California moves high school football to the spring
Is this good or bad for Michigan recruiting?
Likely means that we won’t get senior bumps for Dixon or Worthy. Doesn’t mean much for recruitment of any other targets.
Only move they could make with cases, hospitalizations, and now deaths going up to new highs, particularly in SoCal. I can't see how Arizona would be any different (I'll leave Florida and Texas aside: rationality is not a strong suit when it comes to the two biggest states for high school football, so anything is possible).
Michigan is currently in much better shape than those states, but unless cases start dropping within a week, and keep doing so for the next month, I don't see how fall high school football will happen; there's just no money for regular testing, etc for a sport which requires teens to be breathing all over each other for 2 hours. But who knows? As the great Lloyd Christmas once said, "So you're telling me there's a chance."
I wonder if kids will still enroll early in college and essentially forego their senior seasons.
The top kids? Absolutely.
For them (particularly the QBs), they & their parents have treated this like a business since they were in middle school (if not earlier): going to multiple camps, hiring throwing coaches, trainers, nutritionists. Leaving high school after the fall semester of their senior year has likely been in their plans for years.
If you're a top recruit and your hope/expectation is to play as a college freshmen in fall 2021, more likely than not you will forgo your senior high school season if it occurs March thru May as that would a) prevent you from getting a head start on the college playbook and b) if you get significantly injured in high school (e.g., ACL tear) you would have no chance at playing as a freshmen.
Korey Foreman already said he would.
(For those who don't know, as I didn't, Korey Foreman is #1 overall recruit). He tweeted:
" if they make me choose between my senior season or going to college ... please believe i’m headed to my first camp .. no questions asked."
...which means he was already planning on graduating early, and that is still his plan so he can go to his "first camp" at USC, Georgia, or wherever he ends up committing.
EDIT: BTW, Virginia also announced late last week they're moving to the spring. That doesn't affect Michigan recruiting (it would have in 2020, as we got the top recruit in the state, Hibner) but TreVeyon Henderson (former target, #1 RB, who's going to OSU) is from VA, so I assume he will also skip his senior HS year of football (unless he moves to Georgia or something to play in the fall).
Yes, and this will open up roster spots in Spring for more juniors and sophomores which will increase the quality of the pool for next year.
Time for the Cali kids to rent a van and move to MI. Sam Webb had Ron Bellamy (coach at West Bloomfield) on the radio on Friday and he has already fielded a few calls from California coaches, and other coaches have as well , about families moving for at least a few months just for their senior seasons.
As a current resident of California, I can’t imagine the amount of planning it would take to move to Michigan in the next month, let alone high school football season timing being the driver.
That's interesting. Did Bellamy say that he already got go ahead from the superintendent to play in the fall? He may have, but the high school is going 100% virtual in the fall in instruction, so I don't know how that will work.
https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/local/2020/07/16/west-bloomfield-schools-shift-to-online-hybrid-learning-for-the-fall/
I was about to make a joke about all the 5-star Cali kids moving to Michigan for fall football.
Since this seems to be an actual thing, I think the MHSAA would be an issue. They seem to be really strict with a lot of their archaic rules.
EDIT: Also, if this is a thing, go to Pioneer, look at the Big House every day, and decide Ann Arbor is a cool place to live for the next four to five years.
I could see a new academy pop up in Nevada or Oregon
Or, Bates "Football" Academy in Ypsilanti.
I always thought he could do better than Jessie.
He did. Ali Landry.
I like
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Doritos.
Going to see some boosters funding moving vans and going on “hiring” sprees.
If the trend continues in California, it's likely the colleges and universities go remote this fall. The Pac 12 will then start looking at spring with Stanford, Cal, UCLA and USC all canceling fall football
I'm going to be at one of the local HS football fields here in SE MI later tonight and I fully expect to see at least 70 kids on the field between practices and pickup football/soccer games. Obviously this is ancedotal, but if the same is playing out across the country, not sure what they will accomplish by not having HS football.
What they will accomplish is a reduction in liability, a huge consideration for any entity (public or private), along with a signal of what's acceptable, best practice health behavior during a pandemic (which should lead to fewer sick people, but as you noted, may not b/c some kids will still get together on their own).
It's one thing if kids get sick, and then (more worrisome) get their parents/grandparents sick, from a pickup game. It's quite another if it is at a school sanctioned event the virus is passed around and people get sick later.
Leaving aside lawsuits (that doesn't seem likely, but I'm sure MGoLawyers could speak on it), superintendents & school boards tend to be very risk averse and want to err on the side of public health & medical advice.
They surely saw the news from Kentucky this weekend where there was a HS football related outbreak (kid caught it on vacation; spread it later in a HS weight room) and "38 people, including 18 football players, three coaches and 17 of their family members and close contacts" now have it.
https://www.kentucky.com/news/coronavirus/article244347427.html
That's kind of my point. A lot of these decisions are made with the intent of looking good without any thought into if they are actually accomplishing anything. How is it any different if someone gets sick from a pickup game as opposed to a HS practice? They are no less sick because it wasn't official practice.
I'm not saying the decision is a mistake, but I wish we were making decisions with practical application in mind as opposed to virtue signaling.
Is it possible they are just actually being virtuous? Seems a bit too cynical (coming from a self-identifying cynic) to presume that they are making decisions around something that presents a very obvious threat to health and safety based on their desire to present themselves in a certain light.
As a high school ref in California, I can only say that this is the only possible way I'm reffing this year.
The warmer climate in Cali is conducive for Spring FB. Being such a huge and populous state, they could pull it off. The plan will mess up their return to fall FB in 2021.
Seems about right. I assume we'll see other states follow suit, or at least delay the season a bit.
Probably the right move long-term. By probably I mean definitely. We can only hope Texas, Florida, and Arizona follow suit.
With D1 players enrolling early this will change the competitive landscape of the season