The Considerable Attrition of Stanford's 2010 Recruiting Class
Tony Jefferson (L) and Kain Colter (R) left Stanford's class for very different reasons.
I swear I'll be posting a full recruiting mailbag this week, but when looking at Michael Spath's article on Jim Harbaugh's recruiting style, this merited a closer examination:
At Stanford, The Cardinal produced a slew of decommitments during Harbaugh's tenure (18 alone in 2010), and we've been told that when Harbaugh accepts a commitment, it is often the early stages of the vetting process, and that over the next few months both coaching staff and recruit could come to the conclusion it is not the right fit.
If such were to happen at Michigan, fans would have to ask themselves if they are OK with a recruiting strategy in which players are recruited and offered a scholarship but ultimately told prior to Signing Day that it would be best for all involved to part ways.
Stanford's elite admissions turned away a few prospects, and one could argue it was the school not Harbaugh that had final say, but a staff should have a pretty good feel from the onset which players have the grades to be admitted and those that do not. At Stanford, Harbaugh was willing to accept pledges from an abundance of borderline prospects.
18 decommitments in one class! On its face, that's alarming, especially in the context of Michigan taking this many early commitments. To get a clearer picture of what happened at Stanford and what we can expect from Harbaugh at Michigan, I took a look at the decommitment stories of every one-time 2010 Stanford commit I could find to see what really occurred.
The good news: Harbaugh didn't just kick 18 players out of his class to make room for better players. In fact, a good number of these decommits were players Harbaugh didn't want to lose. There was no Elliott Porter situation. The bad news: while Harbaugh didn't seem to go so far as to yank anyone's scholarship outright, a couple of the tactics he used probably won't sit well with Michigan fans, and understandably so.
I've separated out the 2010 decommits into categories. I believe Spath's source for the 18 decommits figure is this Bleacher Report article. There's only one player on the list (Tyler Brosius) whom I couldn't verify was ever a Stanford commit in the first place; neither Rivals nor Scout even listed him as holding an offer. Here's the rest:
Prospect Chose A Better Opportunity
Several of Stanford's 2010 commits had one of the more common reasons for a commitment flip: they got what they found to be a better offer from another program and made the switch.
- Four-star CA S/LB Tony Jefferson, now on the Arizona Cardinals, committed to Stanford in September of his junior season. He backed off the following January, saying he wanted to keep his options open while citing concerns over Stanford's strict admissions, and ended up at Oklahoma.
- Four-star CA LB Jordan Zumwalt fielded heavy interest from both Los Angeles schools while he was a Stanford commit, and on Signing Day he switched to UCLA, in part because it was closer to home.
- Four-star MD CB Louis Young committed to Stanford without taking a visit, had second thoughts, recommitted, had second thoughts again, and eventually wound up at Georgia Tech.
- Three one-time Stanford commits—four-star GA WR TJ Jones, three-star UT S Chris Badger, and three-star KY OL Tate Nichols—flipped to Notre Dame during the process. Jones switched after an official visit to South Bend, while the other two made their decisions shortly after receiving Irish offers.
- Three-star OH CB Courtney Avery changed his commitment to Michigan after earning a camp offer in the spring.
- Three-star TX DT Will Hampton started fielding increased interest, decided he wanted to take visits, narrowed his choices to Notre Dame and Northwestern, and eventually chose the Wildcats.
That's eight of the 18 who simply decided to pursue what they found to be a better opportunity elsewhere.
Standard Recruitment Issues
For one reason or another, something came up during the course of these players' recruitments that led them to end up elsewhere:
- Four-star FL OL Torrian Wilson changed his commitment to Louisville when his primary recruiter at Stanford, Willie Taggart, took the head coaching job at Western Kentucky. He also said his mom wanted him closer to home. There's good evidence that was the driving factor—he'd later flip his commitment again, this time to UCF.
- Four-star TE Blake Barker, who hailed from Cambridge, MA, changed his commitment to Harvard, telling Rivals he wanted the right combination of academics and proximity to home.
- Four-star MO RB Brandon Bourbon also decided he wanted to play close to home, swiching to Kansas just days before NSD after being committed to Stanford for six months.
Senior Year Injury
This is where things start getting uncomfortable. In two documented cases, Stanford stopped contacting recruits after they suffered injuries during their season season. That's how Kain Colter, a three-star athlete, wound up at Northwestern instead of heading to Palo Alto:
During his first game that fall, Colter heard a "pop" after throwing a post route. An MRI revealed a torn labrum and biceps, but he kept playing as a running back and receiver while rehabbing a shoulder that eventually needed surgery.
