5th Year seniors had to "audition" during spring practice
This bummed out Keith Heitzman, which led to his transfer to Ohio University.
We've all heard some buzz about 5th years not being invited back, but this is the first time I've heard that there was a formal try out process.
except for the part about No Chance. Gardner could have been out of here after the 2013 OL debacle and inserted himself into a much better offensive situation elsewhere. Ryan was still working his way back from a major injury and being asked to change positions - he could have taken it personnally and gone to play at Arizona or whatever.
All 3 seem like high-character program-lifers who were confident in their roles, so I doubt they would have left -- but it would have been pretty likely that they felt some disrespect if it was framed this way.
Certainly there are guys who are somewhere between the Jack Miller attitude (I'm out of here regardless) and the Desmond Morgan football-loving program guys who embrace the challenge. Some guys, who are in between and maybe not 100% sure about coming back, might be put off by this. If this is a good thing or a bad thing is up for debate but I think 99% of the Michigan fanbase is giving Harbaugh the benefit of the doubt right now.
Or Richard Ash? I'll bet it was a lot different than what he said to Gardner and Ryan, or Gallon the year before. That wouldn't be disrepectful to them. I fail to see why Heitzman should feel disrespected. Disappointed, perhaps, and I can empathize with that. But his reaction reflects unrealistic expectations.
Nobody is arguing every 5th year guy automatically gets an invite back, but Hoke managed to retain the guys he wanted to without auditioning them. Arguably, there are SOME guys who earned that respect. Heitzman's particulars are beside the point because what he is saying is that EVERYONE was told they haven't earned anything. In other words an Ash/Paskorz gets the same treatment as a Ryan/Gallon. Thanks and all that but we need you to tryout.
In some cases (not Heitzman's necessarily, but in the example of Countess or Gardner) this can be taken as disrespectful given what they contributed on the field and to the program.
Again, I don't have a problem with it, but it's a change from the past and it comes with risks of losing good players that would help Michigan (e.g., Countess).
That would be an emotional reaction on his part. That we are going to a press defense that he's ill-suited for is a much better reason to transfer. Sorry, but I can't picture Gardner leaving for that reason last year. It's also not fair to suggest that he might have.
There is no one correct way to handle the players. Coaches have to act in a way consistent with their own personality and the one they are trying to establish for their teams. Maybe they lose a few players as a result. This policy wasn't just a message for the 5th year players. It told everyone what was going to be expected of them and that jobs were going to be open to competition. That's how you start to change the personality of a team.
I'll say that Harbaugh will never lose a Jake Rudock because he's strong armed into naming someone else the starter by transfer threats. He'll also never leave us in the position where one transfer will doom the team, like the possible scenario with Gardner last year. But he will have players transfer for various reasons and somebody will voice their displeasure with him.
The impication here - that emotions shouldn't matter to a football player - strike me as being off target.
You don't have to explain that this is the Harbaugh Way to build a program - everyone gets that. The point is there are potential consequences to it. Most of use are happy to live with the pros and cons of the situation in balance. I don't know a single Michigan fan who is not
Whether we are talking about Countess or another hypothetical 5th year senior (who has earned a return based on his on field production) is beside the point. I'm not arguing that these guys left (or would have left) because of the audition. I explicitly said I think the opposite about Gardner.
I'll repeat my point: for a guy who is weighing coming back or not, this kind of thing MIGHT tip the scales, encouraging him to leave. It might be a guy who is thinking about going to the NFL and when he hears 'audition' he might figure he should go ahead and get paid if he has to 'prove it' all over again. It might be a guy looking at other programs who don't take this mentality and welcome him with warm arms. It might be a guy who has been rehabbing for 6 months with a target date of September, now being asked to audition before he thinks he's ready. It might be a guy like Miller thinking about 'civilian' life, and hearing job recruiters kissing his butt vs. what-have-you-done-for-me-lately. Again, the particulars don't really matter to the larger point.
What matters is that SOME people are going to feel disrespected by it. We know of 1 already. And some of those same people MIGHT be guys we want back. That's a risk Harbaugh is willing to take - and, me, you, and most fans are O.K. with it. There are still potentially negative consequences that result from that risk. They may be trivial to you, but they exist.
I think if this becomes standard policy year in and year out it won't really matter to anyone - especially the guys Harbaugh recruited. But putting it out there to guys who aren't used to it, MIGHT have helped push people out the door and there's been a lot of guys who could have returned and chose not to, who we could have used.
So you think a player that transfers from Florida never has anything bad to say about Florida? I find it likely that they talk just as much you just don't care to ready everything a former Florida player has to say about that program when they leave..
I don't think Michigan kids talk more than players on a per individual basis, but I do think we've had more attrition recently than most schools and we get more media attention than most schools.
A Heitzman-type comment coming from an ex-Purdue player isn't going to get much notice.
Heitzman said it was "a bummer". That's not exactly a rip job.
