multi-year scholarships

Number one breakout. ESPN's Travis Haney compiled a list of 50 breakout players for the upcoming season based on "a lot of input from coaches" and your new favorite quarterback is #1:

“I recruited him,” said one of the Big Ten coaches who played against Gardner late last year. “I know how good he can be. I would say I have been looking forward to him getting his chance, because he’s a really good kid, but they’re on the schedule again this year.”

Frank Clark also features at #35.

Swag. We are totally losing Michael Ferns to Mississippi State, you guys.

Following up on earlier assertion. I mentioned in passing in a previous post that I felt Bill Connolly was way underrating LeVeon Bell and way overrating Michigan State's offensive line in his Spartan preview for the year, and as I was looking up various things about Derrick Green I came across a stunning stat on Bell:

Le'Veon Bell gained 921 yards after contact in 2012, most among players from AQ schools. Bell gained more than 50 percent of his yards after contact and averaged 2.4 yards after contact per rush.

Bell got 2.3 yards before contact and 2.4 after. That is a man doing work to clean up for a terrible offensive line. And quarterback: Bell's 382 carries led the nation by 26.

Countdowns to kickoff. Taylor Lewan:

Countdown to Kickoff 2013: Day 28 - Taylor Lewan by mgovideo

Lewan is a thousand times more boring than he used to be. Leadership!

Also Quinton Washington and Jeremy Gallon. True story: bought a chair at Art Van this summer, marveled at the size of the guy they had hauling stuff around, realized that I knew who this was: Quinton Washington. Woo minimum wage, for one more year.

Also, the first day of practice:

Michigan Football First Practice Fall 2013 by mgovideo

Derrick Green's first carry went for 50 yards and birthed a unicorn.

Wide receivers block, then they receive. In-depth ESPN article on the blocking aspects of playing out wide comes highly recommended for interesting quotes and such. Minnesota safety Brock Vereen is either worried about his knees or an expert at backhanded compliments:

“They act as if they are more excited to block than they are to catch a pass,” Minnesota safety Brock Vereen said. “Sadly, I’m not even exaggerating.”

Michigan's dumped cut blocking for a lot of reasons, but the primary one is the fact that defensive backs just get up too darn fast these days:

“They are like those Weeble Wobbles that you had growing up,” Hecklinski said. “You can throw a great cut and he’s right back up making a play and golly, that’s a great cut."

"Golly," says the man eating everyone's lunch on the recruiting trail. #TheMichiganDifference.

The article gestures at one of the main reasons Michigan's wide receivers were so pumped up to block: with Denard Robinson on your team, any play could be a 20 yard run you fail to turn into 80, and then your ass is roasted. Hopefully they maintain the same urgency as Michigan moves to a system more likely to get you five (after contact, and by "contact" I mean "safety murder") than 50.

Hoke advocates earlier official visits. Makes sense, will never happen for the same reason a baseball season that makes sense will never happen:

“Having an official visit date in June would help football,” Hoke stated. “I know some of our friends in the Pac 12 and the SEC probably don’t want the young man and his family coming up to Michigan during the first two weeks in June, because they’re hoping it’s 10 below zero when those official visits take place.”

A rather large win. Wolverine Historian puts up the '95 Minnesota game:

Mack Brown offer letter. I just find this interesting. It's an official offer letter from Mack Brown to a guy named Lorenzo:

[bigger version here]

Items:

• The first bullet is basically Michigan's much-discussed and much-misunderstood "policy" about commits taking visits: you are committed if you are not taking visits, and if you visit elsewhere Michigan will not consider you committed. That doesn't necessarily mean they'll pull your scholarship offer, but your spot is no longer reserved and they may recruit someone else or just reconfigure their class. Why recruiting sites, opposing fans, and Michigan fans keep going on and on about it is a mystery to me.
• Texas is explicitly offering four year scholarships, and seems to state that a fifth year is also guaranteed… but I think the fine print there means the firm handshake is still an option if the Head Coach wants it to be.
• The pointlessness of the rule where players cannot get written offers before August 1st of their senior year is brought home in the first paragraph: Texas is "pleased to reconfirm our commitment to the football athletic scholarship you committed to earlier this year." The lack of written offers has led to the rise of the incredibly annoying "uncommittable offer" and prevents players from getting the exact stipulations of their scholarship offer in writing until long after many of them have committed. And it obviously does nothing to slow down the pace of recruiting.

The only way to slow down the pace of recruiting, by the way, is to let kids sign whenever they want. Eighth grader offers will come to a screeching halt, for real.

SBNation has a roundup of offer letters from around the country, featuring Comic Sans from Virginia Tech, "formally" spectacularly misspelled as "formerly" by Virginia, and Illinois claiming that those who attend there will play "championship football." That latter might be true if in fact the Big Ten has been relegated to the second level of English soccer. Which it probably has after last year. We done got relegated you guys.