Stanford originally stuck by him, but then their correspondences dwindled. They wanted his MRI results and claimed he would have to wait for clearance from the admissions office. Interesting for a kid who carried a 4.2 grade-point average.
Finally, Spencer said, "They just stopped calling. It was a bad situation. I wanted them to man up and talk to Kain."
Colter decommitted in late December. Three-star FL OG Joe McNamara had a similar experience:
The 6-foot-2, 270-pound McNamara, a three-star prospect rated the 28th-best offensive guard in the country by Scout.com, was excited to become a Cardinal. That's when his recruitment started taking a turn for the worse.
Tearing his ACL roughly a week before the season started, forcing McNamara to sit out his entire senior season, McNamara wanted to be sure Stanford was still behind him. After no returned calls or emails, McNamara had to start from scratch.
"The thing that took the longest was finding out if Stanford was in or out," McNamara told Badger Nation Monday. "They never came out and said I was out of the picture but at the same time, there was no communication. I would say probably November was when I re-opened the recruiting process."
McNamara wound up at Wisconsin. If there's a positive to be found in these two cases, it's that Harbaugh never formally pulled either player's scholarship, and both opened up their recruitments with enough time left in the process to find suitable landing spots. It's tough to sugarcoat the complete lack of communication from Stanford's end, however.
Stanford Ceased Contact
Somewhat related to the above, the main way it seems Harbaugh indicated to recruits it was best for both parties to go their separate ways was to stop talking to them.
- Three-star GA S Daunte Carr opened up his recruitment because he hadn't heard back from the admissions department with less than a month to go before Signing Day. He later committed to Arkansas.
- Three-star NV LB Evan Palelei committed in the spring of his junior year, then decommitted in early September of his senior year because he "lost contact with them over the summer." Palelei eventually signed with Navy.
The Late Grayshirt
- In arguably the most concerning situation of them all, the Stanford staff informed three-star TX TE Zachary Swanson that he'd have to take a grayshirt with about a month to go before Signing Day. He chose instead to sign with Virginia.
I can't find anywhere what happened in the case of three-star OG Harris Williams, who flipped to Boston College in July after originally pledging to the Cardinal in late April.
So?
A lot of the attrition in this class occurred for reasons outside Harbaugh's control, but there are definitely red flags that come up. Falling out of contact with recruits as a way of not-so-subtly pushing them out the door isn't a great look, especially in the case of injury; even worse is blindsiding a prospect with a late grayshirt.
We'll see if Harbaugh operates in a different way at Michigan, where he won't have to worry as much about potential attrition within his classes due to problems with admissions. While this stuff doesn't quite rise to the SEC level of recruiting malfeasance, it's not going to go over well in Ann Arbor if Harbaugh isn't more open with recruits about their place in the class as the process moves along.
Thanks Ace! Really hope the shenanagins don't continue here. I would feel icky (for lack of a better word) about the whole thing. Maybe that was only a thing while he was at Stanford?
I don't think it's necessarily shenanigans, but 18 decommits in a single recruiting cycle is certainly enough to make fans justifiably uncomfortable, regardless of whether the coaches' side is known.
It doesn't make me uncomfortable at all.
We are really talking about 5 commits where there is a question of something untoward. The narrative could just as easily be "let's all freak out because 13 kids decommited from Jim Harbaugh at Stanford". I don't see everybody talking about half this class bouncing for better opportunities. Maybe all those southern 2 stars are just using Michigan for the exposure to get an SEC offer?
This whole thread sounds like an Alabama site justifying the oversigning practice that goes on in the SEC.
Seriously, read your post and tell me you wouldn't have railed against it if it were an OSU or LSU site.
As an OSU fan I was enjoying this thread quite a bit.
Granted there are some that have posted they would hate it no matter what and I give them credit but I think that is a bit idealistic and if you guys started winning NC's I don't think you'd hear one word about it.
I think this has become a recruiting reality now a days. Let's face it recruiting itself has changed dramatically. The power (unless you are a 5 star stud) is still much to disproportionally with the schools but the landscape has changed quite a bit.
As I posted once in another thread, we all like to think our side is right and when our side does something we railed on another team for we rationalize it.
EVERY FAN BASE DOES THIS. And precisely because of that this thread has amused me greatly.
January 21st, 2016 at 6:41 PM ^
January 21st, 2016 at 6:42 PM ^
It's also interesting that JH was calling out UM recruiting/admissions while he was at Stanford (public scuffle with Mike Hart).
