MSU DB Julian Barnett entering transfer Portal
Barnett was the #57 player and the #8 corner in the 2019 class. He played WR out of necessity in his first year at MSU and switched to CB with Mel Tucker's new staff.
Harbaugh or whoever the next coach is need to go all in to try to land his commitment because he could bring an excellent combination of length and athleticism to the position.
December 10th, 2020 at 10:29 PM ^
He will end up out of the state like most of the Bellville kids. I can see him at a program like Cincinnati. Not a big school but is winning right now.
December 10th, 2020 at 10:29 PM ^
He would also serve to counteract the Harbaugh not recruiting in state talent and may serve to mend some bridges with Belleville in the long term (though unlikely).
If Barnett wants to play WR instead, I think he could be decent at that position too with a 4.54 40 time. But with his length, I think he could be an outstanding corner prospect. Just needs some coaching.
December 10th, 2020 at 10:31 PM ^
I think the only way Michigan mends fences with Belleville and Detroit area high schools is to have a different head coach.
December 11th, 2020 at 5:02 AM ^
He had a decent freshman year, Devontae Dobbs played sparingly his freshman year, and disappeared on a depth chart in need of depth, and no other player from Belleville has made an impact anywhere else. Maybe players from Belleville are a little overrated?
December 11th, 2020 at 9:51 AM ^
Frank Nunley, Keith Simons and Ian Gold would disagree. Lol
December 11th, 2020 at 10:11 AM ^
When the best example you've got is currently 42 years old, you might not be supporting your argument as strongly as you think.
December 11th, 2020 at 11:02 AM ^
When I read his reply, I almost spit out my coffee. Frank Nunley played for UM in the 60's, I don't know who Keith Simmons is, and yeah, Ian Gold. Haha...
December 11th, 2020 at 1:15 AM ^
Something went down with him this year.
Was definitely a better athlete than either starting corner, or safety this year.
Absolutely limited playing time, a little on special teams. MSU's cb coordinator is plenty capable.
Not going to get the real version for a while, but Barnett & Dobbs fell off the map for some reason besides "coaching".
December 11th, 2020 at 10:00 AM ^
From my Spartan friends, Mel Tucker was trying extremely hard to keep Barnett from transferring. He even took him under his wing. From my Spartan friends understanding from MSU insiders, Barnett was having troubles learning the new system. Mostly because he was an offensive player last season and they missed some spring all. His athleticism is off the charts. And I know Sparty did not want him to transfer. As for Dobbs, my buddies talked about him and apparently he has been battling an injury all season. They told me this from an interview they saw with the O-line coach at MSU. Word on the street is Dobbs won’t see any playing time this season. Per Sparty friends.
December 10th, 2020 at 10:39 PM ^
Tall and pretty fast! He's a perfect cornerback for Michigan's system that's likely getting replaced but still a good in state talent.
December 11th, 2020 at 5:21 PM ^
This is one MSU transfer I can bet on board with. As long as there is no baggage here, this man has some good raw skill.
December 10th, 2020 at 10:39 PM ^
He was mediocre at MSU so yeah let's please give him a scholarship.
December 10th, 2020 at 10:45 PM ^
Bad decision to go to MSU.
December 10th, 2020 at 10:48 PM ^
I seriously doubt he’s considering Michigan.
December 10th, 2020 at 10:53 PM ^
Tom Vanhaaren, one of ESPN's college football reporters, tweeted out tonight that since December 1st, 146 FBS players have entered the transfer portal. That seems absurdly high and there's going to be many many more. I'm starting to get worried that this laissez faire attitude we've all just seemed to accept regarding these transfers is going to have some major unintended consequences.
December 10th, 2020 at 11:10 PM ^
Yes it will be horrible for the players to look for better opportunities for themselves like everyone else in college football.
December 10th, 2020 at 11:33 PM ^
Its really not that simple. It's not like this has created a situation in which there are no "victims," for lack of a better term. The only thing that it did was change who is responsible to carrying the burden.
December 11th, 2020 at 12:03 AM ^
Sorry, I believe it is that simple. I don't know why players are held to a higher standard than the relative adults. Who are these victims here? The people making multiple millions of dollars?
December 11th, 2020 at 12:42 AM ^
Well, you can make the argument that a lot of people get a raw deal when this stuff happens at the rate its currently accelerating at. Teammates, coaches, coaches families, fans ect. You could make a very valid argument that some of these players may have taken a spot that another recruit didn't get, especially at elite academic institutions like Michigan.
I'm not saying your position is right or wrong. You may very well think the tradeoffs are well worth it. But you can't say that no one is affected by this stuff.
