I’ve been waiting to do this diary till the offseason to fill the gap and to write something a little bit more substantial. I have experience in the college and pro football ranks, and this has given me the ability to look under the hood of college football.

These experiences have led to me get to know players, coaches, and support staff. And because I know them I’ve gotten to hear the unfiltered version—there are some reporters that get the scoop, but they usually get the sanitized version. All of this is to say I am not an insider, nor do I pretend to be one. I view an insider like Sam Webb or others to be the ones to hear it first or to break details—my knowledge is different, I am not going to be able to tell you who was taking reps at practice, but it’s something I still think the Mgo faithful would find interesting to hear. For those who care, my background has been vetted by Seth: https://mgoblog.com/content/fall-football-bits-just-wanted-you-face-me-so-she-could-get-behind-you

If you have any questions or myths or any other specific musings on recruitments you want me to answer, post below and I will respond. We can use this diary post as a sort of Q&A/AMA if you'd like.

The Sabanization of Recruiting

I wanted to tackle the idea of Michigan’s recruiting since comments made by Wiltfong and after signing day to shed some light on what exactly goes down in recruiting. I will say as I have in other posts that his comments were far off base, and it reeked more of negative recruiting that Michigan always must deal with.

To give folks some history, recruiting departments exploded after Nick Saban brought the pro model of scouting to the college ranks. You can read some articles on it, but the gist is that Saban brought in a huge support staff to focus on recruiting. Saban has a very specific set of characteristics he recruits for—look at the Alabama DL and you can see that the heights/weights are all very similar. He doesn’t really make exceptions as that is the process he’s always talking about.

One of these key guys in this process was Ed Marinowitz; he came from that world and then left to go to the pros in scouting and then came back. He’s now working for CAA as an agent for coaches. Saban had an army of young college kids and recent grads working crazy hours to help break-down film and act as quasi-scouts. A lot of the current recruiting departments are built off this model because those guys have fanned out all over the country. Look at the top recruiting rankings and you will see UGA, A&M, Oregon, etc. all led by former Saban disciples. It’s because they have taken his system and applied it to their schools.

Michigan’s Recruiting Department

Almost every big school has a player personnel department that consists of student interns, football staffers, and is led by a Director of Player Personnel. Michigan has this run by Sean McGee and Tom Gamble. Tom Gamble is a former GM and has more experience identifying talent than anyone else in the country. Sean McGee is one of the most respected guys in the industry and his experience in the Naval Academy serve him well for this role in keeping everything organized. Underneath that is the Director of Recruiting Matt Dudek, who’s title I think causes some fans to misunderstand his role and creates some angst amongst fans when we don’t sign a class full of 4/5 stars. He is not the only guy in charge of recruiting. That is a team-effort from Sean and Tom and Matt and other support staff. What he really focuses on is contacting guys and being the point-person anytime they are on campus. By all accounts he is very good at this—he is not setting Michigan’s recruiting board and deciding who to target. He gets marching orders and does his best to sell them when they get on campus. There are also a few other recruiting staffers who help on campus and in the ID’ing process of the prospects.

The department's job is to sift through thousands of players and cut-up films for the coaching staffs to look at. Think of it as a funnel-- thousands of names go in and only a few hundred names come out. Coaches then receive the cut-ups and evaluate players; from there only a dozen or so may remain that formulates their recruiting board. They do this throughout the season, hence why Michigan's board is consistently shifting, as there are different outputs always being added.

Here’s where I think the big difference in Michigan’s approach is—Michigan relies heavily on their assistant coaches to identify talent and recruit. You have seen a seismic shift in Harbaugh’s first staff to now, because I think he realized how important to have excellent coaches AND recruiters. A lot of staffs have a bunch of deadweight recruiters who don’t even look at film or hate the whole having to have constant contact with recruits. Michigan does not have that deadweight anymore.

Also, look to the age and demographic shift in Michigan’s coaching staff from older NFL-style coaches to younger, dynamic coaches who can relate to the kids and their backgrounds. What I think Wiltfong was trying to say is that Harbaugh leans more on his assistants to do this heavy lifting, whereas other staffs they have people in place to do most of the contacting and then have the assistants focus mostly on closing the deal.

