A few days ago, Chris Brown of Smart Football posted an anonymous high school coach's negative opinion on Charlie Weis's recruiting mojo. It's interesting, if slightly preposterous from the Michigan fan's perspective. Weis spent his first three recruiting classes punching Lloyd Carr in the face, beating Michigan for large sections of his team en route to racking up the highly-rated recruiting classes that had Notre Dame fans making giddy little charts about how much they would own once the stench of Willingham passed.

When Rodriguez came in, Michigan's recruiting moved away from Weis's in geographical, cultural, and tiny-bastard terms, but what head-to-head battles did go down were still slanted in Notre Dame's favor. This year, Michigan lost out on cornerbacks Lo Wood—once a heavy Michigan lean—and Spencer Boyd. There were no other head-to-head battles. Last year Michigan managed to pick up OT Michael Schofield, but a variety of other recruiting battles went Notre Dame's way. Weis consistently recruited out of all proportion to his achievements.

So this seems a little funky…

Notre Dame has officially offered one of my linebackers, but no one from Notre Dame has ever spoken to the kid nor has anyone from Notre Dame ever returned any of my calls. …. Geewhiz Charlie, that’s not exactly the way to get a kid to choose ND over other BCS schools — and then you offer him blind without so much as making contact with any coach? No. That’s not the way to go about the business.

…and then Rich Rodriguez gets thrown in at the end…

Ohio State, Alabama, Virginia Tech, and others all recruit about the same way as Cincinnati. Pittsburgh, West Virginia, Michigan . . . they recruit like Notre Dame.

…and everybody gets ornery.

I don't know about the interpersonal relationships Rich Rodriguez has with every coach from sea to shining sea. I do know that Rodriguez reeled in a class that was nearly top five after his first year at Michigan and a number of parents from that class have taken to the internets to defend the beleaguered coach from accusations that he makes his players work too hard. I also know that Rodriguez and company fired off a thousand "offers" this spring, and those offers may or may not mean anything.

These things are in the eye of the beholder. I'm guessing the coaches at Trotwood-Madison and Chaparral don't share that opinion. And I know "Coach Ox," the Louisiana high school coach who emailed the blog in the aftermath of Carvin Johnson's commitment to tell us that we had a good player on our hands, sent another email about Rodriguez, unprompted. Here it is:

My feelings for RRod are exactly the same as Carvin's coach said on Rivals - if you are a real high school coach (i.e. you know football) from a real program (i.e. you coach players who will go on to college) and you need help or anything, RRod will bend over backwards for you. Not everybody likes HOW he coaches, but he loves coaches who coach HOW he does.

And here's Carvin Johnson's coach from that Rivals thread Ox references:

The thing I like most about him is him as a person. When other coaches and myself made the trips to WVU in the past to see them practice, etc. he treated everyone of us with nothing but respect. This is rare in big time college football.

So… some coaches like other coaches, and some don't. It's about the numbers. I wouldn't take an anecdotal aside too seriously. Michigan pays attention to the players they are seriously interested in, and offers a bunch more beside. The results were fine when Michigan wasn't dealing with the aftermath of a 3-9 season and a whole lot else besides.