recruiting

[this is obviously not from the presser but is obviously the photo I was going to use]

[Fuller/MGoBlog]

[I missed the question but it’s something about the goals of the event]

“That was the main objective, to celebrate these youngsters and all their hard work. Their parents made so many sacrifices; I had a chance to see it up close. So many sacrifices: their money, their energy. This needs to be celebrated, need to have some fun. We’ll go back to work at 2:30 but great to have some fun. ”

Is this everything you hoped it would be?

“It was. Mainly it was inspired by Chad Carr, the ChadTough Foundation, their family, the entire family. Got to see it for an entire year. Got to see the love, a family that loves this youngster and a community that loves Chad and to see all him loved back, it brings you closer to God. Or at least for me it does. And also the sanctity for life. Have been very inspired by Chad Carr

[something about the recruiting class]

“We are so excited about all of our signees. We are tremendously- I’m standing here with you, so…yeah. But from top to bottom, this recruiting class is youngsters that have a real heart for competing and heart for football. They’ve got football faces. Competitive in the classroom. As we said before, they’ve worked so hard to put themselves in a position to be here and they love ball. I have a real appreciation for the families that trust us to coach their sons, to teach them, because when you’re a family it doesn’t matter what you have monetarily or what you don’t have, your most prized possession is your son or your daughter. When you trust somebody to develop them, I take that very seriously. Just happy that they respect us and that they trust us.”

Where did you get the idea for today and how long has it been in the works?

“I guess just how could we do something fun and a celebration. I’ve been watching this process for years and experienced it myself; you pull a fax out of a fax machine and a coach stands up and talks about them and usually says kind of the same thing, so wanted to do something different. Wanted to do something awesome, and was really pleased. Thought today did that.”

On paper this is a great class. Can you talk about the expectations moving forward for this class?

“Yeah, I mean, it’s a process. I love that word, and talk about it especially going from high school to college. That’s…it’s uncharted waters. It’s the unknown. If you have sons and daughters of your own you know that step and what it takes, [and] it’ll be a process. It’s gonna be a team effort to it. Everybody here at the University of Michigan, the love that you surround the youngsters with, and also a team effort with parents and families. Really appreciate the trust there and with that we can do great things and expect great things. I think that’ll happen, especially with the group we have. All these youngsters all come from great families. They have great places to go and get advice from their parents or from their family, and I think they’re going to make the transition very well.”

What’s the cap number on the class? How high can it go?

“Well, there’s going to be some coming. There’s going to be another announcement later today. Youngsters that are going to be preferred walk-ons that we’ve been recruiting for a long time, they’re going to sign as well. It’s gonna be a good, big number.”

Do you know what the number of scholarships you can give out in this class is?

“Uh, yeah, in terms of scholarships I think it’s going to come in somewhere around 29.”

Did you guys use any grayshirts?

“No.”

Did you guys backdate the early kids?

“Uh, yes.”

[After THE JUMP: sleepovers, honesty with early commits, non-apologies]

via @Babcocks_Hair

OKAY SO HERE'S WHAT WE'RE GOING TO DO. You're gonna load this page and it's just gonna sit there. You will not hit refresh. Our two twitter collections will update automatically, putting the news in your eyeballs. Twitter collection #1 is news-only, who has gone where. Twitter collection #2 is the ongoing exultation/panic/depression thread. To participate just @ me.

We are caching the front page, which means you will appeared logged out. You will be logged in on interior pages. Going to interior pages may result in 503s and the like; staying on the front page will get you the latest and greatest news without such risk.

OKAY SO HERE'S OUR SPONSOR. Yep, Homesure Lending. It's like all those Rocket commercials except 1) Matt was not a major contributor to the subprime crisis, so he's got that going for him, 2) Matt never wrote a letter to LeBron James in comic sans*, 3) Matt goes out to various companies to get you the best possible rate. My lender has the word "wholesale" in its name, and this makes me feel great. Also the rate.

Matt's got a ticket offer going for a Michigan football or basketball game. If you're buying a home or refinancing, he's the right guy to call.

*[Probably. I have not checked with him to make sure this is true.]

OKAY SO THIS IS THE SCHEDULE.

• 8:10 AM: TN WR Nate Johnson. Michigan.
• 9 AM: MI CB Lavert Hill. Michigan.
• 10 AM: MI OL Alaric Jackson. M, Iowa, Nebraska.
• 11 AM: MI K Quinn Nordin. Michigan.
• 11:30 AM: AZ DE Connor Murphy. Michigan, USC, Oregon, ASU.
• 1 PM: NJ DE Rashan Gary. Michigan.
• 1 PM: FL WR Pie Young. Michigan, Louisville, USC.
• 3PM: CA TE Devin Asiasi. Michigan.
• 3PM: CA DT Boss Tagaloa. Michigan, USC, UCLA, UW.
• 4PM: CA QB Vic Viramontes. Michigan, Utah, Cal.

