Out of the box idea for Director of Player Personnel
In the spirit of OSU poaching Greg Mattison, we should poach Mark Pantoni. Offer to double his compensation and make him turn it down. At a minimum, you force OSU to pretty much double his salary to keep him and, who knows, maybe he says "yes" and you get him. If you get him, you actually kill two birds with one stone, i.e. you kneecap OSU's recruiting for a class or two and you find a very good replacement for Courtney Morgan.
December 18th, 2021 at 8:50 AM ^
I like your chutzpah, but…
December 18th, 2021 at 8:51 AM ^
I'll send this idea straight to Ward! I'm sure he hasn't thought of it!
December 18th, 2021 at 9:06 AM ^
Warde*
December 18th, 2021 at 11:45 AM ^
I know you are being sarcastic.
However, Warde in fact has not thought of it.
December 18th, 2021 at 8:55 AM ^
Are you talking about the MSU old head football coach? Isn't his name Cork Cantina?
December 18th, 2021 at 9:05 AM ^
Uh, didn`t we just crush these guys a few weeks ago? And you want someone from their program to come to AA? This seems counter productive ...
I think I'd suggest waiting until the Harbaugh brain trust can pull more winning rabbits out of their hat(s).
December 18th, 2021 at 9:09 AM ^
I mean, they crushed us and took Mattison and Washington and then crushed us again… I don’t think beating a team is grounds for their entire staff being untouchable. Good staff members can still lose games. Hell, Bama makes an entire coaching staff out of fired coaches every year. I especially don’t see how beating a team on the field means their DPP is bad…
That being said, I don’t know why we would want this guy and “forcing OSU to double his salary” isn’t as laughable when the guy’s salary is maybe $125k. Or they laugh at us for hiring a DPP at $250k and it’s a pretty easy position to replace.
December 18th, 2021 at 9:20 AM ^
So you agree that it's a bad idea. I probably also have some problems with the character of people coming out of that Ohio school. "Goodness of fit" matters when adding staff.
December 18th, 2021 at 10:48 AM ^
I agree it’s a bad idea, but not because we “kicked their ass on the field.” You took a weird path to get to a correct answer. Sometimes the journey is just as important as the destination.
December 18th, 2021 at 1:13 PM ^
Reductio ad absurdum can be a good, humorous introductory path. Some people "get it" on the journey, others don't. Regardless. We agree that we agree.
December 18th, 2021 at 9:36 AM ^
Pantoni makes $225k per year. Double it. Triple it. Who cares? And give him a big budget for staff. The transfer portal and NIL are turning recruiting and player retention on their heads. We need a great DPP to navigate all these changes and this guy has proven himself to be one of the best at both UF and OSU. Maybe he says "no". Ok. But he would be a grand slam hire if you can get him.
December 18th, 2021 at 10:51 AM ^
Hmmm no I think it’s probably a better idea to get someone at market value instead of overpaying for a guy. Whatever you think this guy has done at UF/OSU isn’t worth double or triple what any other qualified candidate has done or will do. He’s not worth twice or three times as much as anyone else and that money has more practical uses elsewhere.
December 18th, 2021 at 9:07 AM ^
Michigan needs to expand the recruiting office. Three or four people isn't enough in today's college football. Poaching somebody from OSU would be great but very unlikely and difficult, but make him say No. I would look at adding multiple people to the recruiting office. One should be somebody with Michigan ties. The next two or three people should have recruiting roots in the Southeast/Florida, West Coast and Texas since that seems to be the main areas we are looking for elite talent.
December 18th, 2021 at 12:47 PM ^
Uh, theres already more than 3 or 4 people in the recruiting office.
December 18th, 2021 at 9:08 AM ^
No thanks. If he makes that move once, he would do it again. I’d question whether he would give a full throated pitch for us after likely trashing us for ten years. I do like the idea of getting someone with a proven track record. I’d just prefer from almost any other school.
December 18th, 2021 at 2:20 PM ^
And....what if he's a double agent??
December 18th, 2021 at 9:26 AM ^
Go full SEC and let the sororities handle recruiting.
December 18th, 2021 at 9:47 AM ^
Pi Delta Pi or the Omega Mu’s?
December 18th, 2021 at 12:50 PM ^
Great idea! Do you think the Florida sororities could help out....
Or if they say no, I hear Les Miles knows a thing or two about that topic!
December 18th, 2021 at 12:57 PM ^
Kate Upton
December 18th, 2021 at 1:16 PM ^
Wrong sport. Beautiful idea though.
;-)
December 18th, 2021 at 9:28 AM ^
Occasionally our idiot cat has an "out of the box" idea.
December 18th, 2021 at 10:47 AM ^
Why do you have a cat? /s
December 18th, 2021 at 9:31 AM ^
No way he comes out of retirement to accept a recruiting position after a pretty successful head coaching career, especially at his instate rival
December 18th, 2021 at 9:45 AM ^
If you want to poach someone from (up to recently) Buckeye territory, why not hire a certain dreadlocked ex-QB away from Jacksonville.
Now THAT'S thinking outside of the box.
December 18th, 2021 at 12:48 PM ^
How about no?
December 18th, 2021 at 12:50 PM ^
Why not?
December 18th, 2021 at 1:13 PM ^
Because he has literally zero experience in a Director of Player Personnel role or DPP office. And the only reason he’s even being brought up is because he played here a decade ago. Literally no reasons qualifying him for the actual job.
December 18th, 2021 at 10:08 AM ^
Hard pass on the guy who was Urban Meyer's right hand man for most of his college coaching career.
