erik swenson

4 hours of this is not fun if you're trying to say things [Bryan Fuller]

Events. There are some. If you're in NY or DC I'm sorry to report that I'm unable to make it out this year for various reasons. All the things that happened this summer plus two small people mean that I'm scrambling to catch up on season preview stuff and can't take four days in August. Next year there will not be a coaching search and College World Series. Probably. Also I've been told that once children turn four you can sell them? Is that true? Don't look it up, it's probably true. 

A graphed history of Michigan football. Most of it, anyway. Bill Connelly's S&P+ graphed and annotated:

mich

The Schembechler era is even a little more bonkers because the only negative outlier in there is when Harbaugh broke his arm and they went 6-6.

Also here's West Virginia, the Tweek of college football:

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I'm getting queasy just looking at this thing.

Also also, give it up for Charlie Weis:

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xoxo miss you big guy.

[After the JUMP: BTN visits! Nothing happens.]

"wanna go to delaware?" [Marc-Gregor Campredon]

This is a game of telephone, but… Delaware combo guard Nah'shon Hyland is a fast-rising name in the class of 2019 and may have let the cat out of the bag in re: Jordan Poole. In an article for the Maryland 247 site:

Hyland took a pair of officials earlier in his recruitment, to Temple and St. Joe's. He plans to take one to VCU, and has heard from from Maryland, DePaul, Georgetown, Pittsburgh, Wake Forest, TCU and Seton Hall. Another Big Ten school reached out to his coach over the weekend.

"Michigan. They said they have an open spot because their shooting guard is staying in the draft," he said.

Possible the Michigan contact didn't say exactly that. Since it goes on the heap of other signs that Poole's gone it means something anyway.

Meanwhile: Bones. Hyland is a riser for the reason many are: he missed some critical months with an injury. How he got that injury is incredibly sad. He damaged ligaments when he jumped out of his house, which was on fire at the time. The fire claimed the lives of his baby brother and grandmother. A year later he's physically recovered and managing to play through what must be a heavy heart. Endless Motor:

Hyland had a superb outing at Under Armour Session I in Chicago, where he averaged 15.5 points and 4 assists while shooting over 41% from distance and nearly 49% from the field overall. Nahshon isn’t content though, he expects more from himself.

“I feel as though I haven’t played my best yet even though I did what I had to. But I haven’t reached the level that I usually play at.”

The Wilmington area product has some of the best handles in the 2019 class, with playmaking ability that can best be described as electric. As a scorer, Hyland has range out to 25 feet with good mechanics and good body control when finishing at the rim.

Hyland is a point guard but has the size and (possibly) the shooting ability to play the two—his 6'3" listed height even seems a little low. At 163 pounds he may not be an immediate answer, unfortunately. But he might be worth it down the road. 247 immediately inserted him in their top 100 at #69.

Michigan seems to be genuinely interested; Josh Henschke reports that Yaklich and Beilein are headed out to Delaware to see him in person in the near future, and that Hyland would probably take an official visit if that goes well. That's significant because Hyland has already spent two officials on St Joe's and Temple and has a VCU visit set up as well. Only two schools outside the A-10 are going to get officials.

[After THE JUMP: eye bleach: bleach for your eyes!]

conveyor-solutions-belts

If you had Teddy Greenstein in the Brings Up Erik Swenson Next pool, collect your winnings. I get annoyed at Greenstein because he puts up a front of objectivity while putting out article after article designed to put Harbaugh in a bad light. See the recent article on refereeing where he asked the Big Ten's head of officials if he was bad at his job, got a "no," and said "well, I guess that wraps it all up, folks!"

Anyway. This one was somewhat spoiled by Harbaugh explaining the situation from his perspective...

"There's a camp in June, and we really want you to come so we can see you.' It ended up, after a couple of conversations, that he wasn't going to come to camp.

"I said: 'We're going to be in Indianapolis in the beginning of June for a satellite camp. It's closer to your home.' He said no. I said, 'We really need to see you for ourselves.' He said, 'Just evaluate my senior tape.' 'OK, that's what we will do.'"

...but Greenstein does his best to frame it anyway.

What happened to Swenson is exceedingly rare: a high school player in good academic standing, who remains loyal to the school to which he verbally committed, getting dumped within weeks of signing day.

There is a term for a school dispatching a player it no longer wants: "processing."

Connecticut coach Randy Edsall got crushed last week by national media figures Paul Finebaum ("total disgrace"), Mike Greenberg ("How you go to sleep at night, I have no idea") and the Washington Post's Sally Jenkins ("No one is more committed to Randy Edsall than Randy Edsall") after his scurrilous actions regarding a high school linebacker from New Jersey named Ryan Dickens.

Contrary to pearl-clutchers in the media, "processing" kids before they can sign is a common practice getting ever more common. That's why there's a term for it. Most of these situations go uncommented upon because the kid and coaches know the score and are just looking for a landing spot. The rare thing is a kid getting pissed off about it in the media.

I think we can safely assume that someone moving down from a Power 5 program to a lower level has been processed, and there have been a number of these this year: CB Nick Roberts and QB Todd Centeio went from P5 programs to the AAC. S Ahman Ross is trying to find a landing spot at Appalachian State or Colorado State. RB Bentavious Thompson looks likely to end up at UCF. FIU is the crystal ball favorite for WR Kevaughn Dingle.

That's five guys not from all of the Power 5 or one P5 conference but one recruiting class: Miami's. Every collection of team-specific recruitniks in America has a subliminal list of a few guys who are technically committed but won't actually be in the class. For Michigan this year they were Carter Dunaway and Chase Lasater; for Ohio State they were Danny Clark, Bruce Judson, and Todd Sibley.

The 24/7 decommitment tracker is missing a pager so it only goes back three days. In those three days (three days!) there are four recruitments that look like processing of some variety:

  • WR Warren Jackson decommitted from Arizona and fielded a couple of quick CSU picks.
  • LB DeMarco Artis decommitted from FSU and told 247 that it was "unfortunate."
  • LB Jabreel Stephens decommitted from Louisville and looks set to pick USF.
  • LB Jaquan Henderson flipped from Tennessee to Georgia Tech.

It is exactly one week from signing day.

Even if not all of these are genuine processings that should be sufficient to demonstrate that the practice is not rare, or anything close to it. If Greenstein had done 15 minutes of research he would have reached the same conclusion. You have to wonder why he would not take such a basic step before making an easily-disproved factual assertion.