Questions to Ask College Athletes
Questions for talking with a college athlete, whether you are writing a feature for a student paper or a podcast, hosting a recruit who wants to know what the team is really like, or a parent trying to get past a fine answer. They start with the ordinary week and move toward money, injuries, transfers and what happens when the sport ends.
20 questions, each with the reason to ask it · includes a conversation guide
The questions
Open any question to see why it works.
- 1
Walk me through a normal Tuesday, from when your alarm goes off.
This gets specifics that a question about balance never will: the lift at six, the class in wet hair, the twenty minute lunch. It also lets the athlete talk without having to decide what you want to hear, which is the best way to start.
- 2
How much of your day is scheduled by somebody else?
Most people outside the building assume it is practice plus games. The answer usually includes lifting, treatment, film, study hall, media and team meals, and hearing the total said out loud is often the first time the athlete has added it up either.
- 3
When did you first know you were good enough to play at this level?
The answer is rarely a moment of confidence. It is usually a specific game, a camp, or the first coach who called, and the story tends to include someone who told them before they believed it. Follow up by asking who that person was.
- 4
What was recruiting actually like, and what did nobody tell you?
Recruits and their parents want this one more than any other. The useful answers are about the parts nobody prepares you for: how fast interest cools, how much of the visit is staged, and how a decision gets made on incomplete information.
- 5
What surprised you most about the jump from high school?
Almost nobody says the athletes were better, even though they were. The answers are usually about speed of decisions, the size of the playbook or the training load, and the answer tells a recruit far more than any statistic about the program does.
- 6
Who decides who plays, and is it said out loud or do you work it out?
Programs differ enormously in how openly roles are communicated, and this is the thing current players know that no coach will tell a recruit. Ambiguity about the depth chart is one of the most commonly cited frustrations in college sport.
- 7
What does a bad practice cost you for the rest of the day?
It asks about carryover rather than emotion, so you get a real answer instead of a cliche about short memories. Some athletes describe a whole evening lost, which says something about how the program handles mistakes.
- 8
How do you handle the classes you miss for travel, and which professors make it hard?
Missed class time is the concrete academic problem in college sport, not intelligence or effort. Ask who has been accommodating and who has not, since the pattern usually reveals whether the athletic department has done any work with faculty.
- 9
Did the schedule change what you could study?
Afternoon labs, studio hours and clinical placements collide with practice, and athletes in some majors quietly move out of them in their second year. If they switched, ask whether it was suggested to them or whether they decided alone.
- 10
What do you do with an unscheduled free afternoon?
Athletes whose whole day is planned for them often struggle with unstructured time, and the answer here is usually sleep or nothing at all. It is a gentle way into questions about identity outside the sport without making them abstract.
- 11
How has your body changed since you got here, and what hurts that you do not report?
The second half is the honest half. Most competitive athletes carry something they have decided not to mention, and asking directly, without alarm, tends to get an answer they have not given the training staff.
- 12
What is the injury you played through, and would you do it again?
The regret question keeps this from becoming a toughness story. Answers split sharply between athletes who would repeat it and athletes who now watch a younger teammate doing the same thing and want to say something.
- 13
Who do you go to on the team when things are going badly?
The answer is almost never a coach, and it is often a specific teammate or a member of staff nobody outside the program has heard of. It maps the actual support structure rather than the one on the org chart.
- 14
Has name, image and likeness money changed anything for you or for people you know?
Expect a more complicated answer than the headlines suggest. For most athletes it is small local deals and paperwork, and the interesting part is usually about what it has done inside a locker room where some people earn and others do not.
- 15
Have you ever thought about transferring, and what kept you here?
Ask it as a normal question rather than a loaded one, because entering the portal is now an ordinary part of the sport. What kept them is the substantive half: a position coach, a degree program, a friendship, or a year they did not want to waste.
- 16
What does your family think this costs them, and what does it cost you?
Travel, missed holidays and years of driving to youth games sit behind almost every college athlete. Asking about the family's cost first makes it easier for the athlete to be honest about their own, which is usually the part they have never voiced.
- 17
What do you want people watching to understand that they do not?
Give this one room, because it is the question athletes most often have an answer ready for and rarely get asked. Common answers include the recovery time, the academic load, and how much of the criticism online they actually see.
- 18
What are you going to miss, and what will you not miss at all?
The second half is what makes the first half honest. Once someone can say they will not miss six in the morning conditioning, they usually go on to say something genuine about the locker room or the bus rides that a direct question would not have produced.
- 19
What do you want to do when the sport is finished, and who is helping you get there?
The second half is the accountability part, and it is worth noting whether a name comes to mind quickly. Athletes with an internship, a mentor or a plan answer immediately. A long pause here is the most useful silence in the interview.
- 20
What is the question you always get asked that you are tired of?
A good closing question that often produces the best quote of the conversation, and it hands the athlete some control at the end. Whatever they name, ask what a better version of that question would be.
Talking with college athletes
Practical guidance for the conversation itself.
If you are interviewing for a story or a show
If you are interviewing for a story or a show
- Do not lead with the last game. Everyone does, and it produces the same answers about executing and taking it one week at a time.
- Ask about the week rather than the season. Specific detail about a Tuesday is what a reader remembers.
- Learn whether a media relations staffer needs to be involved, particularly for anything about injuries, discipline or money. Going around that process usually costs the athlete more than it costs you.
- Athletes are trained to give safe answers. Silence after their first answer is the cheapest way to get a second, better one.
- If you plan to ask about something difficult, say so before you start recording rather than springing it in the middle.
If you are a recruit talking to current players
If you are a recruit talking to current players
- Ask the same questions of two or three players, including one who is not a starter. The gap between their answers is the information.
- Get away from the assigned host at some point. The player walking you to the dining hall answers differently from the one sitting in the coach's office.
- Ask what the coaching staff is like in February, not in the fall. Anyone can be pleasant during a recruiting visit.
- Ask who has left the program recently and why. Current players usually know, and will often tell you plainly if you ask without an audience.
- Ask about the parts of the year you will not see on a visit: the training trip, the offseason, exam weeks and holidays.
Questions that go nowhere
Questions that go nowhere
- How do you balance sport and school. It is answered with a platitude every time because there is no other way to answer it.
- Anything comparing them to a professional. It puts them in a position where every answer sounds wrong.
- Asking about a teammate's playing time or a coaching decision. You are asking them to say something they will have to live with in the locker room.
- Questions that assume the sport is their whole identity. Many are not planning to play after college and are quietly bored of being asked about going pro.
- Stacked questions. Two at once means you get the easy one, and the interesting half is the one that gets dropped.