The spotlight is brighter at UM and I think he realizes that everything he does will be publicly evaluated. Whether or not he cares is another question, but I hope his competiveness is a bit above esss-eee-seee win at all costs.
We knew what we signed up for, here we go.
It's not the what, it's the how, which prevents this from being inherently unique. Stanford is a volatile place to recruit, OK. But distancing yourself from recuits by avoiding them is a scummy thing to do regardless of the circumstances. The recruits may have been given non-commutable offers, I don't know, but what's important here is not the circumstances of the decommitment, but the transparency of the decision. Losing contact with a recruit is the polar opposite of transparency.
Granted, I doubt HS kids return the favor, but if you're in charge of a high-profile department, you can't compare your behavior to that of a HS kid.
cases start popping up here, it will be Jim Hackett's first real test in dealing with a potentially difficult problem. At Stanford, the powers that be were probably willing to let things go without asking questions. But as others have pointed out here, Michigan's program is under a ton more scrutiny and the last thing that is needed after the last 7 years is more controversy. I'm hopeful that Coach Harbaugh is aware of all this and will not do anything to make the program look bad.
I feel Harbaugh will be far more careful when it comes to recruiting and his persona. Seems he is under a microscope at Michigan, compared to Stanford. He can't leave the house without an article popping up online about him.
He's already kicked out what, 8 players?
Oh sorry, I forgot "they left on their own."
There is almost always extra attrition with an new coach. Claiming Harbaugh kicked out players without any facts or accusations even, is total BS.
Nice breakdown Ace.
This is kind of what I expected. A decent number of kids switching commits (I'm guessing that a number of the switches were from kids who were lower-rated when Harbaugh offered and then saw better options as their profiles rose), which is expected. But yeah, stopping communication with verbal commits is, to be frank, a shitty thing to do. If you are going to pull their offer, then do that and accept that responsibility. But trying to nudge them in that direction (especially after an injury) through non-action is shady and hypocritical for a guy like Harbaugh who talks up passion for the sport and accountability so much. Yes, kids decommit in a similar manner, but in that case we are talking about HS kids, not grown-ass men getting paid millions of dollars.
The grayshirt thing is equally troubling, but I'd have to know more about that situation (maybe the paywalled article gets more into it) before passing judgment. And I'm guessing Hackett would get more involved in that circumstance.
I'd be interested to see if the attrition continued in future years. I know we have a small sample size of Harbaugh seasons, but if this was more a one-year aberration then maybe the concern will be muted. But if a couple of these commits start falling off the radar as the season progresses, I'll be the first to take Harbaugh to task for it.
There's a night and day difference between letting a kid know he has an offer for a greyshirt (or that it's a real possibillity when you accept his offer), and changing the conditions of his offer after he has committed, especially late in the process. There's nothing inherently wrong with greyshirting and the practice shouldn't be equated with what Les Miles has done at LSU.
Recruiting information mostly emanates from the recruits side. Details about conditions of offers are often missing from recruiting sites. Why would a recruit interested in getting more offers want some of those details made public? Sam Webb hinted even before his announcement that one of our commits doesn't have an unconditional offer. There have been reports that Austin Davis will take a prep year if Beilein doesn't have room for him in 2016. It's easy to believe Davis will be okay with that, because we trust Beilein to be honest with recruits. If the same thing happened at another school, we might well assume otherwise.
There are going to be decommitments and possibly greyshirts. Let's not jump to conclusions about what recruits were told when they committed and reflexively take their side. I'd prefer to start off trusting in Harbaugh, until I'm convinced that I shouldn't.
That's my feeling with respect to the greyshirt. I'd need to know more. If it was always communicated that way, then it's a bit better. That's why I take those types of concerns less seriously, as we don't really know what happened based on a single LSU board post.
It's a two way street. A verbal committment means exactly nothing until a LOI is signed. We aren't talking medical redshirts here or worse. A lot can happen, good and bad, between the time a recruit commits and national signing day.
You often hear on Mgoblog that it is a 17 year old and he should be given some slack. That works both ways.
It's hard to tease out a point from your post, but are you arguing that this article should not have been written because it's "negative?" Also, if you want new material on the weekends, maybe you could try stringing a few sentences together yourself? One of the first rules of the internet: don't whine about free content.
How is it one-sided? By my count there were at least 9 decommitments that were of the usual, non-red flag type and about 5 that could be a little cringe-inducing. Seems balanced to me (on Ace's part).
I agree that it may "appear" to be one-sided, but that's because Stanford and Harbaugh are not allowed to speak about recruiting.
