4* WR Gatlin Bair chooses Boise St over Michigan
Title says it all
2026 me is devastated.
I plan to be devastated long beyond then.
2026 me is dead, most likely
not shocked good for him
August 5th, 2023 at 11:37 PM ^
Maybe Blair is playing a long game. Commit somewhere that you don't mind ditching later. Take a year or more to field NIL offers. Leverage more from your school of choice.
I'm not even sure what conference Boise St will be part of in 2026...
Go Blue.
The Big Ten, er, Twenty Two, silly!
Mountain PAC
This isn't even a joke!
August 5th, 2023 at 10:38 PM ^
The Mountain West will likely add WSU and OSU and will easily be the 5th best conference in college.
They will be in the Leftover 12 conference. A very exclusive group.
He appears to be a serious and thoughtful young man, yet the football landscape will likely be different in 2026. We'll see.
Exactly. There's still two years to go before he plays a college down, that's an eternity in college football.
It’s too bad, i have a few Mormon friends from small towns in Utah and Montana and a few years Ann Arbor was like them going on Rumspringa in Gomorrah. Not for everyone tho.
Why do you always take two Mormons when you go fishing instead of just one?
August 5th, 2023 at 10:21 PM ^
A sole Mormon will drink all your beer.
Sort of like:
“Jews don't recognize Jesus, Protestants don't recognize the Pope, and Baptists don't recognize one another in the liquor store.”
I'd see myself out, but I'm just repeating some very old ones.
Okay, I'll see myself out...
It'll likely be longer than two years. Getting back into football shape and being ready to play isn't something that'll just happen once he's done with his mission.
Just the Bair facts.
Wow, recruiting dong punches continue.
Sigh, I know a lot of Michigan fans are reacting with "hOw DiD wE lOsE a ReCrUiTiNg BaTtLe To BoIsE sTaTe?!?1" but you know who else lost a recruiting battle to Boise State? Every other big time school that offered him. This is just one of those recruitments that sometimes defies logic and the kid just wants to stay home despite if it's what most people consider best for him. His top schools were Boise State, Michigan, Nebraska, Oregon, and TCU despite having better offers. Michigan apparently knocked it out of the park with his visit, he connected with Andrew Gentry and Colston Loveland, and it still wasn't enough. Recruitments like this happen and there's no use in getting upset at them
I mean sure if it was just missing on Bair. They've been missing on a lot of targets recently. They've got to figure out what's going wrong and fix it.
Are you ever not miserable?
Edit: thanks for the neg, Thad. You answered my question.
I am just stating the facts. Uini, Bennett Warren, Aaron Scott, Gatlin Bair, Aaron Chiles. That's a lot of dudes that we led for at some point that didn't come here. We have a lot of players in the top 150-400 range but only three top 100 guys.
Nice job disregarding other “facts,” such as everyone who has already committed this cycle. Oh, and the last two years of actual football games. But you be you
Acting like recruiting over the past 8 weeks hasn't been a big miss makes you look stupid
There's only one comment on this thread that makes anyone look stupid...
August 5th, 2023 at 10:25 PM ^
Oh yes I forgot the mgoblog community isn't one for reality a lot of times. Anyone saying the last month or 2 in recruiting has gone well is again.... stupid and lying.
You disappoint me, my friend
I acknowledged that they had a lot of top 150-400 guys committed. There's just not a lot of top recruits committed to Michigan when it looked like they could have 5-6 of them earlier in the cycle. There's no guarantee that they are going to continue beating OSU without better CBs and they didn't beat Georgia when they played them within the last two years. No one is going to jump off a cliff but I don't think it's wrong for anyone to say the past month or two hasn't been great in recruiting.
I know how belligerent some of the folks here can be, but I'm still surprised at how much Thad is getting chewed up. Especially since he's right on. This isn't about whether Michigan coaches do a better job than OSU of recognizing and developing talent, or that those abilities have got the team to a point where we're better than OSU, at least head to head. Or about the value of recruiting stars or a number of other endless debates.
Thad's talking about something that's been a clear consensus here for about a year and a half -- the hope that the success of the past two years would elevate our recruiting to the level of the OSUs, Alabamas and Georgias. To the point that we would start to get our share of elite recruits, and that we could again start to attract some of the top talent from Ohio -- like we did during the Schembechler, Moeller and Carr glory years. Some held out this hope because of concern that the current formula isn't sustainable, while others just felt it would take the team to another level. I think most people agreed it would be a good thing.
The storyline went beyond that and identified a bunch of recruits considered key if Michigan were to progress this year toward elite recruiting. Then we all sat back with our bags of popcorn to watch. It's been up and down. We started slow but then landed a five-star quarterback, beat OSU for an elite Ohio running back and pulled a great group of offensive linemen and even better tight end prospects than we usually do. For weeks our class was ranked in the top two, people were predicting a top five class, and all of the talk was how we were taking that step.
Since then it -- that specific hope -- has fizzled. We've whiffed on the vast majority of top targets, who Thad listed, including Bair ... after months of commentary that at least we'd get him even if he was really a 2026. Thank goodness for the Smith brothers and Beasley. The class is still ranked 5th (247), but that's a mirage. The better measure of a class's quality is the average rating, and by that we're 13th -- about where we usually are and behind schools like USC, Florida, FSU and Auburn.
Yes, the cycle is far from over, and we did sign a few elite prospects last year out of nowhere and last minute. Yes, we still have coaches that we think are great, and that's worth a lot. Thad wasn't trying to sum up the overall fortune of Michigan football. He was talking about something pretty specific that a lot of people agreed was important and that they were following. I think it's pretty objective that he's correct in saying that right now it's not panning out. I'm sure there's a word for people who ignore the accuracy of what he's saying and blast him for it. If I cared enough I'd figure it out.
