oversigning

my favorite part of this conversation is people looking at Brad Hawkins and Brad Hawkins in consecutive recruiting classes and identifying them as separate people

Michigan's large recruiting classes the last couple years occasionally see grenades lobbed at Harbaugh and accusations that Michigan has "sold its soul" leveled. These accusations are dumb, whether they come from 'Bama hilljacks in my twitter mentions or Stewart Mandel.

The problem with oversigning is not that any year in particular has a lot of kids in one recruiting class but that certain schools used to go well over 85 on Signing Day and had to cut 8-10 kids by fall. (This was usually just Alabama.) The hue and cry about the practice was at least partially successful in reining it in, as Power 5 conferences initiated restrictions on the practice. The Big Ten allows it, but it allows just three and supposedly you have to explain where the scholarship is coming from. Michigan operates in that environment.

And in any case, the amount of attrition needed for Michigan to get under 85 despite back-to-back large classes is well within the bounds of normal. Michigan's roster is comprised of their last five recruiting classes:

2013. 27 recruits, with those remaining all redshirt seniors. There are 5: Patrick Kugler, Henry Poggi, Mike McCray, Maurice Hurst, and Khalid Hill. They have two fifth-year senior transfers, John O'Korn and Ty Isaac. Michigan also expects to bring back sixth year senior Drake Johnson.

2014. 17 recruits. One, Blake O'Neill, was a grad transfer with one year of eligibility. A second, Jabrill Peppers, was three-and-out to the NFL draft. That leaves 15 kids who could be on this year's team. 12 are.

2015. 14 recruits. All could be on this year's team. 12 are.

2016. 27 recruits who actually signed and/or enrolled. Dytarious Johnson and Brad Hawkins ended up going to prep school, with Hawkins joining the 2017 class. Ahmir Mitchell and Devin Asiasi transferred. The other 25 are on the roster.

2017. 30 recruits. Possible one or two might end up in the same boat as Hawkins.

8 + 15 + 14 + 27 + 30 is 94, meaning that Michigan had to lose nine players naturally over the course of the last four recruiting classes to avoid oversigning. Michigan's lost seven. You can be the judge of how natural they are:

• Brady Pallante took a medical hardship scholarship.
• Michael Ferns transferred to WVU after one year under Brady Hoke.
• Freddy Canteen had injury issues and recently announced a grad transfer to Notre Dame.
• Andrew David transferred to TCU to play baseball.
• Brian Cole ran afoul of team rules, ended up at a JUCO, and will play at Mississippi State this fall.
• Ahmir Mitchell transferred to Rutgers after one semester.
• Devin Asiasi, depressingly, transferred after a highly promising freshman year.

That is far from an unreasonable amount of natural attrition for an 85-man football roster, especially because the latter three were highly ranked guys who lasted at most one year. Highly touted guys don't get run off that quickly.

That leaves two spots left, one of which is known and should be announced in the near future. I'm not sure of the second, but the worst case scenario is that Michigan does not bring back a fifth year senior who has a degree in hand and can use his final year of eligibility elsewhere. More likely is someone lighting out for greener pastures voluntarily.

If that's "selling your soul," we're going to have to invent some new lingo for Baylor. Michigan is only oversigning if you consider the practice of offering redshirted seniors a firm handshake instead of a fifth year to be oversigning. That's something literally every school in the country does annually, and is bad-faith pearl-clutching by anyone who would attempt to use that as a slam against Harbaugh.

Crootin'. Here's a 35-minute video breakdown of the recruiting class from Scout.

Helen Lovejoy, commissioner. Obviously the SEC was going to get fusty about Michigan's plan to practice at IMG over spring break. They did not do so in a way that came off at all plausibly. Shot:

“Our primary reaction [is] that, in the face of the time-demand conversations, we've got one program taking what has been 'free time' away,” Sankey said. “Let's draw a line and say, ‘That's not appropriate.'"

Chaser:

“The net of that is to say the Southeastern Conference is not going to be outpaced in recruiting,” Sankey said. “If the national approach is that we want to have more aggressive summer camps and coaches touring around all summer, then we will not only engage in that behavior, we will certainly engage in that behavior more actively -- probably more effectively than others.”