That being said, I don't think it takes away from the investigative work that Ace has done. In no way do I think this paints a bad light on Michigan recruiting. This is about Stanford. Yes, Harbaugh was the coach then, but that is why, we, as a Michigan fan base are curious about it. In no way does that indicate that Harbaugh has done (or expects to do) anything wrong (or perceivably wrong) at Michigan.
This is MGoBlog. We are allowed to look at ourselves in a critical manner. If you can't analyze your faults, then how can you fix them. Come on.
I assume you're similarly skeptical of any negative story about Notre Dame that doesn't offer Brian Kelly an opportunity to extensively rebut the charges...?
I dunno, man. By that logic anything written on this blog that doesn't include input from the subjects of the analysis (like the UFRs) is one sided. I mean, I guess that is technically one-sided, but "one-sided" is more pejorative than "typical blog analysis" or whatever.
If by "one-sided" you mean "based on facts" in most cases and, to Ace's credit, some cautioned assumptions, then yes. This isn't "little" evidence about some future event - it's the past, and Ace isn't passing judgment on Harbaugh now, only that if he were to dump 4-5 kids from this class the way he did at Stanford it would justify some questions by the fanbase.
This is one side's version of the breakup; doesn't mean it isn't true, but it isn't unassailable either.
You think Harbaugh's version of events would be the same? I don't know, maybe.
I can buy he'd had a different point of view on the greyshirt situation, and maybe he would argue that he didn't so much stop communicating as, I don't know, got busy. But it's pretty clear that a couple of kids were at least de-emphasized due to injury or a perceived quality compared to other options. And that's fine if you didn't give them an offer and they committed. But in the cases provided, anything Harbaugh could say would likely be more damage control than some substantive difference between the reality that he was trying to get those kids to decommit.
I hate it when people give me free stuff and it doesn't live up to my expectations. Those selfish pricks Brian and Ace don't want to work 7 days a week? Screw them!
Its posts like this that make me wonder if people even look at the words they type before hitting submit.
8 of the recruits Ace listed left because they wanted to; that really isn't a controversy or some contrived "he said/she said" stuff. And sure, I'm guessing one or two kids might embellish a bit when recounting what happened. But this list includes kids who received offers and committed to Stanford, then for whatever reason didn't attend. And not all of them went somewhere else because thet wanted to. Harbaugh is a human being, and he makes mistakes. One hopes he's learned from this experience 5 years ago, but bitching about the messenger pointing out reality because it doesn't jive with your homerdom embodies the laziest parts of the internet and, well, this community.
"bitching about the messenger pointing out reality because it doesn't jive with your homerdom embodies the laziest parts of the internet and, well, this community."
Or humanity? I agree with your post overall, but it gets annoying when people act like a bunch of common biases and flaws in reasoning are somehow special to mgoblog and not the world at large.
No, I agree they aren't unique. I basically said as much in the quote. But this community sometimes acts like it is above it, even though I'm guessing there are a decent number of mouthbreathers in the ranks, just like other fanbases. And at times, I'll totally admit to being a reactionary homer as much as the next guy.
Yeah, because my existence is all dependent on my up-to-down vote ratio on a sports blog.
Look, I upvoted myself twice! Betcha you can't do that
I'm pretty sure I'm the only person who has ever upvoted me. I have a binder full of alternate accounts, similar to WD's ¡SuperGuide!
As a matter of fact, most of the stuff you read on here is actually just me.
That thing is creepy looking.
Very interesting post and definitely something to keep in mind if we want to be objective about recruiting. Will be curious to see how things play out at Michigan
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What does this have to do with the current program? Why don't you wait for something to actually occur with THIS program before you feign negative feelings
This is one of the (ok, probably the only) concern I have with Harbaugh. Given his competative nature he is going to do things that rub people the wrong way. This is the thing he is going to do that rubs me the wrong way. I really think doing anything that screws over the kids is bad. I am probably going to have a hard time accepting it if this ends up happening at Michigan.
The potetnially mitigating thing we will probably never know is: what were kids told? There has been a lot of talk that the Safety from Florida (drawing a blank on his name at the moment) was going to get a grayshirt offer here. Then the next day he committed. Now did he commit with the warning from Harbaugh that you can commit, but we may end up grayshirting you? If so I don't have as much of a problem with it. If he committed to a "guaranteed" spot and later he is told grayshirt or you are out I would have a major problem with that.
This whole thing is what makes college football fandom a sketchy process- making moral/opinion based calls with limited (no) information.
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