SMU after packaging himself as a prospect and reaching out to college coaches (photo by SMU athletics).

Dollens is a renaissance man of sorts. Before becoming a published author, the former English major started Hilltop Boards, a company that creates custom skateboards, with each model (the “Colt,” the “Stampede” and the “Boulevard Bomber”). He also shed the weight he carried while playing defensive line and made a run at qualifying for the U.S. Olympic bobsled team, and now has taken a job in the oil industry, working for former SMU lineman Joe Bays.

“I developed great time management skills during my time at SMU,” Dollens said. “College football and academics are a full-time commitment. My coaches and professors at SMU taught me great habits that effectively prepared me to balance the equally busy schedule I've pursued post-graduation.”

Recruit Yourself, which was published last month, already is proving effective, Dollens said.

“I have gotten a lot of positive feedback from players and parents,” he said. “Of the first five or six who got the book, three have resulted in scholarships.

“The players have to have the talent first, but there are a lot of players out there with talent, and they have to get in front of (college) coaches. Everyone knows on-line video is how coaches view game film now, so if you can make a viral video, you can get a lot of attention. Some sites are charging as much as $100 a month, and they tell players they’ll get their film in front of coaches, but then they also try to get the kids to come to their ‘camps’ — which costs the players’ families more money — and just e-mail hundreds of kids’ (films) to coaches, so they can get lost in the shuffle. I know of a kid who went to a camp when he had the flu, so he scored horribly on his running and on the bench (press), but he got a letter from the website congratulating him on his performance, telling him he was eligible to come to the next camp in Houston. It was a scam.”

Dollens knows the value of getting a highlight video in front of the right coach at the right time.

“My last year in high school, we won one game and our coach got fired,” he said. “There was nobody coming to see us play, and nobody at the school after the season to promote me. I made 75 VHS tapes and packed them up and sent them to coaches. One of them was (former SMU defensive ends coach) Eric Roark — I sent him one, and the rest was history.

“But sending individual packets like that was so expensive and time-consuming. A lot of families can’t afford stuff like that, but now, all of it can be done on the internet.”

Boulevard book signing: Dollens will be signing copies of Recruit Yourself at Boulevard spot No. 46 Saturday before the Mustangs take on Temple.

The book also can be purchased by clicking the following link: http://amzn.to/1fXAQwq