Michigan Expanding Football Recruitment Dept
Hmmm... something that I've been advocating here for a while (look at my previous posts).. let's see if we can start getting our back-office staff up to snuff where Clemson and Bama have it
Looks like my little birdie was right-- Harbaugh is finally starting to see the light in this area. Morgan already getting some big-time help on staff.
Anyone want to throw their hat in the ring? Unfortunately, these postings are merely to meet State requirements. I have a feeling Harbaugh has ID'd a few good candidates...
Happy to answer questions below! Haven't been on in a while and it's Draft Night, and I always enjoy answering (most) questions.
Paging Dubyah Dee (WD)..
First, expand our football player development department. Second, expand recruiting department.
I hear Les Miles prefers young, fit, blonde students to run the on-campus recruiting department ;)
April 29th, 2021 at 10:17 PM ^
Bobby Petrino likes them to ride on the back of his chopper.
Definitely seems like something that is going to take time to payoff. Have to think Harbaugh has more time than just one season to try and fix things.
It’s something that a new coach would likely install anyway. This simply makes sure the position is already in existence and the framework is there if/when a new coach takes over. I don’t think it says much about Harbaugh’s job security.
Though I do think Harbaugh gets two years at minimum to fix things.
April 30th, 2021 at 12:00 AM ^
I think Harbaugh gets two years maximum to fix things.
April 30th, 2021 at 12:52 PM ^
So eight years total? Since these are his things he's fixing.
Well based on his contract, the moves he was allowed to make (an entire defensive staff overhaul with a brand new system and a new focus on recruiting doesn’t spell “one year”) two years seems to be a minimum unless this year is REALLY bad.
It's because the U of M Standard Practice Guide requires that there be 7-day minimum public notice of any job opening within the U. You know... public money, openness in hiring, fair competition for a position, that kind of stuff.
https://spg.umich.edu/policy/201.22
That just explains why the job was publicly posted, not why the position was created and the recruiting department is being expanded in the first place.
ALBERT KARCHNIA!
Cheers
Keep the CMU to Michigan pipeline going strong (or, in his case, UM to CMU to UM).
Would be a big plus in the department
This certainly sounds like good news.
Many people here might already be familiar the operations of the back office, but for someone like me that doesn't know much about the recruiting/administrative side of things, it would be nice to know what some of these new hires will be doing. Are they mainly responsible for organizing and planning on-campus visits--and hopefully making sure we don't misspell the names of recruits and thank them for attending recruiting events they didn't actually attend (Aubrey Solomon)? Or will they also be involved in talent spotting, etc?
Also, any chance of a job advert for bagmen?
I don’t know the specifics of all the jobs, but if you click the two Hyperlinks in the OP it takes you to the job application page where it tells you the job duties/responsibilities.
Most of these roles are going to be in the business of organizing, planning, and logistics of some sort.
My bad. I guess I should've looked at the links first.
But after looking at the advertisements, these seem like positions we already had. What is the difference between the first position (Director of On-Campus Recruiting and Operations) and Dudek's position (Director of Recruiting)? I'm not questioning whether this is a step forward (I believe umgoblue11 that this is an improvement), but just wondering how it's different from what we've done in the past.
I did like this from the second link: "Develop presentations for on-campus visits of prospective student-athletes and their families regarding NIL education."
April 29th, 2021 at 10:31 PM ^
Likely the biggest difference is that we’ll have more people splitting the duties that were carried out by individual people before.
I can’t say for certain, as I don’t know what exactly the roles were before, but my guess is that instead of Dudek running the entire recruiting department, Dudek’s old position becomes more of a supervisor role while there is a group of people that works under the Recruiting Director that handles different areas that Dudek once performed.
Less on the plate for individual people allows for more focus to be put into each individual task. If person A only has to worry about setting up travel and lodging for coaches on recruiting visits, that allows person B to worry about setting up on-campus activities for recruits instead of that all falling on one guy. Simply seems like a more organized and streamlined system.
Obviously I don’t believe it was just Dudek handling these duties by himself, but adding positions and job titles seems like a better way to organize the recruiting department.
April 29th, 2021 at 11:58 PM ^
That makes sense. Thanks for the response!
April 30th, 2021 at 12:52 AM ^
They seem like completely different roles with radically different skill sets. I hope Dudek wasn't doing them both. I follow him on twitter and have yet to see a packaged video on a recruit.
The Director of Football Branding & Strategic Communications roll seem pretty important on a variety of levels.
Again, I don’t think he was doing it all by himself. But it was probably his responsibility to get it all done and the duties were divided up among himself, the coaches themselves, and a few interns. If you take those duties, assign them to a specific job title/position it can create a more streamlined process.
I’m not pretending to know exactly how everything was set up when Dudek was running the recruiting department, but when our recruiting process gets called “unorganized” by recruiting experts and that our recruiting process places too much responsibility on the coaching staff compared to other programs, this is what it sounds like to me. And it makes sense when they’re adding positions to the recruiting department.
They have to do something with all of that money they're raking in. They've already solved world hunger and financed all the non-rev sports from here to eternity. Why not?
Pay KBA!!!
And Juwan
Any names that you've already heard? Do you think these guys will get in with enough time to impact the '22 class? Or do you think this is more for '23 and beyond?
Seems like a lot of the 22 people have been in contact with schools for sometime now. we've been working on 23 and researching some 24's. You probably start with freshmen who are making impacts and just getting any names from any camps you can. Then, start to winnow those lists down based on what you need and how kids develop; or don't
They’ll be brought in for a logistics/organizing role so they’ll impact this class when it comes to setting up visits and sending the staff out on recruiting trips. So it will have an impact, but it isn’t like hiring these people will play a pivotal role in getting recruit X. It just makes our recruiting department run smoother and takes some responsibilities away from other people.