Quite a rise. Four Michigan players make the final roster at the USA World Juniors evaluation camp: JT Compher, Tyler Motte, Boo Nieves… and Andrew Copp. I think 14 of the 18 forwards on the roster will be on the WJC team, so Copp's gone from JJ Swistak But Big to a guy with a very good chance of making the WJC team in 12 months. Wow.

Amen. Hoke on ND:

"I do not like the fact it's going away," Hoke said.

Asked who is a fault for all this, Hoke responded simply: "We would like to continue the series."

Realignment has replaced the ND game and games against Nebraska, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Northwestern with Rutgers and Maryland.

Etc.: Harmon Of Michigan's theme song is a "Hollywood-style rendition of the Victors," and MVictors has it. Michigan Hockey Net posts the famous 2002 Denver-Michigan West Regional Final at Yost. Michigan players on the O'Bannon case.

Well, I'll be danged. I think this is the first documented case of a recruit stating he picked a school because he wanted the security of a long-term scholarship. He's Dyshon Sims, a 3.5 star OL recruit who just picked Georgia over Alabama:

“I also like how you get a four-year scholarship at Georgia. That’s one of the main reasons I picked it. From my understanding, you get three years at Alabama, and you only get a scholarship for each year. If you don’t show enough progression, then your scholarship is pretty much gone at Alabama.”

Nick Saban is probably not quaking at this development, but it's nice to see someone is paying attention to the fact that they can get a four-year ride guaranteed if they ask for it.

don't mention Woodson… don't mention Woodson… don't mention Woodson

Gardner camping. Devin Gardner was at the Manning QB camp thing over the weekend. That was mostly notable the general public for the fact that Johnny Manziel was bootted for showing up late, apparently hung over. Dollars to donuts as he was leaving he made several Heisman poses and rubbed his eyes theatrically in the general direction of Peyton.

Anyway, Gardner was either impressive or raw depending on who you talked to. Mike Mayock named him first when asked about juniors who impressed:

"Gardner came in at the end of the year, he's 6'4", 210, he's got a buggy whip [ed: ?] for an arm, he's highly athletic, he's raw as can be, but trust me—this kid's got some ability. I'm really anxious to watch him develop this year.

Mayock clarifies that this was not actually football, so don't think it's football.

Mayock wasn't the only guy to notice Gardner. According to Bruce Feldman, he was generating quite a bit of buzz:

Out at #Manning Camp and heard from a few folks talking abt how impressed they've been w #Michigan QB Devin Gardner.

NFL.com's Bucky Brooks also noted Gardner:

@dg1two might be the next Ryan Tannehill. Limited experience, but athletic and a ultra-talented passer. Great physical tools. Big arm.

If you missed al the Tannehill references last year around this time, Tannehill switched to WR for Texas A&M, was successful there, went back to quarterback for his last couple years, and was a first round NFL draft pick.

Brooks noted that there were 41 college starters showing out at this thing, so for Gardner to be a must-mention for everyone is a good sign.

Whoah. Someone pays 860 dollars too much for a ring commemorating the Mississippi State slaughter; the ring is Kelvin Grady's. Why would you put up a memento like that, other than a desire to never think about that game again?

Kevin Grady Sr. is now in federal prison for 14 years after he was convicted last year on multiple charges of bank and wire fraud and lying to federal authorities as part of a $3 million mortgage scheme. … The sons were left holding the bag on a $45,000 judgment which will be only slightly reduced by the auction, according to Visser, who represented Reitberg Realty and Rusty Richter in the court action that began in 2008.

Whoah. The piece dryly notes that "it is unclear if the buyer of the ring is a Wolverine fan or not."

Yeah, I would have bought this. ARGH CLASSY SHIRT THAT IS NOW ADORNING UGANDANS

Slight difference between this and the immature cheese BCS t-shirts from a couple years back—you know, ORANGE you glad we won, hur hur.

Yes, yes please. Smart Football makes some suggestions to improve the box score, starting with the obvious (sack yards are not rushing yards) and moving on to some good stuff I hadn't thought of:

Completions Behind the Line: Bubble screens, rocket screens, now screens, touch passes and swing passes are an increasingly large part of offenses, and, given that these plays are nominally forward passes but are typically “packaged” with running plays, they really should be their own quasi-run/pass category.

Also suggested is the addition of yards after catch, which yes.

My suggestions:

• I'd like to see punts divided into air yards and ground yards, so I can stew over that 30-yard duck that rolled 20 more.
• QB hurries are a legit stat that should be tracked.
• WRs should be charged with drops and have their targets tracked.