Shorter Greg Sakey: we are concerned about the kids, but if we don't get our way screw the kids. Par for the course amongst lizard people. This is of course a conference that's completely fine with a baseball schedule that sees Northern teams literally spend a month straight in the South, but don't screw with a man's right to go to South Padre, brah.

Meanwhile, try not to burst out laughing at this one:

Sankey is also concerned Michigan would be at a “site full of prospects run by a business enterprise that has a lot of interests -- but one of those is sports agents. It seems like very much the wrong tone.”

The "wrong tone," says the comissioner of the League of Extraordinary Bagmen. I'm all for people getting whatever money they can out of college athletics but to turn around and wave the rulebook at Michigan's face while crapping on it daily is hypocrisy worthy of… well… a high-ranking NCAA official. I cannot top reality there.

Hello: Bush the Elder? Buzz has been building that Michigan would fill one of its open recruiting/analyst spots with Devin Bush Sr, who built the Flanagan program from nothing into a state champion. That had been constrained to subscription sites until this article:

Multiple sources have told the Miami Herald on Tuesday that Flanagan coach Devin Bush is on the verge of joining the staff at Michigan where three of his Falcons -- son and linebacker Devin Bush Jr. and safeties Devin Gil and Josh Metellus -- have signed.

An announcement is expected next week. Bush is obviously a natural for the spot Chris Partridge vacated when he got bumped up to linebackers coach. The two guys have very similar backgrounds. Both were/are HS head coaches who made previously lagging programs into powers by getting gents to transfer. Partridge was interviewed by the WSJ a few days ago, providing some insight into why his hire was so successful for Michigan's New Jersey recruiting efforts:

How much does your New Jersey background help you land recruits from there?

Shoot, some of these kids I’ve seen play football since the fifth and sixth grade. I know them, I know the guys that have coached them their whole lives, I know similarities in the styles that they play, you know people that know their families. Of course, it gives you an advantage because you’re just so familiar and because they feel comfortable. And ultimately, they know that I’m watching out for them.

Hopefully Bush can have a similar impact in a bigger pond.

Meanwhile Flanagan is set to replace Bush with Pretty Much Devin Bush. DC Stanford Samuels, another Florida State legacy whose son is a major recruit, is expected to get a promotion.

Oversigning, the coda. The oversigning thing doesn't get brought up anymore because people mad about it more or less won. Get The Picture has a list of SEC signees per team before and after the Houston Nutt cap was implemented that shows a big dropoff for the worst offenders:

SEC Average Signing Class Numbers
Team	Average Class 2007-11	Average Class 2012-16	Difference
Auburn	30.2	24.2	-6.0
Ole Miss	28.0	24.0	-4.0
Mississippi State	28.0	23.6	-4.4
Alabama	27.2	25.8	-1.4
LSU	26.8	24.4	-2.4
Arkansas	26.6	23.8	-2.8
Kentucky	26.0	25.6	-0.4
South Carolina	25.6	24.4	-1.2
Florida	24.2	24.4	+0.2
Tennessee	24.2	25.4	+1.2
Missouri*	24.2	22.4	-1.8
Texas A&M*	23.8	24.2	+0.4
Georgia	20.8	24.6	+3.8
Vanderbilt	20.2	22.0	+1.8

(He's using that to show that Georgia is now fighting with both arms instead of one.) Even if the LOIs foregone were mostly sign-and-place type deals where a guy who's going to JUCO signs a letter of intent for funsies that's still an improvement since no longer is that guy restricted if he does get eligible—and he isn't signed with a team that doesn't even want him to qualify.

The NCAA should still move to a yearly cap with no limit on overall scholarships to remove the incentive to get rid of a guy entirely.

I thought this was the entire point of dodgeball. If this was the standard for psychologizing folks in my time, whole dang middle school would have been in a line going out the door of the psychologist's office:

Harbaugh had to see the psychologist because he drilled a kid in the head during a game of dodgeball. In the fourth grade.

— Ben Axelrod (@BenAxelrod) February 5, 2016

Dude didn't dodge the ball. That's the name of the game, man. Can't hold Harbaugh accountable for that unless you're the SEC commissioner.