December 11th, 2020 at 2:25 AM ^
Coaches families and fans? Come on. Yeah fuck Zach Carpenter. I'm the real victim here.
Also, there are almost surely going to be a lot more transfers this year than usual. You're lumping all transfers together and talking about how teammates and coaches are victims, but a lot (most?) of these guys are transferring because they're buried on a depth chart.
December 11th, 2020 at 9:42 AM ^
Well, you're taking what I said to the extreme when that's not how I presented it. I never said anything close to "fuck Zach Carpenter" at all. And yes, coaches families can be affected by this stuff. If mass transfers contribute to a coach's termination, whether that be a head coach or an assistant, it without question has an impact on their families. I guarantee you there's people on this blog that have high paying jobs and if they were to get fired the fact that their positions were high paying isn't much of a comfort to their families.
It seems to me that many people on this board don't want to give any thought to the fact that there may be ramifications for this stuff. Nobody is affected. There are no consequences for any of it. The important thing is that we pound the table in unequivocal support of the players just before we pat ourselves on the back. All of the power, none of the responsibility.
December 11th, 2020 at 10:12 AM ^
This is me playing the world’s smallest violin for those poor multi-millionaire coaches’ families out there.
Won’t anyone think of the children??
December 11th, 2020 at 6:14 AM ^
Fans are not in any way victims in any way connected to transfers. Coached families are also not in any way victims in any of this.
OBLIGATORY: I have no specific info about any of the 146 reported transfer portal kids. THIS IS MY PERSONAL observations and may or may not be relevant to current transfers today.
I’ve posted this before but it’s been a while:
I played a varsity Big Ten sport for 5 seasons and I can tell you during that not-so-long ago time it was pretty common to absolutely HATE your coach. I hated my coaches. I know lots of other guys from around the conference who hated their coaches too. Not at all in a “Bo treats them all the same - like dogs!” way. But in a “coach lied to me and my family about my responsibility here” way. In a “Coach made racist jokes in front of my teammates about me” way. In a “coach called me out in front of the whole team and athletic training staff using gay slurs way”
all things I have personally witnessed in your average Big Ten practice. I’ve seen 14 different teammates get called c**k sucker in front of the whole team in one season during post game “what went right what went wrong” locker room break downs. We actually kept track as players because it was so frequent to have your masculinity and heterosexuality attacked by our coaches (plural). One of my coaches once pulled me aside to say that even though he wouldn’t have used the word, he needs to defend another coach who used the N-word multiple times in a group of people about one of his own players. My assistant coach thought we, the players, shouldn’t make a big deal out of what that head coach chose to say about a POC on his team. Convoluted reasons and circular arguments ensued.
DJ Durkin’s antics from a year ago didn’t surprise me at all (especially what Peppers said he observed). I don’t know DJ but it didn’t sound any different to me than what other coaches I’ve seen routinely do. I’ve personally worked out with DJ’s strength coach (in the incident) Rick Court, and who Rick’s players described him to be is very far away from the man Rick presented himself to be when I was being recruited. If, totally hypothetically in Rick’s case, I had gotten on campus and this really chill guy who seemed as much like a friend as a coach was suddenly a threatening bully who made my day worse whenever I was his target, yeah I’d feel lied to and transfer too.
December 11th, 2020 at 10:18 AM ^
So who is the "victim" here? Some teams get worse and some get better, but every departure opens up another spot for a player who wants to play at that school and possibly get a starting spot, which feels like a win.
The biggest victim AFAIK are coaches who now have to deal with changes to their rosters, which considering they're paid million of dollars to do so doesn't feel a particularly heavy burden.
December 10th, 2020 at 11:11 PM ^
I thought only Michigan players transferred?!
December 11th, 2020 at 11:50 AM ^
TomVH needs no introduction to this board. Hold me Tom
December 10th, 2020 at 11:02 PM ^
I never liked Barnett as a CB coming out of HS. Thought he was a much better WR prospect. Another Belleville kid who hasn’t done anything in college.
December 10th, 2020 at 11:09 PM ^
- This guy is a stud! To bad we suck! He might have come here! He's better as a wide receiver than a corner thou!
December 10th, 2020 at 11:32 PM ^
When you leave a school that has more playing time at each position than most other BIG10 schools can offer, you're a stud? Yeah your definition of stud may really mean dud!
December 10th, 2020 at 11:39 PM ^
His freshman season he played wide receiver against us! He made a descent amount of catches against our star cornerbacks!
December 11th, 2020 at 12:25 AM ^
He's a very athletic kid with good quicks.