Uh-oh. Luke Kennard picked up MSU, Duke, and Kentucky offers this weekend. Kentucky is a particular issue, as Kennard said he grew up a fan of the Wildcats. What is with Kentucky getting all up in Michigan's recruits? Isn't there some 6'7" guy who does not acknowledge the effects of gravity to recruit? Leave us our wonky-form shooter plz.

Hopes: nope. I'm not going to get my hopes up about Kevon Looney. I'm not going to get my hopes up about Kevon Looney.

The mutual interest comes from what Looney watched Michigan do during this past season — specifically, he saw the success Robinson experienced as a first-year player.

“I could be next,” Looney said. “When you see someone that’s built like you, has a style of play like you, and you see he’s going to get better, you sort of put yourself in that position.”

Looney knows what he’s looking for in a school.

“The best situation for me,” he explained. “The best situation where I could come in and play, where I could come in and develop. The best college atmosphere, I want to go to a real college town.”

I'm not going to tell Kevon Looney that he's like three inches taller than GRIII and GRIII's usage rate was in the Brent Petway range.

You should be Trey Burke as well. Derrick Walton, just dribbling stuff.

Etc.: Happy 100th, Gerald Ford. HTTV contains a great Ford anecdote, BTW. Wait, someone ISN'T on a watch list?

left via

The NCAA repealed a longstanding prohibition on multi-year scholarships a couple years back. Uptake has been surprisingly slow, as the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette details:

…nearly two years after that legislation, multiyear scholarships are rare, not publicized by universities and largely unknown by the athletes. According to data of 82 universities at the Division I-A level obtained by the Post-Gazette through open records requests, only 16 have offered more than 10 multiyear scholarships. Thirty-two of the universities have offered between one and 10, and thirty-four have not offered any.

Ryan Squire, the associate athletics director for compliance at Illinois, remembers that when the legislation was passed in 2011 many schools "were all calling around saying, 'What are you going to do, what are you going to do?' And they said, 'We're kind of going to hope other schools aren't doing it.'"

Ryan Squire can get away with saying that because Illinois is an exception to the rule, giving a "majority" of its athletes four-year deals. Fresno State has gone all-in. Michigan State has gone four-year-exclusive in football. Most everyone else has tried to avoid the topic altogether.

This is an issue that shouldn't exist at all anymore. Schools should no longer have a total limit of scholarship athletes in any sport, but rather yearly caps that encourage retention instead of summary execution. In an environment where every stakeholder with an ounce of power is busy holding down costs that aren't administrator salaries, that's never going to happen.

There is a point in time during which the students have the power: when they're being recruited. If Jabrill Peppers wants a four-year deal at Michigan, or anywhere else, Michigan will trip over itself to get him the proper paperwork. If a marginal recruit isn't offered one, he knows the deal. The common theme in these stories, however, is that players—and I imagine by extension their parents—are at best vaguely aware of the terms of their scholarship:

"The multiyear, the first one, I think," said Boyd, a Clairton High School student who signed with the Panthers in February.

He thought about it for a moment longer. He then asked his coach, Tom Nola. Boyd reconsidered. In fact, he thought, his scholarship lasted for only one year with a renewal option.

"I've never had a parent bring it up to me and I'm around a lot of people," says Montour High School football coach Lou Cerro. "I'm not sure why the NCAA and the coaches are keeping this a secret. It doesn't make any sense."

"I'm not sure," tight end Brent Wilkerson said. "I hope I'm on scholarship for four years."

Penn State safety Malcolm Willis said he was on a renewable scholarship and preferred it this way, saying, "you have to earn your scholarship."

John Infante:

“The bigger failure is not that the school isn’t adopting” multiyear aid, John Infante, a former compliance officer at Colorado State University, told us, “but that we’re not seeing this market develop where kids know there is the potential for multiyear scholarships and negotiating for that.”

So what to do?

Well, isn't this somewhat on recruiting reporters? Recruiting reporters are the number one avenue that recruits have to express themselves in the media; I'd guess the ratio of reporter contact to coach contact most recruits have is 10:1. Coaches are obviously loathe to mention the possibility of multi-year aid; reporters shouldn't be.

But I have literally never seen an article in which the reporter asked whether Recruit X is seeking a multiyear scholarship and which schools are amenable to that request. Not only is that information interesting, but by asking the kids you get the kids to ask the schools and hopefully chip away at the gap between the rules and recruits' knowledge of them. This goes triple for anyone covering Michigan State or Illinois or Fresno State (if recruiting reporters covering Fresno State exist), schools that will look on that sort of question as beneficial to their interests.

Ask the kids about which schools are offering them four-year rides, and the mystery of slow uptake will resolve itself either way.