The NIL position that is being filled won’t really have an impact on players until they’ve arrived on campus. Their role with the recruits will essentially be “here’s our plan for you.” Which you’d have until signing day for that to be effective with the current class. Probably will be more effective with future classes and as they have something to show recruits.
Our issue is more talent development that actual recruiting. But if this means our recruit evaluation is better and that less high 4s and 5s bust/transfer.. I'm all for it
Jim Harbaugh, always a step or 12 behind.
Actually there are examples of Harbaugh being ahead of the curve only for the NCAA to change the rules. Ex. satellite camps.
We didnt really get anyone impactful from the satellite camps anyway
We got projected 1st round pick Rashad Weaver (ignore that we pushed him out and he wound up killing it at Pitt).
Metellus ended up starting at safety.
April 30th, 2021 at 11:24 AM ^
2 things that have no correlation with one another especially when you go back and look at what a waste they were. More than likely because Jim was too disorganized to take advantage of whatever recruiting momentum those camps created.
This new recruiting department was needed BACK WHEN Harbaugh was doing these camps, hence always a step or 12 behind.
Agreed, might be time for new blood.
Cool. Hopefully this will be in reasonable operating order by the time the next staff comes in.
Wake me when we beat OSU.
April 29th, 2021 at 11:41 PM ^
Since that doesn't seem like it'll happen in our lifetime here's this instead:
Wake me when we have as many bag men on staff as OSU
You're gonna need a new username when you finally wake up. May I suggest Rip Van Winkle?
I read this blog often so I don’t feel like I miss much but what do you think makes OSU recruiting department so much better than ours? I realize winning and product on the field are huge but I think it goes deeper than that.
Your thoughts and what you would like M to do going forward?
Organization.
The BTN behind the scenes with Ohio State's Recruiting coordinator. Let's just say, Michigan's approach has been Micky Mouse under Harbaugh compared to this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ay2hqU94hH4
I wrote a ton on this previously so I encourage you to go back to my profile and see what I wrote. But I'll give you a cliff-notes version:
1. Hire the best and brightest. Triple the staff numbers and bring in recruiting staff to help alleviate the work on assistant coaches.
2. Be on the cutting edge for NIL and lean in HARD to the Michigan network with that! Get Bobby Kotick to sponsor kids playing video games
This has been Saban's MO for over a decade.
Coaching positions are capped. Support staff is not. Michigan knows this and does have a large support staff themselves. https://mgoblue.com/sports/2017/6/16/michigan-athletics.aspx
All programs know this and have known this for a long time. https://abcnews.go.com/Sports/expanding-college-football-coaching-staff-nick-saban-started/story?id=41046492
When it comes to the football arms race, Michigan isn't lacking in money to spend https://www.pennlive.com/pennstatefootball/2019/03/who-are-the-richest-and-poorest-power-five-college-football-programs-here-are-all-65-ranked-bottom-to-top.html
its not the size of your wallet; its what you spend it on
Exactly this. We should be at Bama's level with support staff. Bring the NFL model that Harbaugh had in SF to Michigan. So weird that he decided to down-size staff
Hmmmm.... if I only had one question, what would I ask...
So many good ones to choose from.
- T/F: Do you believe West Quad is, in fact, the best quad?
- What is the largest number of patties you’ve ever conquered at Blimpy Burger?
- If you can’t get into college, where should you go?
- Why were people so offended by the Halo?
- Why did Michigan discontinue the best advertisement ever (the Apollo mission in orbit playing The Victors) in favor of the lame ones they are airing today?
- Compare and contrast Michigan State’s ability to field a swimming team with that of your local middle school.
- Can you name a video game, all time, that is better than Crisis Wolverine: Insurrection Green?
- How much would Detroit’s trajectory been changed in the 40s-00s if the University of Michigan didn’t leave the city in the 19th century?
- Do you think Rich Rod ever figured out that he didn’t understand his quote from the Lion King about things happening in the past? Rich Rod said “it doesn’t matter, it’s in the past” but the movie’s point is to learn from the past.
- If Drew Henson didn’t get bribed by the Yankees, how many points would Michigan have won the BCS national championship game by?
- Can the downfall of Michigan football simply be traced to when they removed the bowling alley in the Michigan Union, in favor of a computer lab?
April 29th, 2021 at 11:24 PM ^
Thanks for always doing these Q&As. I definitely remember you talking about this a little over a year ago. Good call!
I was wondering how you would balance recruiting the transfer portal vs. regular recruiting. You gotta think there is a lot of help - especially from grad transfers - in there, but then there's also the culture thing to keep in mind. It would seem that bringing in a lot of transfers would break trust with a lot of kids on the team.
So here's the issue with the transfer portal.. you can dip in there for a guy here or there. OSU and Bama have taken a few guys when they needed it most (Dickerson for Bama Fields and Sermon for OSU). Michigan's problem is going to be they can essentially only go after grad transfers. Admissions is not friendly to transferring credits (this is campus-wide not just athletics).
I've heard a few sources who are very curious as to MSU's strategy of filling their entire roster with transfers. They're turning over half of the roster and they aren't recruiting HS kids well. Such a huge risk with that strategy.
If I'm Michigan I'm scouting other team's rosters and looking for guys who want to play a final year to boost their draft stock. Go get a Dewayne Eskeridge from WMU. Work the back channels baby.