OKAY SO THIS IS THE NEWS-ONLY TWITTER COLLECTION

NSD 2016 News

OKAY SO THIS IS THE EXULTATION/PANIC/DEPRESSION THREAD

Answering questions whilst chained to my laptop all day. If I don't get to yours it's almost certainly because it's already been answered several times already, or I'm answering it right now. Greg Little is not flipping. I deeply regret ever bringing his name up in speculation.  There is no silent commit whose name isn't on the schedule above. Don't tweet at croots.

NSD 2016 Q&A

Back in the day the recruiting roundups that Ace would put together would show the star ratings from each site of the various Michigan targets. The problem was we kept noticing dramatic differences that weren't really dramatic. For example here's a table of guys given 5-stars by these services since the 2010 class:

Was Scout ludicrously high on M guys, or giving out more 5-stars? Actually they were all ranking not that far from each other, but Michigan just happened to get a lot of the guys in that 4-/5-star margin. It only looks dramatic because there are only five possible rankings.

This was recruiting until 247 introduced their composite rating. That composite is so amazingly useful for most "how good was he as a recruit" questions.

Since forever I've also been maintaining this spreadsheet of data on Michigan players that started as a naming sheet for some iteration of the NCAA game, and just kept gaining columns. My old way of tracking the recruiting ratings on that was to take the stars each service gave out, figuring they all roughly had the same definitions, and average them.

But that was throwing away a ton of information provided by the sites, which typically post national rankings for the top ~250-300 recruits, and in three of their cases have their own more precise star rating systems. For example Rivals's 5-star range includes "6.1" and "6.0", while ESPN (50-95) and 247 (69-102) have numeric scales with the decades roughly coinciding with the next star rating.

They also have position ratings, which don't match up since they split positions differently, but if they can all be turned into percentiles.

So far I've done all but the last bit. Matching table's above. What we end up with is not a composite system like 247's so much as a composite Star Rating system that quadruples the star precision level.

I tried to honor stars and what they mean, but I also took national rankings and position rankings into account when one site's rating spanned multiple ratings of its competitors. So a 5.8 on Rivals will be a 4.00 if he makes the Rivals 250, and a 3.75 if he doesn't. And a 3-star WR on Scout who's ranked just behind the 4-star receivers in the WR rankings is like a 3.5-star.

[After the Jump: charts until I literally break Excel]

was their recruiting coodinator, might help w/ Asiasi/Tagaloa

Hello. This is an attempt to give you a 1,000 foot view of Michigan's current recruiting class. It lives as a wiki post under the "Useful Stuff" heading as well, and can be updated by anyone with 500+ points.

not eligible sry [Patrick Barron]

SCHOLARSHIPS

We assume Michigan will go to 28.

Michigan has 16 open spots right now plus three specialists who may be on one of those "you get the first spot that opens up" kind of deals. In addition there are 2-4 guys who probably won't get fifth years.

Thus Michigan is expecting to lose at least 5-8 current members of the roster (other than fifth years) before Signing Day. (Big Ten rules prevent teams from oversigning unless they can explain where the scholarship is coming from.) That's not an inordinate number given the roster composition, the sudden possibility of NFL interest, and the fact that this is the first year of a new coach. We know of one guy who is already planning a playing-time transfer, FWIW, and there are no doubt more.

CURRENT CLASS SIZE

We are not considering Dele Harding a commit. He was removed from the Rivals commit list and any insider you poke will tell you they don't expect him to end up at Michigan.

We have also heard that some of the camp commits in the class were explicitly offered grayshirt deals. We are not exactly sure who, but depending on how things go Michigan could end up with extra spots in the class as guys reclassify to 2017 or take opportunities for 2016 elsewhere.

In addition, Chris Evans, Kingston Davis, and David Reese have all announced plans to take visits and should be considered soft commits.

So: the current class is somewhere between 14 and 20 guys. Welcome to 'crootin.

ROOM LEFT AND WHO MICHIGAN IS TARGETING

Michigan can take somewhere between 8 and 14 additional players. They are targeting approximately

• one running back
• one wide receiver
• one tight end
• one OL
• one kicker
• two or three DL
• two or three LB
• one or two CB
• one or two S

The only spot that is definitively full right now is QB.

Latest Updates: Debut

this week in unintentionally grim-sounding recruiting headlines