December 18th, 2021 at 12:36 PM ^
we've all seen where urban's hand has been...... probably needs a shot of penicillin.
December 18th, 2021 at 10:27 AM ^
Pantoni is not a recruiter. The coaches evaluate and recruit the talent. That is why there is a salary disparity between Pantoni and Jim Knowles. His role is administration, tracking, scheduling, dispatching, communicating. It requires skills that not everyone has, but it is not recruiting. Rather than poaching Pantoni, mimic his system. Hire one of his underlings an try to duplicate his operation. If he left Columbus, that operation might not miss a beat. It's the system that matters.
December 18th, 2021 at 12:53 PM ^
Ding ding ding. The role of recruiting director is almost entirely logistics and paperwork. Setting up visits, planning of activities on those visits, making sure proper paperwork is submitted, compliance is kept, etc.
We’re also not hiring a recruiting director, we’re hiring a director of player personnel. Which is more of a counselor/mentor type role in addition to handling logistics, day to day operations with some overlap into the recruiting world.
December 18th, 2021 at 2:53 PM ^
Sounds like a job Denard can handle with the right staff supporting him. You might be pleasantly surprised that in a year or two he becomes one of the best in the country at it. He's a good looking guy with a winning smile, he's young and he's a former star who recruits and their families would probably trust. He has a lot of intangibles that don't show up on paper. We all know he loves Michigan so there's a good chance he sticks around for a while too. I think he deserves a shot.
December 18th, 2021 at 10:29 AM ^
Didn't Mark Pantoni work for the University Of Florida as a program coordinator for football while Urban coached there, and then show up in Columbus the moment Urban did and took a similar position on his way to his current one? I guess I would rather stay away from people who have had a lengthy association with any culture created by that particular man.
December 18th, 2021 at 10:32 AM ^
He's Urban's guy. He got his start when Urban hired and groomed him at Florida for his first job--no other prior experience in college football. Pantoni and Mickey Mariotti at OSU were Urban's first hires--his most important administrative guys. Pantoni's entire career was built off the Urban Meyer machine.
Now maybe he was a guy that would have helped prevent the some of the trainwreck you see in Jacksonville, but I have my doubts about that as he seems to be more involved in the recruiting part of the job. More likely he knows where a lot of the bodies in the Urban Meyer era are buried--and helped bury some of them himself.
December 18th, 2021 at 12:51 PM ^
".....groomed him...." - sounds creepy AF.
December 18th, 2021 at 10:29 AM ^
I thought the OP mentioned poaching as a joking intro to some good reason for hiring this guy, something special he'd done or a track record of excellence.
But, no, poaching is the only reason. And a bad one.
Normally, I'd stick with this new thing I'm trying, staying positive, not criticizing (much), but the post and the discussion treat the idea as if it has some value. No. No value. No idea. No reason. It's not even a good joke.
December 18th, 2021 at 11:21 AM ^
We could quadruple his salary and they could match without even noticing. No birds would be killed if we got him as it would take much more to slow down their recruiting and I doubt we'd notice any difference with ours.
None of this makes any sense.
December 18th, 2021 at 11:23 AM ^
CMU people seem to think that Michigan is going to bring back Karschnia, who was a rising star here until the Chips gave him an opportunity to be DPP there at a pretty young age.
https://247sports.com/college/central-michigan/board/104028/Contents/ka…
December 18th, 2021 at 11:53 AM ^
From cmuchippewas.com
He literally gone. Since he needs the job...;)
December 18th, 2021 at 12:11 PM ^
It is easy to buy stuff.
It's hard to earn it.
Harder still to give it up once you've earned it.
Not related, per se, but Harbaugh giving up his incentive money to pay AD back concessions from staff who have doubled down is a Michigan story. NIL money going to benefit the community is another story.
Buying OSU talent... not so much. How OSU works is fundamentally exactly how Michigan works, and OSU is a good school on many fronts. I am a B1G alum and laud my conference over any Ess-Eee-See competition (excepting some like Vanderbilt and Georgia, perhaps.)
OSU is different wrt recruiting and football. For the most part, the Buckeyes (and SEC teams) don't come to play school, and Michigan doesn't find its players dead in dumpsters with Brutal tattooed under their lips before the game. (Which is not to say we don't have CTE and rampant post-concussion disorders in our alumni, we do. But we also advise many more student-athletes to retire medically than OSU - for justifiable reasons - not to pad the roster. This data is as private - not in the players' interest to disclose as is the policy abuse by programs - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5839677/ .)
I'm just saying football means something in Ohio that it doesn't mean anywhere else on the planet. I'm not sure if I want to transit that orbit or not poaching recruiting resources and BKMs.
I trust Michigan to be Michigan. Fundamentally there may be no difference, but there are differences.
December 18th, 2021 at 12:12 PM ^
Put it back in the box, It's Karschnia.
And that is a home run hire.
December 18th, 2021 at 12:36 PM ^
I have some out of the box thoughts.
Beyonce
Benicio del Toro
Jack Dorsey
Keanu Reeves
Barak Obama
December 18th, 2021 at 12:52 PM ^
How about.....
December 18th, 2021 at 1:07 PM ^
The athletic had a survey of Dir Player Personnel where they voted on their best peers and OSU/Pantoni was by far voted #1. Courtney Morgan was #10. While some usual suspects (the co-leads at LSU, Georgia, the guy who was at MSU but just left) there were a couple surprises, like Kansas.