I want to see his review of Infinite Jest. Harbaugh went on a media tour at the Super Bowl, the highlight of which was this:

"You look like a writer!" Harbaugh says with enthusiasm as we shake hands.

Harbaugh saw a movie about a writer recently, on a flight a couple months back. It was calledThe End of the Tour. He loved it, loved the dialogue. And now he has just one question.

"Was that a real person, David Foster Wallace?"

I don't expect or even want my football coach to know the answer to that question because I expect that people who know the answer to that question are bad coaches. But I do think he should start with a Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again because it is the most accessible writing DFW did and that he'll probably think "oh, the NFL" after seeing the title.

Etc.: Shoe not effective when used as gun. Michigan is 6th in the post Signing Day S&P rankings. Austin Davis is tall. Children are not. Harbaugh has no unfinished business in the NFL. Wheatley in the Players' Tribune.

Hello, I'm back, and very thankful to have missed the dumbest week of the offseason thus far. The long-promised recruiting mailbag is here, and I'll have a recruiting roundup tomorrow once I've caught up.

There may be in-class attrition. It probably won't include Mike Onwenu. [Rapai]

At long last, we've gone long enough—hold on...

[checks Twitter]
[checks three different message boards]
[checks Twitter again]

...we've gone long enough without a commitment for me to put together the recruiting mailbag I promised weeks ago.

@AceAnbender #MGoMailbag A lot of talk about us reaching and passing 25 in this class. Do you see it?

— CBCS (@MGoFour) June 15, 2015

It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest. Michigan already sits at 21 commits in the class and they have several positions of need yet to fill: wide receiver, tight end, defensive tackle, BUCK linebacker, cornerback, probably one more offensive lineman, and maybe an additional inside linebacker. They may even take a kicker, though Quinn Nordin's recruitment is trending towards Penn State. That's seven or so more potential spots. If they find a way to make the numbers work, this class could conceivably reach 28 players, with the coaches backdating a few early enrollees to fit under the yearly cap of 25.

Can Michigan make this work without oversigning? I think so. Brian covered part of the numbers outlook in his recent mailbag, noting two areas where scholarships should open up:

• There are 4-6 current redshirt juniors who are candidates for unrenewed fifth years. They'll have spent four years in the program and will leave with degrees in hand.
• There are a couple potential medical redshirts, not including the now known to the public effort to get Ondre Pipkins to agree to take one. Pipkins, a senior, wouldn't have affected the 2016 scholarship count regardless.

There's another huge factor: the impending depth chart crunch. Michigan is set to have seven scholarship quarterbacks on the roster in 2016; they'll also have seven scholarship running backs. That's 14 players for two starting positions (three if M goes RB-by-committee), and there's a good chance underclassmen pass an upperclassman or two. Depending upon how the depth chart shakes out, there could be 3-4 transfer candidates just from those two position groups. As the pecking order is established in fall camp and during the season, some players will look for playing time elsewhere.

In addition, I looked at Stanford's 2010 class for a reason. Any class that fills this many spots this early is likely to have attrition, and while Stanford's 2010 class had an unusual number of decommitments even for Harbaugh, it'd surprise me more if Michigan held onto every current commit than if they lost at least a couple. David Reese is looking at Louisville and Notre Dame. Dele' Harding camped at West Virginia recently. In-class attrition should be expected.

For those looking at the number of highly ranked targets on Michigan's board and wondering where those spots will come from, that should help provide an answer, as should this: always remember that fans tend to overestimate their team's chances of landing top-ranked commits. Is Michigan going to pull in some four-stars and perhaps even a five-star or two down the stretch? Yes. Are they going to add Rashan Gary, both Kellys, Dontavious Jackson, Terrance Davis, Ahmir Mitchell, and Nasier Upshur to round out the class? No. While Michigan is in very good shape with each of those prospects, anyone who's followed recruiting for a while knows that a class never wraps up so neatly, let alone so spectacularly—especially when dealing with so many out-of-region prospects.

At this point, I'm not too concerned about the numbers. There's still an entire fall camp and football season to play before Signing Day, and Michigan is in their first year under a demanding coach with a markedly different style from his predecessor. If M has to "free up" a half-dozen scholarships in February, we have a problem; I don't anticipate this being a problem.

[Hit THE JUMP for the rest of the mailbag.]