Good points, Thad. To the belligerents, I'd be glad to take some of his downvotes.
If calling out Thad makes me one of the Belligerents, sign me up. No one here has ever said, NOTHING IS WRONG WITH RECRUITING, as you and others have implied. Instead, we have opted to not bemoan every miss, especially since, as another poster pointed out quite clearly, we have no idea what’s going on behind the curtain.
You are clearly under the mistaken impression that Michigan will ever “…elevate our recruiting to the level of the OSUs, Alabamas and Georgias,” as you stated. That will likely never happen because “we” will not ever do recruiting the same as those schools. It’s not Harbaugh’s fault that you and the other non-Belligerents refuse to accept that and instead opt to fill this site with never-ending vitriol.
But go ahead and keep complaining, again and again. I’m sure Harbaugh is reading your every word and considering changes as we speak, and obviously everyone here values your input. Oh, and thank you also for the negs.
He's not wrong. Big misses lately with various reasons/excuses. Certainly confident in our player development, but I'm afraid this recruiting trend will eventually catch up to us.
Back to Back. You should know that Goblins always come out at night. There's never enough. If you're not happy about this class, so be it.
August 5th, 2023 at 10:27 PM ^
You do realize in reality you can say this class is good AND the last 2 months haven't been. Not sure why some people around here can't acknowledge this.
August 5th, 2023 at 11:45 PM ^
This is what I realize. You do know that there's a certain poster in here who's,"never" happy no matter who we recruit. Now you can realize that you are also somewhat quasi defending that particular inadequate person. Now if you do realize that we will still have a highly rated class and will still do well as a top-notched football program. Then, and only then will you realize, why we don't bitch and moan after every single fricken recruit who chooses to hone their skills, elsewhere.
August 6th, 2023 at 12:16 PM ^
You win the post of the day. Could you copy and paste this reply every time Goblin or whoever else he claims to be (based on his typical post I’m guessing he’s had more than one username on this site) spouts his negativity? Thank you
August 6th, 2023 at 11:33 AM ^
I can't acknowledge it because "acknowledging" something like that would mean I'm acknowledging that I have the arrogance to judge Harbaugh and his staff's performance. What the fuck do I know about recruiting that I can say yeah Harbaugh and his dozens of staff didnt do a good job the past couple of months?
Apparently not nearly as much as you and the other anonymous internet recruiting critics.
"What the fuck do I know about recruiting that I can say yeah Harbaugh and his dozens of staff didnt do a good job the past couple of months? "
You know that Harbaugh and his dozens of staff didn't get the guys they wanted the most.
This comment right here. Both things can be true. Great incoming class, but swing-and-missing a shitload lately.
It always feels like people are way over focused on what happened recently, when these are multi-year recruiting cycles layered on top of even longer player tenures and Harbaugh building a team over (hopefully) 1-2 decades. It's effectively random *when* players decide to commit. There's no "trend" there's really no "lately", it's all random timing. If you want to see a trend, look back over years. Or look at the class as whole - it is more-or-less random whether the last 5 commitments happened early in the cycle, late in the cycle or in the middle. For goodness sake, we're not even talking about commits from the same cycle. And kids are changing their minds all the time!
Even further, almost by definition every school (including Bama, Georgia, OSU) misses on more than they hit on.
Just look at the class we have as a whole and decide if he's doing a good job. Even more important, so how he's doing as a coach and decide if he's doing a good job. Lighting your hair on fire because a few kids across a few different classes happened to commit elsewhere a few weeks apart is like doing the same because the stock market is up or down any given day - it's 99% randomness and by even focusing on it you're losing the forest for the trees.
We're going to miss on recruits. It's a thing that is 100% expected to happen that is a tiny part of the much larger overall thing which is Michigan Football. And i think by all accounts the much larger overall thing is doing pretty well these days.
We lost a few Ohio kids to OSU, lost a Mormon Idaho kid to Boise State, and we lost a handful of kids to schools who dropped the bag. Yeah, it sucks, but our class is basically full besides a few more guys
Exactly. And Bennett Warren and Michael Uini were luxury 6th OL. It's gotta be tough as a kid looking at that depth chart and knowing there are already five other guys IN YOUR OWN CLASS who play your position. No matter how good you think you are, its gotta give you pause.
August 5th, 2023 at 10:30 PM ^
I have a hard time considering Uini a luxury 6th OL when he would have been one of the best OL prospects in our class.
August 6th, 2023 at 12:06 AM ^
Why is it so hard for fans to look at things objectively, yes he would’ve been the 6th commit, but that doesn’t mean he would’ve been the best OL in the class. And no, highly rated kids aren’t running from competition especially when 5 OL play at once. We lose out on recruits! It’s okay to admit, no need for false equivalencies to ease the blow. We started out hot in recruiting, but it has cooled off big time as of late.
How is it hard for people to see that when there is literally a full OL committed in your class alone (not even considering the class before and class after) that it would potentially turn kids off? Players 100% take into their account playing time and chances of starting so getting a 6th OL was always going to be hard
Hamster wheel comment.
One would think winning b2b Big Ten championships would instill trust in Harbaugh’s recruiting from fans.
"One would think winning b2b Big Ten championships would instill trust in Harbaugh’s recruiting from,"real" fans!"
FIFY
August 6th, 2023 at 11:34 AM ^
Delusionally arrogant fans are still real fans, yes.