Wednesday Recruitin'

I believe SI's "top RBs of 2010" is just rivals All-purpose backs standings

Brian or Tim or someone with admin powers: some of the comments on the 2011 Recruting Board really need to be baleeted.

I still do not understand how this obscure coach can have so much sway on pro-Michigan prospects and their parents. What the heck is he feeding them?

According to AnnArbor.com he will not enroll early. http://www.annarbor.com/sports/michigan-recruit-jerald-robinson-growing-...

Although, hilariously the hyperlink on his name links to this story.
http://www.annarbor.com/sports/marvin-robinson-among-michigan-football-r...

So, a high school assistant coach steered a kid away from Michigan. Ok. Are we thinking then that never, ever before has a high school coach steered a kid to Michigan.

Hey, thats life in recruiting. I dont think we should be whining that much about it.

Besides, isnt going to OSU right now better for any kids future? That is, if we are being honest with ourselves.

Its a compelling, dramatic story. I know we would all have the same outrage here if we found out that coaches were doing this on behalf of michigan. Yeah, right. given the creeperness that hovers around all collegiate recruiting, its naive to think it doesnt happen. Or is this like supporting political parties: its ok if your guys do it?

Thank you, though, for not writing 5,000 words on the subject.

Tim, Ricardo did appear in the directory, he was actually the earliest entry.

His full name is James Ricardo Miller, just a heads up!

Hopefully they can make it in, if not it looks like we are still recruiting a lot of guys to fill up the class anyway. It would still be a shame if they aren't qualified to get in though.

I'm sorry to reg on OB, but the fact that MGo has linked his 5 billion word post TWICE today has me sort of annoyed:

The whole thing is one giant "CITATION NEEDED". There is no fact, no evidence, no NOTHING written into it, which is amazing - over 4,000 words you'd think there would be SOMETHING factual.

All he has is Fred Smith's "love for Michigan" (which he doesn't source a thing that establishes this) an article in SpartanMag predicting him to be a U of M lean, his subsequent commitment to MSU, and an upset brother. What he then does is write a gigantic piece of speculation about what happened in the ensuing time. He lays it at the feet of Collins. I could just as easily lay it at the feet of martians with an equal amount of facts and citations - ZERO.

How is his treatment of Gholston insidious? If Gholston lives with him, isn't he something of a "guardian"? Wouldn't one's guardian go on recruiting visits with him?

Then, he somehow points to Hankins' swaying between Dantonio and Saban (despite no reported offer from EITHER)- two former Collins associates as evidence of Collins' tampering when...HANKINS DIDN'T GO TO ONE OF THEIR SCHOOLS. He went to OSU, where Collins has no ties. He then writes a fictionalized conspiracy theory on how the timing was engineered to stop Hankins from seeing U of M's coaches. HANKINS HAS ALREADY SEEN U OF M COACHES. He's been to camp, and he took an official visit.

I'm not even saying he's wrong, I'd just like to know where his evidence for all the stuff he's created that connects seemingly innocuous events comes from.

I think this is wishful thinking on you part Brian.

"The two still both favor Michigan, and plan to announce on Signing Day. Tony also said that he didn't know there was a dead period between college coaches and recruits, and was wondering why Michigan wasn't contacting him as much. Sounds like other schools haven't quite been following the rules. THE NCAA WILL BE ALL OVER THIS!"

If USC can get away with their top player getting paid going on 4 years now I doubt they will put forth ANY effort to find out which schools are not abiding by the dead period.

There were very few passes from what I watched of the game. Don't know if they were staying away from Grimes so much as Grimes was not really involved in many plays, for whatever reason.

There were a few runs that went his way, none that I saw where he was the person primarily responsible for making the tackle.

In coverage, did not see any routes where his receiver was primary target.

At corner he was playing off the line pretty far, and when he moved in, I think was playing more of a FS position, but the game was such poor production quality and the all star format is never really terribly compelling in football anyway, that I did not watch the whole game.

