Pick Up The Damn Phone
[Patrick Barron]
You will not be surprised that the Rashad Weaver decommitment set off another media/twitter/message board tempest. The guy who called Kyle Flood "real" two weeks before his grade-fixing scandal came to light has weighed in. Teddy Greenstein has resumed calling Michael Spath a hack so he doesn't have to actually address Michigan's point of view. Lawyers from Alabama have invaded my mentions.
This is not a good state of affairs. It is not the End of Integrity, as the pearl-clutching wing of the fanbase has fretted. The decommits will sign elsewhere; they won't have to transfer or take a medical midway through their careers. Finding yourself with a guy who would be better off elsewhere is inevitable and it's better to rip off the bandaid.
Michigan isn't in this situation because it's evil or untrustworthy, but rather because it's been disorganized and sloppy. There are countless examples just this year of similar decommits that were handled much better, like when Florida commit Isaiah Williams flipped to Washington State in December. Was that a voluntary switch? Not bloody likely. Did it cause a rending of garments and beating of the breast? Not at all.
Michigan took a number of early commits from fringe players, and they did so without checking up on grades. While there have been no complaints from anyone other than Swenson and Weaver, the sheer number of decommits looks bad even if Michigan has valid reasons for consciously uncoupling. There was no reason to take commits from a slew of academically questionable three stars this summer. Michigan gave them a plan to get right and they couldn't get there, which is fine. More or less dropping contact with them is not.
Meanwhile Michigan's two talent-based decommits were given broad hints but not told flat out until they did not want to take those hints. Whether or not this is how it's done elsewhere, that's the equivalent of breaking up with your girlfriend via meaningful eyebrow arcing and the occasional pursed lip. It results in confusion and people buying you gun racks.
Erik Swenson should have been explicitly dumped as soon as he did not show for Michigan's summer camp, and certainly by October, when his midseason senior film arrived in Ann Arbor. Weaver got enough of a message that he started looking around in November; his situation should have been made explicitly clear by midseason at the latest as well.
This is both ethically better and less damaging to the program. A Swenson set loose in October is both more capable of finding an appropriate landing spot and less capable of setting off a media firestorm. If Rashad Weaver simply flips to one of the four schools he visited over the course of the season his decommit is as newsworthy as that of Isaiah Williams, ie, not newsworthy except to Washington State fans.
So. To prevent further outbreaks, pick up the damn phone. By December.
January 26th, 2016 at 1:54 PM ^
justifiable right? Was it premeditated? Is JH insane? was there malice? Let's think thru this.
January 26th, 2016 at 1:25 PM ^
What is lost in all of this from the pearl clutching is perspective...a sense for time and place.
Harbaugh is five years removed from the recruiting process being revolutionized in how we track recruits & how recruits voice their opinions about the recruiting process. I chalk this up to a learning experience that will be learned from because he values getting better uber alles.
Net net, even if Harbaugh did/does lack a moral compass or even if he was/is tone deaf to public sentiment, none of that matters because he is addicted to competing (and winning). He goes to the end of the Earth to squeeze every bit of juice from each and every competitive lemon. If this kind of behavior evenly slightly impacts his ability to get the best kids, he'll course correct.
January 26th, 2016 at 1:30 PM ^
i was considering that as well. there's a few unseemly examples from stanford (colter) but i've wondered if harbaugh is still adjusted from the NFL where an underperforming special teams player gets told "welp, bye" every week.
January 26th, 2016 at 1:22 PM ^
Yes, picking up the phone would save the FANBASE some heartache, but c'mon, this is getting pretty goddamn ridiculous.
We believe one side on Swenson yet the Matt Falcon thing played out pretty much like you're asking and everyone is all on Harbaugh's ass?
I'm not necessarily picking a side but I do think it's absurd most of you are even with only half the opinion and almost none of the facts.
January 26th, 2016 at 1:23 PM ^
January 26th, 2016 at 1:26 PM ^
Could not care less about perception, and Coach is probably not looking for advice from the fanbase anyway.
January 26th, 2016 at 1:26 PM ^
I think this is a non-story story and I wonder why you're even wasting your time. These are clueless 17 year olds and they have to make the effort to reach out too. Harbaugh isn't their mama and can't keeping looking after them. Not everyone has what it takes to wear the winged helmet, you don't get to be on this team if you have a heartbeat anymore.
January 26th, 2016 at 1:26 PM ^
January 26th, 2016 at 1:27 PM ^
I don't get it, Brian. According to Steve Lorenz someone picked up the damn phone on October 5 when he wanted to go to Temple.
