Newsome: "I'm committed to Michigan"

Bryce McNeal is officially the man. In the course of one weekend, McNeal upped his own stock, re-sold Newsome on Michigan, and spent a huge chunk of time selling Michigan to Shaq Evans.

don't think we're out of the woods yet, what do you mean?

I don't think Mr. Newsome has to reply to every report or blog that comes out saying he is not going to Michigan. To expect so much is crazy-sorry scout and rivals. The fiasco with TP has everyone on edge but Kevin is a smart young man and knows that Michigan has alot of offer. Bryce and Kevin sound like great guys as well as great players.

I know Robert Prunty, the head coach at Hargrave, reasonably well. Hargrave and Fork Union Military Academy rely on soft-money donations as the lifeblood of their athletics programs. Forgive me if I'm covering ground that's familiar to you guys, but those are pretty expensive prep schools. The kids who end up going there usually can't afford them. So they get financial aid packages that cover about half of their tuition. There is some work-study that's also available. The financial aid packages are almost always provided by a Hargrave or Fork Union "booster" who coincidentally is a big booster of NC State or UNC or Clemson or Miami or Penn State or whoever. Look at Ahmad Brooks as an example. He committed to UVa and then failed to qualify. He headed to Fork Union for a year. He gets a scholarship to go there and it's paid for by a UVa booster. In return, UVa knows that the Fork Union coach (John Schuman) is going to "protect" Brooks and keep VPI recruiters away from him. The first thing you do when you get to either of those schools is turn in all of your civilian gear. It gets packed up and sent home to mama. Getting in touch with someone there by phone is pretty daggone hard. It's probably not as intense as actually enrolling in the military...but it's close. Ain't no way in the world I'd ever want to go. Coach Prunty protects his guys. Even though he's friendly with the VPI staff (among many other staffs), he doesn't want his boys committing unless they are certain they know where they want to go. He hates his players jerking people around. Likewise, when one of his guys commits, he keeps the recruiters away from them. I mentioned in another thread that I used to cover recruiting. One of my first scoops involved a kid named Morris Foreman at Fork Union. He was committed to NC State. He had the grades, but was a little short on his SATs. At the time, NCSU sent their guys to Fork Union. Foreman got a qualifying score in January. He had already graduated from high school, so he didn't need to finish his extra year. He went home to Farmville, NC one weekend and never came back to school. While he was at home, one of the ECU coaches managed to get him to come five miles down the road to Greenville to a basketball game. I had a friend who spotted him at the game and told me. I managed to get his mom on the phone and she admitted he was not going to NCSU, but was going to ECU. I talked to Coach Schuman and he was furious. The next year, NC State no longer sent their kids to Fork Union...they sent them to Hargrave. Foreman ended up being a pretty good lineback for ECU and died a few years ago from a heart condition. And just for a little Wolverine content, that same NC State recruiting class involved a kid named Damon Jones. A few days after Foreman decommitted, Jones switched from NC State to Michigan. As I understand it, Jones set off a pipebomb in his dorm room and got thrown out of school at Michigan. He ended up at one of the Michigan directional schools and later played a couple of years for the Jacksonville Jaguars. This is a very long-winded and roundabout way of saying that I think you have a good shot at holding on to Newsome. If there's a dangeround time period, it will come around Christmas when he's away from school.

Am I the only one who noticed the word hopefully?

 "It was great to be around a guy that's going to be a future teammate hopefully,"

That to me says he may still be waivering.

Go Richrod