Every recruiting cycle, Colorado issues scholarship offers to hundreds of prospects.

The Buffs are by no means exclusive in that regard — programs across the country routinely dish out countless offers every year.

For Colorado and all college football teams, the number of recruits initially offered compared to those who take unofficial visits, official visits and ultimately end up committing and signing decreases considerably.

At the end of the day, there's only so many scholarships available per cycle.

So, how does the process start exactly?

Given the volume of kids CU goes after annually, it can be easy to lose track of how exactly it all goes down.

In short, there are many moving pieces with respect to how Colorado's football program issues offers to prospects, involving many different people across multiple departments.

The overwhelming majority of the time, every given offer that goes out features a collaboration between CU's coaching staff, its recruiting department and its player personnel department.

During a recent sit-down with CUSportsNation, Colorado inside linebackers coach and recruiting coordinator Mark Smith went into detail about that process and those who keep it running smoothly.

“There’s a couple of different ways we identify guys," Smith said. "Number one is just through the high school coach. I may call and (they) send me a prospect list. Here’s the prospect list from Southlake Carroll (Texas) High School (for example), and then they’ve got it broken down.

"Here’s the (players) they feel like are Power Five, here’s who they feel like are Group of Five, here’s there FCS-type players and so-on — we take that list and submit it to the recruiting department. That’s where the initial evaluation will happen."

Colorado also identifies a significant number of prospects from its coaches being out on the road.

Every year, coaches visit dozens of schools and often attend camps across the country.

"I’ll go to SMU to the mega camp again this summer and there’s going to be 800 kids a session for six sessions," Smith said. "You may find a guy there and say, ‘OK, let’s send him back to the recruiting department and look into this guy.’ So, now you’ve got 10 coaches out on the road that are doing this, and gathering this information."

While CU's coaches are the more obvious identifiers of prospective recruits, there are many others within the recruiting and player personnel arms of Colorado Football that play important parts, too.

"(We) have a really tremendous personnel and recruiting department," Smith said. "(There's) Assistant Director of Player Personnel) Andy Wang, (recruiting assistant) Emily Giusti, we’ve got (lead recruiting assistant) D.J. (Bryant), we’ve got (Director of Player Personnel) Chandler Dorrell in the personnel department — they’re finding players as well."

Once CU has identified a player, the wheels start turning with respect to determining whether or not to pull the trigger and issue an offer.

Colorado's recruiting department often provides an initial evaluation of a given prospect, after which, that player, if passing the first evaluation, will be forwarded to the relevant position coach.

From there, the road that leads to an offer often looks like this: the offensive and defensive coordinators weigh in and, if all parties, from recruiting staff, to position coach, to coordinator, are in agreement, that prospect's information is placed on the desk of Karl Dorrell, who gives a final OK.

“There’s a pipeline of checks and balances with that," Smith said. "Then, if we decide we want to offer somebody, it goes from there."

The process described above is an example for how a single recruit may be processed by the relevant people and coaches within CU's football program.

Looking at things more broadly, each Colorado assistant coach is paired with someone from the recruiting department. In Smith's case, he works directly with Bryant.

The purpose of the partnership is to maintain a fresh list of prospective recruits on file at all times, so that there's never a lag in the identification/evaluation/offering process.

Once an offer is issued, Colorado enlists a pair of coaches, a given player's relevant position coach, plus the area recruiter, to oversee things.

For example, if the recruit in question was a running back from Texas, then tailbacks coach Darian Hagan and Smith, the area recruiter for that state, would work in tandem.

"It really becomes a tag-team recruiting event between the position coach and the area coach," Smith said. "We’re an area recruiting team and we believe in that because of the relationships that come with area recruiting."

There is one exception to the two-man "tag-team" recruiting method that Smith mentioned, however, and that comes into play if the player hails from the Centennial State.

"For in-state kids, if we’ve got an in-state young man that we’ve offered, that becomes a staff job," he said. "That’s just the level of importance that we put on it.”

CUSportsNation will be publishing a series of stories based off a recent conversation with ILBs coach and recruiting coordinator Mark Smith as Spring practices get underway starting March 30.

Up next, Smith discusses in-state recruiting as well as Colorado's recruiting footprint in the states of California and Texas.