Even if he wasn't explicitly told he might not have a spot, anyone that can't read into that plus no contact is intentionally being dense. I would hope to talk to the place I'm going to be spending 4-5 years at least once in 3 months prior to signing the dotted line.
January 26th, 2016 at 1:35 PM ^
When someone is committed to Michigan and thinks their destination otherwise might be Temple there is a powerful motivation to be intentionally dense. Michigan should prevent someone from fooling themselves by being explicit.
January 26th, 2016 at 1:43 PM ^
I posted below before reading the comments or I would've just left it alone...but this is precisely what I was trying to say.
If the hottest girl on earth wanted to date me...it's going to take more than just the silent treatment for us to be broken up was my point. Especially when my next best option is Temple. A below average chic that looks good with makeup and good lighting.
January 26th, 2016 at 1:53 PM ^
Especially when my next best option is Temple. A below average chic that looks good with makeup and good lighting.Temple isn't that good.
January 26th, 2016 at 3:40 PM ^
I was trying to be nice because they were solid this year...the good lighting.
January 26th, 2016 at 1:58 PM ^
You must be almost as old as Fielding his own self.
January 26th, 2016 at 2:00 PM ^
Yes, agreed. I guess we disagree on the level of which that may have occurred. When people really want something, they often delude themselves no matter what someone tells them. I am not taking a stand yet but I also think the stance most here are taking is too early, as well.
None of the kids' high school coaches have come out with outrageous claims, which at least makes me question the half of the story we're getting from the recruit right now. That's my a big point - everyone assumes we have facts when we do not.
January 26th, 2016 at 1:59 PM ^
For some reason, there is a group here that keeps thinking there is more to it than UM just done messed up in how they handled some of this stuff. We saw it Stanford a bit with Harbaugh as well. For whatever reason, he drops communication and expects people to take the hint, and maybe that worked at Stanford, but UM is a high-profile program and you can't just leave these types of things to chance. Saban seems like a grade-A ass, but he finds a way to basically kick kids out after the fact with less hoopla than Harbaugh is getting with a couple decommits.
I don't expect this to continue in the future, but for now this is a bad look for Harbaugh and the team.
January 26th, 2016 at 2:51 PM ^
I actually expect it to continue. As you said, this was Harbaugh's exact approach at Stanford so it's not like he's suddenly trying something new. Also consider that Michigan will enter 2016 with its strongest team since 2006. If Harbaugh wins the B1G and gets into the playoff, no one will care about whether he picks up the phone in the future or pulls scholarships at the last minute.
As far as Saban goes, he took a lot of heat for his recruiting practices when he first got to Alabama. He then won a NC (and then 3 more after that) and the talk died down despite his practices continuing. His reputation hasn't suffered one bit and Alabama continues to recruit whoever they want.
January 26th, 2016 at 3:36 PM ^
Maybe not with you, but I think it has with some of us.
January 26th, 2016 at 3:42 PM ^
Don't get me wrong, I think he's a dirtbag. However, among the \media, high school coaches, recruits, families of recruits, basically the groups of people that can most directly impact his reputation and his ability to recruit, his reputation is pretty much unnaffected. He's considered the greatest coach in college football by most people and he signs #1 classes year after year. Doesn't matter what I think of him.
January 26th, 2016 at 1:28 PM ^
Assuming the information we have about these decommits is correct, I wholeheartedly agree.
What sucks about this is that we don't know the other side of the story. But it sounds like our staff has learned some valuable lessons and that this will improve going forward.
All that said, none of this would be getting any attention if Harbaugh wasn't killing it on the road. Success like Harbaugh has had this quickly was always going to be attacked. I sincerely hope we handle these things better in the future, but:
January 26th, 2016 at 1:28 PM ^
Michigan isn't in this situation because it's evil or untrustworthy, but rather because it's been disorganized and sloppy.
I did not think we'd ever see "sloppy" in a sentence related to Michigan and Harbaugh.
There's a part of me that would like to think this is just Harbaugh getting his system up and working as he wants, and these are regrettable hiccups along the way. But as I was reminded on another site, Harbaugh had 4 years at Stanford and knows how these things work.
I am somewhat perplexed by it all.
January 26th, 2016 at 5:27 PM ^
...this is how it worked at Stanford, too, and it didn't get better during the four years. Ace's article focused on Harbaugh's last class, not his first.
There are a lot of people involved in recruiting and it's a continuing pattern through two schools, at least two (now three) recruiting coordinators, many assistants. How can it not be intentional?
