STARKVILLE — A.J. Morreale concedes his football future was never on the field.
A native of Franklin, Tennessee, Morreale played receiver on the Centennial High School football team, though readily admits he “was not very good.”
Rather than chase on-field aspirations, Morreale enrolled at Mississippi State, where he connected with former head coach Joe Moorhead’s staff through his cousin who played for Moorhead at Connecticut. With no openings available at the time, Morreale continued to show up at the Leo Seal Jr. Football Complex, eventually landing a job as a student recruiting assistant.
“I mean, he’s our lead dog,” MSU Director of Football Personnel Matt Wilson said. “And he’s literally right now training five new guys. His evaluation is literally the one that gets sent to (Director of Football Recruiting) Mike (Villagrana) and I.”
Now a senior and entering his third year with the football program, Morreale is on the verge of revolutionizing the recruiting industry not only in Starkville, but nationwide with his football recruiting startup StatTrack.
Developed by Morreale and engineered by partner Patrick Bell, a December 2019 MSU grad, StatTrack is a software designed for recruiting personnel to compile statistics from potential high school prospects in an effort to cut down on the human and error and time most schools spend gathering such numbers by hand during the fall.
“Two months ago, my total life plan was: graduate, go get my teaching certificate, teach and coach — which I still kind of plan to do,” Morreale said. “…But to have that be my only goal and then now all of a sudden, like, hey, I own a business. It’s wild.”
Friday nights during football season for MSU recruiting personnel usually consists of three or four student assistants scouring Twitter, Maxpreps and local newspapers to gather information on potential MSU targets.
As stats, results and news stories are compiled into a Google Doc of anywhere from 200 to 300 potential prospects that grows with each ensuing peck of the keyboard, the final list is sent off to Wilson and Villagrana.
Once Wilson and Villagrana receive the information, it’s passed on to MSU’s position coaches, who can use it as a reference point when contacting recruits the following morning.
In all, the painstaking process takes roughly four hours per student and is naturally subjected to human error.
“Everywhere I’ve been, I sit down and I’m like, ‘Somebody is going to make a lot of money once they figure out how to do high school scores and stats, because it’s miserable,” said Wilson, who’s previous recruiting gigs included stops at Indiana and Tennessee.
“Everybody you talk to in the personnel space, that’s definitely the biggest pain in the a– is scores and stats,” Villagrana added through a laugh.
Chatting in the recruiting office on September 2, Wilson and Morreale discussed their issues with the system and contended there had to be a better way to go about it.
Intrigued at the proposition, Morreale began to explore a way to automate the process. Calling a friend who recently graduated from MSU in the business world, Morreale was later connected with Bell. The two then began preliminary discussions on the logistics of building the database and subsequent website where the information would be compiled.
Visits to the Mississippi State Center for Entrepreneurship and Outreach also ensued. Working with Director of Entrepreneurship Eric Hill, Morreale was able to build a business model and secure a $2,500 in funding through the university to get the project off the ground.
Bell, a Starkville native who received his undergraduate degree in computer science and will wrap up a master’s degree in the same field next year, then set to work on the product, finishing their first semi-working product in mid-October.
“Every day has been a ton of work, but I’m really thankful that the Mississippi State E-Center has kind of been there for me and helped me out along the way,” Morreale said.
Morreale’s vision and Bell’s design has quickly garnered interest outside of MSU. Morreale said there are three current Power Five programs committed to beta testing the software and zoom and telephone calls with more are in the works.
Twitter follows from varying FBS recruiting coordinators have followed, too, as Villagrana and Wilson have aided in spreading the word on Morreale’s growing product.
Morreale’s father, Tony, who’s worked in the Nashville Music scene for more than three decades in varying roles at Columbia Records, RCA Label Group and Average Joes Entertainment, among others, has also helped his son through the financial side of things in addition to applying for an LLC last month.
“It’s just been neat to be able to take this idea and test around with it and see that it is really pretty plausible to do and build it all.” Bell said.
Last week, Morreale was selected as MSU’s representative in the annual Southeastern Conference Pitch Competition, a contest in which each member institution nominates a student with a self-built business to compete against others from around the conference.
The event, which was supposed to be held at Georgia but was audibled to a virtual setting given the COVID-19 pandemic, allowed Morreale to pitch his product before two sets of judges and receive feedback on how to go about growing his startup.
“I think he’s one of our top performing teams,” Hill said. “This year, certainly, and I think in the spring he will very much have this company up and running.”
During a time in which the majority of seniors are cherishing their last few nights at the local bar, or milking college-aged freedom for just a handful more months, Morreale works longer days than most full-time employees.
He wakes up at 7 a.m. every morning and heads to the gym for an hour and a half. Twelve credit hours worth of classes persist throughout the week. So too do spells in the recruiting, while Morreale spends nights working on StatTrak, finally going to bed around midnight.
And while it’s been just over two months since he and Wilson maligned the high school scores and stats process, Morreale’s taken the skyrocketing interest in stride.
“It’s kind of becoming my full time job at this point,” he said. “It’s really exciting. We’ll see where it takes me.”
Ben Portnoy reports on Mississippi State sports for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter at @bportnoy15.
You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 46 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 46 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
