MaizeAndBlueWahoo

February 28th, 2013 at 5:43 PM ^

Meh, at best they were tied at the top.  I don't think there was ever a point where anyone ever said "FSU definitely leads."  I would say the line has been (at least this is what the UVA reporters have said, and they're pretty sharp) that "if Blanding goes out of state, it'll be to FSU."  (Ohio's presence was a more recent thing.)  A couple FSU fans I've read claim they were told "if he visits [FSU] he'll probably commit," which, OK, whatever. 

I think the main thing really is that FSU fans don't have any respect for most of their opponents, and don't understand how playing for a home-state school two hours up the road with a bunch of your friends and HS teammates and for coaches you really, really like could possibly trump playing for almighty Florida State.

jscbus

February 28th, 2013 at 8:07 AM ^

No really, he announced yesterday and surely everyone would've been surprised had he not picked UVA. I just posted it as an update since I hadn't seen a "thread" for it already. I check here regularly for virtually everything so while perusing through ESPN extra early this morning, I decided to share. Can't add tone to text though, so my bad there if it was misleading.

Trebor

February 28th, 2013 at 9:55 AM ^

I still fail to understand the logic behind "good thing we won't have to play against him" when he's still an unproven commodity. He has the stars, but that alone doesn't mean he's going to be a high-impact safety in college. And it's not like we don't have guys with a lot of stars next to their name on our roster.

RakeFight

February 28th, 2013 at 10:17 AM ^

The other contradiction about that kind of statement is that typically it's coming from the same kind of fan that is worried that the Big Ten isn't attracting enough talent to compete with SEC.  Well, either good players come to the Big Ten and we play against them and have a better conference, or they go elsewhere and the conference continues to try to get out from under the shadow of the SEC.  You can't have it both ways.

RunTheFootball

February 28th, 2013 at 11:04 AM ^

A matter of expected value - a recruit is certainly a random variable, but star ratings are basically expected value (value being contributions to the football team, helping them win games). Given that definition, I will always want Michigan to have the highest value in college football (= National Championship all the time), and at least in the B1G.

This player will likely make his team more valuable. As team value is generally measured in wins and losses, I'd prefer valuable players not play against us, as a more valuable team will more likely give us a loss. Yes, valuable teams being in the B1G is good, and I agree with having a strong conference, but UM going 14-0 is ALWAYS priority #1 to me as a fan.

Given that #1 priority: Good recruit commits to Michigan > Good recruit commits to some school we probably won't play > Good recruit commits to some school we will play > Good recruit commits to OSU (all the anger).