January 26th, 2016 at 1:30 PM ^
It's all very well and good to complain about the "gotcha games" that the 24/7 news cycle plays.
But when you, knowing full well about this, slow lob an underhand softball for them to whack out of the park that's 100% your fault. We should've been on top of this potentially becoming the Thing it now is.
January 26th, 2016 at 1:30 PM ^
What if the powers that be could turn this into a pr bonanza. JH could visit the recruit from Illinois(who is a 4 star), meet with his parents and him. Apologize. Say he got bad internal information. Say he was so busy trying to get a Citrus Bowl win that he made a horrible mistake. Reoffer. Announce all this on signing day with all the national media looking on. Praise the kid whose lile dream was to play at Michigan. Eveyone hugs on camera, JH looks like a contrite father figureand all parents watching want their sons to play for him. JH provides guidance to the world on the process. Eveybody has tears in their eyes.
January 26th, 2016 at 1:34 PM ^
F that.
January 26th, 2016 at 1:44 PM ^
This creates more problems than it fixes.
It also assumes Harbaugh wants Swenson ... and Swenson wants Michigan.
January 26th, 2016 at 2:28 PM ^
It's not THAT big of a deal. We're going to sign a top-5 recruiting class.
This is more of a "going forward, you should do this instead of that" kind of thing.
January 26th, 2016 at 2:37 PM ^
We will never know the impact on any particular kid. There could be someone who went away from UM due to this in this class. There could be someone swayed by this in next year's class. We will never hear those cases.
Nearer term let's see what Hudson does - he apparently retweeted some of the Weaver stuff. That doesnt mean it was the deciding factor - none of us will know. It might mean little to him and he is in blue tomorrow. But if he goes to PSU one could ask was this one deciding factor. And the answer is no one knows. So its difficult to say its no big deal because if it impacts even 1 player the staff really wants its material.
January 26th, 2016 at 3:37 PM ^
They refused to come up to camp. The kid was warned that he would be evaluated based on his senior year film which sucked and now he's trying to act like he did nothing wrong. Kid can go up to Wisconsin and Swen Swenson can go with him with his awesome sounding name.
I could understand apologizing to Weaver since the lack of communication on UM's part has not been refuted yet. But considering he's getting offers from your schools playing on Tuesday and Wednesday night on ESPN, I'd rather a private apology without an offer.
January 26th, 2016 at 5:13 PM ^
First, the sightly relevant stuff: Nobody knows when Swenson was asked to camp, how much notice he was given to do so (a week prior, a month, 2 months, who knows), and in what manner its importance was expressed. Nobody knows this stuff except the staff and the Swensons.
But more importantly, after Swenson failed to attend a camp in June/July, they had a decision to make in August:
- Inform Swenson that the staff would not honor Hoke's scholarship offer and that they were no longer interested in recruiting him (offer pulled).
- Inform Swenson that the scholarship offer from Hoke was now contigent upon a personal evaluation (camp or the like) or film from the season (commitable offer converted to non-commitable)
- Do nothing, say nothing and evaluate his film when the staff had a chance.
- Send Swenson a scholarship offer confirming his commitment.
The staff was so put off by Swenson's decision not to camp they chose the last option, to reaffirm his scholarship, as confirmed by Brian and others.
January 26th, 2016 at 1:31 PM ^
If this were any other program, or more so, any other coach, there would not be the media firestorm and outrage you have here.
I guess you take the good with the bad...high visibility requires better discipline and a higher standard. But this is borderline witch-hunt by two different camps: one who wants to impede the progress of Michigan, and another who is laying down the narrative of 'Michigan's dirty recruiting' to establish the foundation of inevitable excuses - (i.e., Sparty - when we start winning and they regress to the mean, all we will hear is 'yes, but MSU is not willing to do what Michigan does in recruiting).
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January 26th, 2016 at 1:32 PM ^
January 26th, 2016 at 1:33 PM ^
I'm surprised there are not any MGoLawyers on here grabbing pitch forks asking for both sides to present before issuing a ruling.
Is there nobody left that thinks the kids could be stretching the truth just a touch or that their perception could be a little biased?
Weaver was taking visits to schools not anywhere in the league of Michigan. Several sites including this one have been reporting he won't be part of the class, but he's decommitting now? Nobodies bullshit detector is going off?
D.A.: Mr. Simpson did you kill Nicole Brown
OJ: No
D.A: Good enough you can go.
January 26th, 2016 at 3:00 PM ^
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January 26th, 2016 at 4:13 PM ^
This story has run its course in less than 24 hours. Erik Swenson feels like 2 weeks ago.
