Lee Brecheen’s blue-chip scouting tools

When college football recruiting guru Lee Brecheen talks about what it takes to put out the Louisiana Football Magazine, the words passion and hard-work finagle their way into pretty much every sentence.

“I’m in a very unique profession,” Brecheen says. “It’s a 24-7 job.”

Brecheen’s interest in recruiting started while he was still in high school. He played defensive back and quarterback for Central High School and ran on the 4×100 meter relay team. He could’ve walked on at some college, but he opted instead to work for a radio station and start his career early. His late father Clyde Brecheen, a youth football league coach for 20 years, inspired his career choice.

“He had a gift to do what I’m doing now but never acted on it,” he says. “He could’ve been a phenomenal college coach. I looked up to him because he was this walking encyclopedia.”

Fifteen years since Lee founded his own football recruiting publication, Louisiana Football Magazine has become the annual almanac for state high school football. If you want to know a player’s vital stats, which team plays which and when, or even which coach has the best chance of winning a district championship, it’s all in there.

• Trusty Ford Explorer. Brecheen figures he racks up 20,000 miles a year visiting recruits and their coaches.

• Digital video cameras. He and his crew use 10 of them to record multiple games, allowing Brecheen to observe and evaluate far-flung recruits.

• TV and DVD player. Brecheen converts all the digital video tapes to DVD, and then watches and notates every single play of every recorded game.

Brecheen is not overly animated, nor does he speak in fiery tones. Indeed, he tempers his passion for the sport with patience, a crucial balance needed to stay in constant touch with high school coaches throughout the state. Brecheen travels from Shreveport to Port Sulphur for games, watches and analyzes countless hours of game films, and visits kids year-round to size them up face-to-face and find out their college plans.

He attends more than 50 spring practices, then sends out annual questionnaires to players in early summer.

Brecheen does have help. He employs interns and has “camera guys” stationed all over the state to whom he can ship cameras back and forth so they can film games for him.

Still, there are no days off. “It’s hands-on—a lot of people don’t do what I do because they don’t have the passion to go out there and get it done,” Brecheen says.