Technology in Recruiting

If you walk around the coaching convention, you’re going to be bombarded by hundreds of companies that have software or tech that they are trying to sell to college staffs. I can’t tell you the efficacy of 99% of it, but I can tell you that most staffs have programs and use 3rd party folks to help cull the lists of players down. A big one that's come out in the past few years uses track times and data to help project kids and their potential I know that Michigan uses this one and focuses heavily on verified track times. Why? Because they are standardized across the nation unlike unreliable camp laser times, and they provide a great historical context. If guys are running sub 10.6 100M dash you know for a fact that dude is fast. I would imagine that with Gattis you are going to see many of our receivers as 10.6 guys. Other track data is also very useful, shot-put and discus for lineman to hurdles and long jump for other defensive players.

Other apps that I know are being used are daily alerts for when certain kids they ID’d get offered. This is usually the signal to either go back and re-look at a prospect or to have your staff put an eval together of him. OSU/PSU track every offer and every contact that we put out—they want to see who we are going after and in most cases will offer a kid after we do. A big change from the previous years is that Michigan is one of the first to offer major prospects, something that was not the case 5 years ago. Guys like Jalen Mayfield and Matt Hibner this year were guys that Michigan ID’d early before they were highly rated. Slight side note: Iowa State under Matt Campbell has one of the best recruiting departments. Go back and look at when they offer kids—it’s insane how many first offers they were to guys before they blew up.

What Happens After an Evaluation Happens?

After the recruiting department culls the list based on all those factors, the coaches review the film and ID the kids that should be offered the group comes together to decide who goes on the board and where they prioritize the recruits.

Here's the portion that fans don't see because not every offer means that they are a target of the staff. After that list is whittled down there is still a multitude of factors that go into a whether Michigan actively recruits the kid. Unfortunately, a lot of kids get dinged because of grades, Michigan has a staff with Claiborne Greene that if they like the prospect and he just needs to improve scores and is a good kid will work with them to give them advice and guidance. That's why sometimes there is the gray area of is a kid a take or not comes in. Ideally, you don't want to take a kid if he still has a lot of work in the classroom because if he doesn't do the work he has to de-commit and all the negative backlash that comes with it. Then they have due diligence on the kid's background. They look through social media and talk to HS coaching staffs. This portion dings another portion of the recruiting board, as coaches don't want to take risks on a kid if there are red flags in their past and get those red flags get brought to campus. This is where someone like MSU got into deep trouble for looking past these red flags to take certain kids.

The last portion and this is always the most heated topic amongst Michigan fans is there is a large portion of Michigan’s board that we will not pursue further-- we are not holier than though and aren’t this shining beacon and bastion of morals and integrity, but flat out if a kid or his family or handler is looking for “assurances or things of that ilk” we won’t play that game. I know this for a fact and have been told of at least a dozen of these cases from people directly involved. This post isn’t meant to detail that side of recruiting, but I can always answer questions below.

Recruiting Rankings and their Impact

For Michigan and most staffs, the answer is zilch; not even one iota. They trust their evals more than recruiting sites because they have more data and information than they do. Some coaching staffs like to use it for PR, or a scorecard, and some coaches have bonuses in their contract. Some use it as a tool to show how awesome they are to fans and keep that reputation of being a great recruiter *cough James Franklin*.

At a staff like Alabama it is such a machine that they know damn well that when they offer a kid that recruiting services will automatically bump them up. Saban doesn't care about how a recruiting service ranks a kid because if he commits to Bama, he knows they're going to almost automatically become a 4-star.

Now all of this is to say that recruiting services do generally hit on the 5-star guys because almost anyone can pick out a kid with that type of talent. I would say the best indicator of how well Michigan’s class is doing, is by how many of the kids you landed were being courted heavily by any of the Top-10 (Alabama, Auburn, A&M, UGA, Clemson, OSU, Penn State, Notre Dame, Texas, etc.). This will change based on regionality, but a guy like Braiden McGregor is a great example. Clemson, Notre Dame, and OSU all really wanted him and was a huge recruiting win for Michigan.

Today's recruiting is very different from the past decade. It's much harder for players to fall through the cracks nowadays, but it still happens. Back in the day, Tom Lemming would be a great resource because he would be talking to tons of HS coaches and know what players were getting talked up and what ones are flying under the radar. Now every program has a staff in place full of technology that has made them into professional scouting departments.