Bosch said he was expecting to be back but didn't go into a lot of detail.
Sure, these guys could have protected the program a bit by not saying anything but what they did say was fairly innocuous and didn't affect the program in any meaningful way.
Different story for Pipkins - who seemed to be going for a little attention and/or feel aggreived, perhaps legitimately. That was the one that really made headlines and I dont know that we have all the facts so much as two sides to a story.
Nothing wrong with it but it does show that the emphasis is a bit more on winning and less on "family". Hoke treated these kids like sons, and he would probably not do something like this. But we already have learned that the Hoke friendly guy model leads to complacency and doesn't gel with winning. Ultimately fans want winning more than they want players on the team to feel supported and comfortable. Harbaugh doesn't want comfortable players.
I don't think that we can generalzie that Hoke's "friendly guy" mode leads to complacency. It seemed to work pretty well during Hoke's first year when the team outplayed their talent levels and won the Sugar Bowl. You could just as easily attribute the subsequent decline to poor coaching and lack of adaptiability. College kids are going to respond differently in different circumstances. Being rigidly tied to any coaching style whetehr it is friendly guy or or to hardass is likely to be misattuned in many circumstances.
Denard had won the B1G player of the year award the year before and has now been a starting RB in the NFL. Molk was a Rimington finalist (three guys) who then won the award a year later. Lewan was 2-time B1G lineman of the year. Schofield ended up a 3rd round pick. Omameh ended up 1st team all-B1G and started for the Bucs last year. Fitz finally got healthy that year, rushed for 1,000 yards, and is now on the Ravens active roster. Hemingway got drafted and plays for the Chiefs. Gallon broke the single season receiving record at UM and got drafted. Roy Roundtree was 3rd in the B1G in receiving the year before Hoke arrived. Mike Martin was 2nd team all-conference the year before Hoke's arrival and got drafted. Roh was 2nd team all-B1G as a senior. Jake Ryan ended up a Butkus Finalist and 4th round pick. Demens made the Cardinals active roster as an undrafted free agent. Cam Gordon has a Super Bowl ring. Desmond Morgan is still a solid player in the program with loads of starting experience. Kovacs made the Dolphins active roster. Countess was 1st team all-B1G. Josh Furman just got drafted after a very good season at Ok. State but never saw the field here. Guys like Vinopal (two year starter at Pitt) and Marvin Robinson (1st team all-conference at Ferris State) got NFL shots with the Cowboys (Ray is in camp with them this year and Robinson got hurt there last year).
That team had plenty of talent. Hoke didn't adequately replace it, so we slowly fell from 11-2 to 5-7, and probably won't be too much better this year.
Rich Rod left the cupboard bare! The Florida midgets with bad grades have already won!
Thank you for putting this together. Much like the belief that Hoke "turned around" Ball State, the belief that Hoke was a superior recruiter likely dissipates under scrutiny. While his recruiting classes were higher ranked, and the issue is clouded by development issues (e.g., Greg Frey v. Funk), I'm not sure how much of an eye for talent Hoke has. He wouldn't give Jake Ryan an offer -- while Hoke was coaching SDSU. (Ryan was ranked the 763rd player in the country, and Michigan was his only offer from a major program, if I recall correctly.) Omameh was ranked the 1229th player in the country -- lower than any OL recruit that Hoke brought in, to my knowledge. The only Hoke OL recruit that has performed to the level of his ranking seems to be Mason Cole.
Also, attributing the Sugar Bowl victory to Hoke and Carr's players was one of the most shameful parts of our recent history.
I'm almost able to laugh at it now:
http://www.mgoblue.com/sports/brandon/spec-rel/112713aaa.html
I think that's a fair question but at the same time recruiting highly ranked recruits is only half the battle. Developing them to be good college players and utilizing those players to maximize their strengths is the other half. I think most of us agree that Hoke and his staff weren't that great at the latter.
Molk, Omameh, Lewan, and Schofield all played at a high level under Hoke. Denard kept making big plays. FItz had a 1,000 yard season. Hemingway, Funchess, and Gallon put up numbers, and though Roundtree's dropped he still made some huge catches (game winners against ND and Northwestern, 70+ yarder against OSU). Martin, Roh, RVB, Clark, Ryan, Countess, Kovacs, etc. all played at a high level.
He probably could have used guys like Furman and Marvin Robinson better/more, and there were some issues with the offensive continuity as a whole (though even the maligned Devin Gardner still accounted for 70 TD under Hoke). Still, good players had no problem being good players under Hoke. The problem was he didn't recruit enough of his own and as a result the team got worse each year.
August 1st, 2015 at 12:54 PM ^
Yeah, so I just noticed I got five negs for my comment and a bunch of follow-on posts mostly on issues unrelated to my original post. Not sure if anyone is still following this thread.
