recruiting rankings are a gravely serious matter

[Barron]

Transitioning to transforming transactions. Michigan's annual Grand Traverse weekend was an opportunity to test Harbaugh's new "We're transformational not transactional" motivational poster catch phrase for its approach to NIL. This atop their sluggish start to 2023 recruiting while those they mostly recruit against—namely Notre Dame, Penn State, and Michigan State—are cleaning up has created a sense there's a state of emergency in the recruiting department.

Regarding the current class rankings, yeah man, Rutgers was Top 10 at this point last year. More concerning is (probably) missing out on two in-state 5-star quarterbacks, one a guy who's been working out with Devin Gardner for years, the other Lloyd Carr's grandson. That's probably not all about NIL, but it is true that Michigan's response to the new NIL realities has been, depending on whom you ask, somewhere between tepid and insanely naïve.

The NCAA quickly abandoned the hill of "boosters can't play" and the rest of its guidance has been thoroughly ignored; even I can't believe even Michigan takes that organization seriously. What they do have to take seriously is state law, which goes into effect December 31 this year. Michigan's stated policy complies with that law, and by all accounts their actual policy matches the stated one.

To over-simplify, as I understand it the main the difference between Michigan and their competitors right now is we're paying attention to the "no facilitation" piece, and nobody else on our level is actually doing the same (even if they swear up and down otherwise). The site Opendorse has a map of the current state of legislation as well as a rundown:

image

The repeals, suspensions and amendments across the SEC all came after the NCAA gave up the ghost, since the whole point was to operate without rules. All laws are not the same; Nebraska's is optional (Nebraska opted out), Arizona's is like "whatever the NCAA says" and Georgia's will sunset before it goes into effect. Illinois freed its schools to be more involved. Ditto Mississippi, Louisiana and Tennessee. Ohio State wrote Ohio's law to mean whatever's best for Ohio State. Texas, due to a controversial state law preventing quick amendments, is the most like Michigan in the structure of their law and unlikelihood that it changes any time soon.

The relevant sticking point is "Schools, Conferences, and Associations cannot compensate a student-athlete for their NIL." That was a bone meant to make things more palatable to the NCAA. Michigan the school has interpreted that as complying with the NCAA's hand-wave policy that schools cannot "facilitate" these deals. Michigan State is ignoring it for now, but will have to comply by next year.

Michigan donors informed me they've been told by the program or Harbaugh himself that Michigan is not going to take their money and pass it along. At Michigan's recent camp I chatted up a few coaches who've chaperoned national recruits through the process. Most are ideologically close to Harbaugh, but even they said most schools (including mid-majors) will get the adult in a room and talk dollar amounts, but you know not to even bring that up at Michigan. Meanwhile Ryan Day himself is imploring Ohio State fans to raise $13 million to keep their roster intact, and most schools have official collectives directing fan efforts.

So what is Michigan doing? Still figuring it out. On the player side, Valiant Management, organized by Johnny Wangler and friends, is representing a good number of players, though many are still striking their own deals. Valiant are the ones who put together those NFTs and the tailgate after the spring game. On the collective side, there are three that seem to have any footing. MGoDAO is a consortium of fans—many of them our readers—creating an NIL collective to pool the fans' money to spend on the players. They'll be at the MGoPatio this fall. Champions Circle, announced a few weeks ago via Angelique, was recently formed by a group of older boosters. Stadium and Main is another collective that formed, though I don't yet have a good handle on what they're focusing on.

Some of this will work itself out—for example Saban will do whatever A&M is doing then call that the "right way"—but there's certainly a danger we're going to end up with a more expensive version of the old situation, plus a few years of Michigan's fumbling in the dark for a new line it won't cross (which it will then cross).

[After THE JUMP: Rankings]
Go up, gasballs [Patrick Barron]

Offense is here as well as an explainer, so we can just dive in. There wasn't a lot of movement on this side actually.

Hi [Patrick Barron]

I track how recruiting rankings of Michigan's commits move over the course of the recruiting cycle, because it's useful to have a record of this stuff, and because the way the rankings change often tell us more about the player's prospects than the rankings themselves.

Previously: December 2019 offense and defense. July 2019 offense. Feb 2019 offense/defense, July 2018. This class mostly came together this year, meaning except for McCarthy and El-Hadi (who haven't changed much) I didn't get comprehensive snapshots until March, so we'll start there.

There were few camps this summer for re-evaluations but Rivals and 24/7 have been updating their rankings. ESPN has been so laissez-faire that you can see how everybody moved up one spot in their rankings after former CB target Tony Grimes reclassified to 2020. We're not going to have much fall football either (the state of Michigan just announced practice can resume), and a lot of these guys would have opted out if there was, so this class is probably staying where it is. They're also going to show up on campus with the same eligibility as this year's freshmen, who get a year in college weight programs to get ahead of them. For that reason many are planning to enroll early, perhaps even this fall.

Also: My rosters have been updated with the new eligibility rules, latest recruiting ratings, and new weights, along with the recruiting comps list.

Gravity: Players will naturally drop as more players are evaluated; a few spots relative to their previous ranking is standing still.

Ratings: My star ratings are on a curved 5-star scale and based on a composite of available national, state, regional, and position rankings, as well the sites' individual ratings and stars. A quick table of what the scores mean:

Site 5-star High 4* Solid 4* Low 4* High 3* Decent 3* 3* Pile Meh/?
247Sports 98-104 94-97 90-93 88-89 86-87 81-85 70-80 67-69
Rivals 6.1 6 5.9 5.8 5.7 5.6 5.5 4.9-5.4
ESPN 91-100 86-89 81-85 80 79 77-78 70-76 59-71
Composite 0.99+ 0.97-0.98 0.90-0.93 0.88-0.89 0.86-0.87 0.81-0.85 0.7-0.8 <
MGoBlog 5.00 4.67 4.33 4.00 3.75 3.50 3.25 3.00

I'll use the larger font for guys with interesting changes. Let's go!

[After THE JUMP]

Craig responds to the 3-star mafia.

Risers

It's Blake Corum Day here on MGoBlog dot com

I like to check in quarterly to see the movement in recruiting rankings of Michigan's longtime commits. This is because how much they move and when can tell us things about a guy.

More reds and greens.

They go up mostly.

Hybrids and Daxes

Stargazing [Patrick Barron]

Mouseovers!

stargazing

Tracking the changes in star ratings of the 2019 commitments