Recruitment Revolution

As an undergraduate student, Ben Weiss upended the world of college football recruiting by bringing data analytics into a field where gut instinct reigns.

Weiss started sports analytics company Zcruit with six friends as a junior, and by the time he graduated, Zcruit counted 13 college football programs, including nine Power Five schools, among its clients. 

Drawing from strategies that university admissions offices use to predict which prospective students are most likely to accept offers of admission, Zcruit developed an algorithm that identifies with 94 percent accuracy which high school football players are most likely to commit to a given college football program. This allows recruiters to more efficiently allocate resources, focusing their time and money on students who might actually consider their programs.

Weiss developed the concept for his company while taking an economics class with Northwestern University President Morton Schapiro. He officially launched the company in September 2015 during Zcruit’s team residency at The Garage.

“We never could have done this without the resources available to us at The Garage, both in terms of work space and physical resources as well as the mentorship and networking,” Weiss said.

With support from the Northwestern alumni network and faculty mentors at The Garage, Weiss landed clients at major universities around the U.S., including one of the four 2017 College Football Playoff teams, while working toward his undergraduate degree in the School of Education and Social Policy.

In 2017, Zcruit became The Garage’s first student-founded company to be acquired. Zcruit now is a wholly owned subsidiary of California-based Reigning Champs, which serves 5 million student-athletes and helps them find opportunities to play in college. Zcruit retains its name, and Weiss, working out of Reigning Champs’ Chicago office, continues to oversee all Zcruit operations.