Athletes Hire Image Makers to Get an Edge : High school: Companies are discovering there’s a booming business in marketing athletes to colleges.

As a 6-foot-4, 250-pound lineman with a 3.7 grade-point average at Trabuco Hills High School, Jim Farbaniec appeared to be a likely candidate for a football scholarship.

Farbaniec wanted to play Division I football. During his junior year, to help spread the word, he hired a service to blanket the country with resumes touting his athletic and academic achievements.

Letters poured into the Farbaniec household, enough to fill two dresser drawers. USC, UCLA, Georgia Tech, Utah State and Cal State Long Beach seemed to be wooing Farbaniec.

Yet, when the process was over, Farbaniec, a Times’ second-team all-Orange County selection last season, had only vague scholarship offers from Utah State and Cal State Long Beach. Last spring he decided to attend and play football at UC Davis, a Division II school that doesn’t offer football scholarships.

Seeking to break into the lucrative Orange County market, College Prospects of America provided its service free to the Farbaniecs. Farbaniec’s teammate, quarterback/defensive back Tim Manning, on the other hand, paid about $300 for the same service. Manning is attending California on a football scholarship; Cal, however, had contacted Manning before he went to College Prospects.

Manning’s and Farbaniec’s experiences are evidence that when it comes to the quest for an athletic scholarship, there are no guarantees.

The services make no promises, but sell the idea of exposure through mass mailing.

“You can’t hit on as many people as we do and not find someone who is interested,” said Keith Fox, president of College Prospects of America, which is based in Logan, Ohio.

The Farbaniecs and Mannings say they are satisfied with the service they received from College Prospects. “It got his name out to a lot of schools that I couldn’t get it out to,” said Farbaniec’s father, Ron.

Said Doyle Manning, Tim’s father: “I really looked at it like, ‘Yeah, it’s a couple hundred bucks for all the exposure in the world.’ ”

Traditionally, it hasn’t worked this way. Most scouting services generated revenues by charging colleges a fee for the names, heights, weights and other details about the top high school athletes. These so-called “blue-chip lists” were usually made up of players destined for major college football and basketball programs that could afford the fees.

Companies such as College Prospects and the Scouting Report market their services primarily to parents of athletes not on the blue-chip lists who might have the talent to continue in some level of athletics. The main targets are the coaches who don’t have large recruiting budgets--often coaches of football and basketball teams below the Division I level, and of teams in non-revenue sports such as softball, baseball, golf, tennis and track and field.

Here is a summary of some of the services available in the area:

College Prospects of America has been in business since 1986 but recently began offering its service in Orange County. College Prospects charges $489 ($389 outside of California). The company’s representatives prepare the athlete’s resume after talking to the athlete, the athlete’s parents, coaches and opposing coaches. The resume is sent to the national headquarters, where it will be determined which schools should receive copies of the resume.

National Sports Marketing Group is a Newport Beach company founded in 1989 by Kenneth Parady, a former college football and basketball official. Parady was one of College Prospects’ first representatives in California and his company offers a similar service for $395. But before it will sign anyone, National Sports Marketing Group requires a $125 personality test, which ranks the athlete’s aggressiveness, drive and leadership, etc., on a national level. It markets its athletes as students who will graduate from the colleges that accept them and includes a book and videotape on “sports psyching” and a manual that suggests answers to questions recruiters commonly ask.

Scouting Report, a service founded in Birmingham, Ala., in 1981, was initially only a football scouting service in the South. Its headquarters are now in Atlanta, and for $395, it will send resumes to virtually all of the colleges and universities in the nation that have teams in a specific sport. Scouting Report also provides information about loans and financial aid and study guides for standardized tests that are required for entrance into most schools. For an additional $200, Scouting Report will produce a videotape of the athlete in action.

None of the services compiles statistics on the percentages of clients who receive scholarships, so it’s difficult to determine how effective they are. The services say they maintain credibility by being selective in their choice of clients.

However, many high school coaches are skeptical when families are solicited for money by these services.

“I don’t believe you should have to pay out money to get a scholarship,” Los Alamitos football Coach John Barnes said. “All good scouting services are free. They make their money from the colleges. The minute I get any call saying, ‘I can help your kid for $100,’ I say, ‘I can help him more.’

“The borderline player might need a service, but he’s still at the mercy of the college guy who is recruiting him. That guy is still the one who will come and take a look, then say yes or no.”

But Barry Stevens, who owns the College Prospects of America franchise in north Orange County, said coaches don’t have enough time to do the job his service can.

“There’s no way in the world that your coaches--I don’t care who they are--can do what we do,” Stevens said. “They don’t have time to take these kids individually and market them to colleges.”

About a dozen coaches contacted nationwide had variety of feelings about the services. In general, the perception is that coaches for teams without big recruiting budgets are more apt to make use of the services.

At Division I football programs “there are very few kids that get missed,” said Mike Maynard, football coach at Division III Redlands. “If a kid’s going to get a scholarship, he doesn’t need to market himself. Very few get missed. But for the Division II or Division III kids, this is a very helpful service.

“When a student pays money to advertise his achievements and skills, we feel he is a serious prospect. He really wants to play football.”

UCLA soccer Coach Sigi Schmid said he uses the services to gather information about athletes from areas to which he doesn’t have direct access because of a limited budget. Once initial contact is made, he relies on his own contacts to determine an athlete’s worth.

“If you ask me, ‘How many players have you gotten from the services?’ ” Schmid said, “I’d say probably none, but this year there is one kid who popped up through the service that we are taking a serious look at. He’s probably the first one.”

In sports with quantitative standards, such as track and field or swimming, coaches seem more wary because success in those sports is defined by how fast an athlete’s times are.

Dave Wood, cross-country and track and field coach at Division II Ferris State in Big Rapids, Mich., said most of the profiles he gets from such services are for marginal athletes. Wood said he answers every letter from athletes inquiring about his track program, but throws away most letters from the resume services.

Nevertheless, parents who believe the services have helped their children get scholarships maintain they got their money’s worth.

Doyle Manning, whose son, Tim, received a football scholarship to Cal, kept track of how many inquiries were generated by College Prospects of America. Of 64 initial contacts the family considered seriously, 46 could be traced to College Prospects. When Tim narrowed his choice to nine schools, three of them were traceable to College Prospects. Cal contacted Manning before he signed with the service.

Jim Kirner, whose son Lee signed with National Sports Marketing and received a partial tennis scholarship to Oregon, believes the service helped Lee get exposed to schools that wouldn’t otherwise have known about him.

But Kirner warns that hiring a service doesn’t guarantee anything.

“I think people who think this is some type of guarantee or warranty are completely wrong,” Jim Kirner said. “You still have to sell yourself and you still have to have the goods. You have to have intrinsic worth and if you don’t you probably won’t get too far.”