You can take Swigert off your board he verballed to BC a few months ago

A sobering post, and this part just makes me sad:

"Fred Smith was a wide receiver for Detroit Southeastern whose senior year was 2007. He was a pretty big prospect, a 4-star, top 250 player on Rivals, and Michigan and Michigan State were both after him hard. Keep in mind this is pre-Rodriguez, Lloyd still in charge. This is pre-App. State, even. Anyway, Fred Smith also grew up a huge Michigan fan, along with the rest of his family. His parents spoke glowingly about Michigan and how they would love to see their son play for the Maize and Blue. His recruitment started to wind down in July of 2007, with an early August decision planned. His final two schools were Michigan and Michigan State, and all signs pointed to him joining Michigan's class. Even SpartanMag, MSU's Rivals site, predicted on August 2 that Smith would commit to Michigan.

Three days later, Smith committed to Michigan State in a press conference at his school, and his brother, just as diehard a UM fan as Fred was, left the room in tears.
...
In his two years at MSU, Fred Smith has one catch for seven yards, has never set foot on the Breslin Center floor in an MSU basketball jersey, and was part of the attack on the fraternity that resulted in suspension and an arrest for conspiracy and assault."

edit: Chitown, I understand your issue re: GS's lack of citations, but the part about Fred Smith that made me sad is just the stripped down fact part (i.e., Smith expressed a "love" of UM in many recruiting interviews, SpartanMag did predict a UM commitment, and the reality of his non-production and pending legal probs are sad).

But obviously, kids can do what they want. They don't have guns to their head, but as anyone who's been a HS-ler can recall, the perception of a gun to your head can sometimes be just as bad. Who knows what the case really is.

but seriously, nobody is putting a gun to the head of either the recruit or his parents to sign with any particular school. When a high school kid supposedly "loves" Michigan and his parents supposedly want him to go to Michigan, and the recruit has a Michigan offer, and then ends up signing with OSU or MSU or wherever, I think it's entirely reasonable to question the depth and strength of that supposed "love" for Michigan. If you really, truly "love" something, entreaties and inducements and soft cooings in the ear to abandon it usually aren't successful.

Parents who genuinely want their child to attend the University of Michigan and then allow themselves to yield on that point because some recruiter is promoting another school are either not doing their job as parents or their desire for their child to attend UM is simply not really that strong in the first place. If it's the first, they'll eventually regret it. If it's the latter, then that's the way recruiting goes.

One thing I don't really get...if you spoke to a recruit on some sort of regular interval/basis, and then knew you weren't going to be able to keep that up over a set time period due to NCAA rules, wouldn't you say to said recruit, "Yo, I can't contact you until x date due to NCAA dead period rules, but we'll be thinking about you, still very much look forward to you donning the Maize and Blue, and we look forward to catching up on the flip side."?

I don't understand why you'd let that confusion fester with the recruit. Of course my understanding of the whole situation and process is almost assuredly overly-rudimentary.

I think we could've seen something of a contest for the Buckeyes in Ohio if Kelly had stayed at UC. He was building a serious program, and if he had cemented himself in Cincy, it woulda been really interesting.

That said, of COURSE there isn't a fight in Ohio for OSU. The next best contender is Bowling Goddamn Green! When Case Western's football team gets out of Division 3 and into the SEC, let me know.

Now, there are two major football programs in Michigan. There are going to be people in each camp. The fact that a MSU fan exists in the lives of players we covet isn't insidious. Them's the breaks, you know? If he steers him, he steers him. If what Tim says is true about shady stuff, it's different, of course, and this entire post was a waste of time.

Anything known about Orchard Lake St. Mary's safety Earnest Thomas? Three star recruit on both Rivals and Scout just decommitted yesterday from UCLA. Not sure how long ago the offer sheets on the sites were updated, but it looks like he has offers from pretty much all the Big Ten (minus Michigan/Michigan State), UCLA, Stanford, Missouri, and West Virginia. Was curious if there's any Michigan interest there as possibly a fall back if any of our other targets fall through.