I will give it to you that we had quite a bit of talent on offense. The offensive line, anchored by Molk, was good enough to give Denard the freedom to do his thing. The best that can be said of Borges is that he didn't totally screw that up in the first year. But go take another look at the defense in the Nebraska game and compare it to the defense the year before. There is no fucking way you get to that level of team performance based on an assessment of the talent level of the individual players. Mattison, as Hoke's DC, had that defense humming on a level that far surpassed the agregation of the individual talent levels. And yes, Hoke's coaching style deserves some credit for that. He set the overall direction for the team and then got out of the way and let Mattison do his job. He let the senior defensive leaders lead, and they did just that.
In the following years, Hoke's coaching style showed its weaknesses. He did not adapt. My point was that there is no one perfect coaching style whether it is "player's coach" or hardass. Harbaugh is a successful coach, not becase he is a hardass, but because he is excellent in every aspect of the game. As part of that, he is a hardass when that his the smart thing to do to get the best out of his players.
what they could do, not because he thought of them as sons. He wasn't bringing back every guy for their 5th years, just like every other coach.
He said nothing about family values! Like what happened under RR with Boren. I remember everyone said that Boren was lazy and wasn't really that good. Though he played well for OSU. I wish we could have kept Boren.
I agree that there is nothing wrong with this. However, it may be that the program that these players initially entered (under the previous coaching staff) implied that 5th years were all but guaranteed. This would make the transition to an actual tryout pretty shocking, and probably a little confusing for these guys.
Again, I'm in favor of try-outs for fifth years. But at the same time I think it's understandable and perhaps justifiable that some of these players are upset about this.
Hoke didn't retain several 5th year seniors last year. Furman, Ash, Paskorz left, only Ryan and Gardner stayed.
even if the the last staff made promises ( which i'm sure they didn't since Hoke let 5th years go) They are no longer employed, so any promises made by Hoke would be void. This is just a non-story trying to be a story. The guys get a 4 year guarenteed scholarship with an optional 5th year.
When you have a new coaching staff EVERY player has to audition for their spot, 5th year or not. I don't see how someone would think anything otherwise
Sent from MGoBlog HD for iPhone & iPad
I've hated Justin Verlander since he was born.
Trust me, we all hated Inge.
It was always bizarre to me that he was voted tiger of the day almost every time! 0-4? People voted him MVP of the game...
I went to a West Michigan Whitecaps game several years ago that Inge was playing in while doing a rehab stint. It was amazing how many Inge fans were there, and how similar they were. They were all 40+ year-old women carrying at least 200 lbs (and most missing a few teeth).
I have to admit, seeing them woo over Brandon Inge (the true 2006 WS MVP) was maybe the most entertaining part of the game.
I do think Inge base was suburban housewives who found him safe ---but still a little edgy with those tats and all.
Inge lost me for good when he whined about the possibility of being a utility player rather than a regular. As if he was entitled to hit .212 at 3rd base. The one thing he could do was play multiple positions--as in utility player--a poor man's Zobrist.
LOL then you've been hating for longer than I have, Hipster Dudeness
It kind of seems to me like if you are a coach who will have no time but the upcoming year to have an effect on a player's skill level you would want to see what you're looking at before offering a fifth year.
Put differently, I can't get that exercised about making players who have been given four years of a University of Michigan education prove that they deserve a fifth.
Yeah, I honestly don't see too much wrong with this. They had their 4 years. Now if they got redshirted some time in those 4 years because of injury like Desmond Morgan then he shouldn't have to "try-out".
Whatever Coach Harbaugh thinks will work and is done correctly I am fine with. Sometimes it's better for these kids to play elsewhere for their 5th year anyways. We have seen a few players do pretty good for themselves lately by doing this.
Isn't earning your job every week what Mattison and Hoke said all the time? What difference is there if it is earning it in spring, fall or the season?
Entitlement is out and competition is in.
Also agreeing with your last point, I wish all of the departing kids well, and if I am not mistaken they have gotten their undergrad degrees...for players who are marginal at best for making the NFL, a 5th year somewhere else can be a great option.
BTW - Wasn't Russell Wilson(SuperBowl Champion) forced out of NCST and did his 5th year at Wisconsin? - worked out okay for him...
There was a disagreement between him and the coaches.
NC State asked Wilson to focus on football full time, he wanted to play baseball during the spring with Colorado. They parted ways.
Not sure I get your point. By definition, all 5th years have redshirted. Why does it matter whether the redshirt was for injury or otherwise? Also, how do you differentiate between injury and not - physically unable to participate in 12 games, 8 games, 2 games, 4 practices...?
though medicaled. He transferred because he wanted to play, despite the UofM staff telling him it wasn't advisable medically.
As for believing it's "basically impossible to be to remain academically eligible and not get your degree in 4 years given that players also attend summer sessions." Isn't it true that lots of guys choose to spread out their classes and take less credits each year so they can do well academically despite all the athletic demands on their time? Of course that assumes they get that extra year to work for their degree.