January 26th, 2016 at 1:34 PM ^
I scoffed at the time, but in retrospect, I wonder if that's what some of this is about.
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January 26th, 2016 at 2:44 PM ^
Who was recruiting coordinator during this time? Was it Partridge?
January 26th, 2016 at 1:35 PM ^
January 26th, 2016 at 1:37 PM ^
January 26th, 2016 at 1:44 PM ^
January 26th, 2016 at 1:45 PM ^
January 26th, 2016 at 5:42 PM ^
what is Saban doing to prevent that class from filling up with 3-stars early in the process?
He's not giving them committable offers. They can not accept any offer.
January 26th, 2016 at 1:50 PM ^
It's the right thing to tell them early and directly.
It's common sense, and Michigan had enough information in December to make its decision. Waiting til late January vs. December only hurts the kids, hurts PR, hurts relationships with programs. Yes, recruiting is competitve, but I can't see us gaining that much by stringing these kids along if we pretty much know by December or late November. That's my 2 cents.
I was quite surprised by some of the comments made in threads taking the "everyone else does it," "we're not as bad as they are," view.
Yes, it's business. Yes, it's competitive. Yes, we love Harbaugh. But this kind of communication is People Relations 101. It's important in business, in life, and yes, in recruiting. And we bungled it.
January 26th, 2016 at 1:38 PM ^
"Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence"
What made me upset and uncomfortable with so many people clutching their pearls on teh board is that it seems like many were so quick to think harbaugh was purposefully screwing the kids over (i.e. malice). So that's why it always felt like a gross overreaction by many. Like a significant number of posters/fans/media was taking up the role of Helen Lovejoy shouting "Won'ts somebody PLEASE think of the children!!!"
It's important to remember that this is new to Harbaugh too...Michigan is a different beast from Stanford, it's easy for Harbaugh to maybe underestimate the leve of interest he could get for recruits to Michigan...and also it is key to note that he was an NFL guy for a few years too, so there's an adjustment to get back into the college recruiting game, he's only been in it for about a year now. And that might be the simplest explanation for teh sloppiness and incompetence of his staff to let a couple commits fall through the cracks, in a less than ideal fashion.
I believe it will get better. It has to. Because Harbaugh has got to know this shit looks bad to his program, and he of all people knows that sloppiness will not be tolerated
January 26th, 2016 at 1:39 PM ^
This isn't 6th grade...you don't give the silent treatment to break up with your girlfriend.
And I'm sorry, but don't they realize THIS IS MICHIGAN! (stay with me here...)
Bitch, you are the hottest girl in school!! If my ugly no good ass lucks out and I'm dating the hottest girl in school, you think I'm going to just assume we're broken up?
HELL NAH!!!
I'm going to be riding that wave to the END!
If Beyonce or Carrie Underwood or Kate Upton or whoever your all-time crush said right now that you're dating. It's going to take a lot more than not talking for it to be a break up, right?
I'm gonna be like "hey, my girl Paula Patton, she hasn't said anything to me all fall...but damn, that's my girlfriend!! She picked ME!"
I'm being silly, but the point is the same. When you're MICHIGAN...you're the hot girl. You need to be doing everything in your power to say "MOVE ON! WE ARE NOT TOGETHER ANYMORE."
...otherwise you're going to have me doing one of these...
January 26th, 2016 at 1:46 PM ^
Why you choose to believe jilted 17yr old kids so blindly and with so much fervor intrigues me.
January 26th, 2016 at 2:08 PM ^
So you're saying that Steve Lorenz, Sam Webb, and Brian Cook are just flat out lying then?
January 26th, 2016 at 3:44 PM ^
Yes. That is what he's saying.
They're lying and his favorite Coach who has not and cannot comment right now is the one he believes. Rather than reserving judgement. He's going all in on someone he's never met and doesn't know. That's a bold stategy, Cotton. Let's see if it pays off...
January 26th, 2016 at 1:40 PM ^
!00% this. These are grown adults who seem afraid to tell a bunch of HS kids, who they have promised the moon to in many instances, that they can't come to UM. Sure it hurts and you might get some heat from the kids, but it's way better than the clown show we are seeing right now. And before everyone starts bitching about "manning up" and "bootstraps" and all that crap, this doesn't mean that the kid wouldn't be equally heartbroken or wouldn't learn about life. He'd just have been treated like a human being by an adult, not as toy that is no longer as shiny.
January 26th, 2016 at 1:43 PM ^
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