December 11th, 2020 at 12:11 AM ^
Wait, are you still talking about MSU?
December 11th, 2020 at 2:58 AM ^
"He's better as a wide receiver than a corner thou!"
From Shakespeare's Recruiting Digest
December 11th, 2020 at 12:10 AM ^
Michigan State currently has 5 in the portal and its reported a few more will join. Michigan currently has 3 in the portal. Zach Carpenter, Charles Thomas, and Osman Savage. Florida has 3. Georgia has 5 in the portal including Mathis, a highly rated QB. Auburn has 4, Florida State has 7. Including an extremely high rated wide receiver who is coming to IU. Clemson only has 1 this year so far, but had 4 last year. This is just the way college football is now. Used to teams would recruit 30 guys and process 5. Now players find themselves homes when it doesn’t work out and teams don’t over recruit as much. This is how Saban built depth for a long time. Over recruit and then push out. Now the players have some say in getting out before being processed out, so teams less and less are having to process guys out. Instead teams are looking to fill spots with transfer in themselves.
December 11th, 2020 at 12:14 AM ^
Let’s just keep in mind this is a freak year. Kids got an extra year of eligibility and basically all restrictions were taken off. Things will settle down next year.
December 11th, 2020 at 1:19 AM ^
Should be a good year for us to pick up 1 or more defensive tackle and be more than just bodies!
December 11th, 2020 at 2:33 AM ^
Screw Bellieville and their head coach. He is actually hurting his students by not letting his kids explore the opportunity at Michigan.
December 11th, 2020 at 7:57 AM ^
I've been saying this for a while, but recruiting in the State of Michigan is very tricky. There are a fair number of 4- and 5-star kids who go on to do very little. As much as we like to talk about the need to land Steve Elmer and Quinn Nordin and Julian Barnett and every in-state prospect, there are a ton of flops or guys who are JAGs. Barnett still has time to succeed, but think about Michigan's recent 1st round picks - New Jersey (Peppers/Gary), Ohio (Charlton), Florida (Bush), the FL/NJ border (Ruiz), etc.
Michigan's last 1st round pick from the State of Michigan is (IIRC) Brandon Graham.
December 11th, 2020 at 9:24 AM ^
Very true Magnus and it's interesting. I have coached high school in Michigan and now coach down in South Carolina. In my short time down here, it seems South Carolina has more players become impactful players at the power 5 level than Michigan. While Michigan has more athletes go D1 than South Carolina when you look at raw numbers, we have a much higher percentage. I can also say that the concentration of players in greater in Michigan. By that I mean there are a handful of schools that seem to have most of the D1 talent. Down here, it seems every team we play has at least a couple of D1 level athletes. These kids play the part and look the part. Now there are schools that have more than others (Dutch Fork, Dillon, Myrtle Beach ect.), but in Michigan you could play an entire season and see maybe 1 D1 kid unless you were in league with one of the big boy teams.
December 11th, 2020 at 9:46 AM ^
So true, people get caught up in the "protect your state" argument, but sometimes the players aren't worth protecting. I made a diary post showing how the players from the state have fared since 2016. I didn't do the the research, but just a casual look would tell you that 3 stars from Cali, Florida, Louisiana, Texas and other southern states do better than 4 stars from Michigan in college.
December 11th, 2020 at 10:27 AM ^
Right. There are a few powerhouses in Michigan on a regular basis (West Bloomfield now though that's a relatively new thing, Belleville, King, Cass Tech, Orchard Lake St. Mary's, etc.), but if you get outside of Metro Detroit, there's not much talent at all.
And you look at some of these Detroit kids who get 40 or 50 offers or whatever (Lavert Hill, Donovan Peoples-Jones, etc.), and they go in the 6th round or go undrafted. We made a big deal about Mike Weber, who had a fine career at Ohio State . . . but they were/would have been just fine without him because they had a 3-star kid from Texas named JK Dobbins.
December 11th, 2020 at 11:17 AM ^
Dobbins was a 5 star recruit
December 11th, 2020 at 2:25 PM ^
Pretty sure he was a 2-star.
December 11th, 2020 at 10:21 AM ^
You want Harbaugh - to go after a kid in the Portal, when we are on the verge of a mass exodus, and our coach may be gone? What’s up everyone’s asses today?
December 11th, 2020 at 10:21 AM ^
I doubt he comes to Michigan, but people freaking out about guys transferring need to just look around and see that every school has had to deal with it.
December 11th, 2020 at 12:36 PM ^
Bellviille players tend to be overrated unless they commit to Meeeechigan,!!!!!