Recruiting woes?
I am not a voracious consumer of recruiting news. But, to my great irritation, I'm seeing on my stupid twitter feed, day after day, thrilled pronouncements by tOSU, Notre Dame, PSU, other crap schools about pulling in all-world recruits.
I thought that would be us after making the freaking playoffs. What gives? It can't be all NIL; I understand Notre Dame is far more gun shy than we are, but they appear to be having more immediate success. Maybe we need to exercise patience, which none of us can do. And, to reiterate, we just made the playoffs. I thought that would precipitate a revolving door of elites.
That must be Jim Tomsula as a high school freshmen practicing.
Something…Harbaugh wanted to coach the Vikings…something…so he may leave…something something.
On the flip side of this, Freeman is a brand new rookie head coach who might get fired in a season or two. Ryan Day is also always in the NFL's sights. Harbaugh tried and wasn't wanted by 10+ teams looking for a head coach. Tired take
Rookie coaches almost always bring about a recruiting uptick for the program, and Freeman is allegedly a stellar recruiter regardless.
ND has had two coaches work out in the last 50 years and they wanted to fire Brian Kelly every year he didn’t make the championship.
Ara Parseghian won a title in 1973. Dan Devine won a title in 1977. Lou Holtz won a title in 1988. Brian Kelly was the winningest coach in ND history. Their track record with head coaches, over the last 50 years, has been far better than ours.
Correction, Lou Holtz won a special weasel-National Championship, ducking the #2 team in a proposed bowl game.
Huh?
ND beat #1 Miami, #2 USC, #3 WVU, along with #8 Michigan, PSU, MSU…
Miami was #2 going into Bowl Season & ND already beat them.
Miami was contractually obligated to play the Orange Bowl against Oklahoma.
ND was obligated to play in the Fiesta against who the Fiesta selected, which was 11-0 #3 WVU.
The final poll had Miami #2, Michigan #4, WVU #5, USC #7.
That is as legit national title there ever was before the CFP.
Still the only team to beat #1,#2,#3 all in the same season.
Every indication is that Freeman is VERY charismatic. Case in point: zero transfers I can remember when Kelly split, and I believe all the assistants chose to stay with him, too. We'll see if he's also a good on field coach, but the guy inspires loyalty in an uncommon way.
I can think of one assistant that didn't stay with him
Whoops. I blame my age. Thanks for the correction.
I think the rest stuck around and it sure sounds like he knows how to work a room. Anyway, the point stands that dismissing him as a first year who dat guy that's still out recruiting Harbaugh is too simplistic.
This is going to go well…
Like at all….
Nothin' is easy. Not as far as our football team is concerned. The football landscape is changing at record speed. We like to go slow, think about things in a deliberate (read: forever) manner and never be at the forefront of innovation.
That and our coach sure looked like he didn't want to be here.
Edit: this post is ridiculous and I won't go about making it more ridiculous
I understand Notre Dame is far more gun shy than we are
Based on what?
Harbaugh's NFL flirtation has definitely resulted in some recruiting struggles imo and I think our NIL is still behind some of the higher tier schools, but I really don't understand what's going on with recruiting being so slow right now
Agreed - that was historically true about Notre Dame when there used to be rules.
Now that everything is legal, Michigan is the only major football and basketball power that is holding itself back based on what they think shoudl be the "spirit" of NIL. While I actually agree with their view in principal of how it "should" work, we are in the middle of a gunfight and our NIL butterknife is not going to cut it.
Valiant Group is apparently trying to put together a collective of interested M boosters but it is tough sledding without the University's support.
Pretty incredible that notre dame managed to just shed all of the rules and barriers to elite recruiting including the setting up of a robust top tier nil situation in three months post Kelly.
Or an alternative suggestion that one might argue is more plausible is that as of right now, freeman is just a much better recruiter than harbaugh and Kelly.
Could go either way.
Dude - you must be living under a rock. EVERY major school has shed its rules over the past 9 months. And the spiral has intensified over the past 3 months… players and boosters are talking about this openly. Collectives are coordinating with schools all over the country. Some schools are publicizing the deals their recruits are signing.
Michigan has also shed its previous compliance regime but it continues to handcuff itself by not coordinating with boosters / collectives. Also, Michigan won’t use NIL deals as a recruitment tools only espousing that NIL opportunities will be available (which is less enticing - a bird in the hand…).
As far as Notre Dame, you are leaving out the fact that they are outrecruiting OSU, Bama, Georgia, etc… objectively better football programs with better recruiting and NIL deals available. You believe that ND is doing that without an effective NIL program? Well I have a new crypto coin to sell you
A lot of recruiting is momentum. UM won the conference, made the playoffs and instead of capitalizing on that momentum, Harbaugh was at a job interview on national signing day. Once you lose it, it’s hard to get back.
I’ll worry about that down the line. Right now we have a stacked offense and a schedule where we have zero excuses not to be 11-0 heading to Columbus.
Other than replacing 70% of the defense?
Not just 70% but some superstars that just don't come along all that often - one in particular
Aidan, David and Dax will not have 1:1 replacements but the replacements for the others will, very likely, be better. All in all, I see this as a wash. Next year's defense may not be as good as I think it is going to be but the likelihood that is will be better than what the BPONE experts believe is significant.
Morris, Upshaw, Jenkins, Welschof, McGregor, Harrell, Mullings, Barrett, Benny, Hood, Guy, Rooks, Giudice, Iwunnah...among others-including all those outstanding freshmen prospects. Lots and lots of talent on the defensive side of the ball.
If you actually look at our defense from position group to position group, every position group should be better except DE and maybe S. While Ojabo and Hutchinson are obviously huge losses, improvement elsewhere should hopefully offset those losses
11-0 is a possibility regardless. We have a cupcake non-conference schedule that calling it so would be an insult to cupcakes. Then back to back home games later against MSU & PSU with a convenient bye week Oreo sandwiched right in the middle. Going to Iowa sucks, but how good does the defense have to be at that point?
11-0 is could happen, I really don't see us as being an underdog until the OSU game.
That type of optimism is not welcome in a thread about sorrow and grief and death and murder and Michigan football. Cut it out.
It's a possibility but not a high one I'd say. Remember that having a 90% chance to win every game doesn't mean a 90% chance to go 11-0.
Michigan hasn't won at Kinnick since 2005.
OK but how many games have they played there in that time? 2? Also, Michigan is a lot better than they were for the early part of that stretch.
They will this year!!!
Said Michigan kook aid drinkers every year.
Hey kook aid! Crasha banga booma bamma.
They certainly have a chance to do it but starting 11-0 is hard, even given the cakewalk non conference.
Won't be the end of the world if they lose a game, either. See: last year.
Defeat a Tucker led MSU team? I’ll believe it when I see it.
Uh, we were one inexplicably bad review away from doing it last year. And that was despite getting caught on the substitution issue multiple times on defense. It's not like they dominated the game, and we are not the only ones that lost talent. Tucker may turn out to be a good coach, but they are not some unbeatable juggernaut. Hell, we beat the team that was up on them 49-0 at the half last year.
I thought that would be us after making the freaking playoffs.
Really? I'm sorry you thought that.
I can no longer look at those two without getting angry. Way to completely ruin a great show.
ikr? To atone for my sin.
M'lady.
Apparently the reason the finale was so bad was because they had to film it before the actors who played Ted's kids aged out of the roles. So basically the show ran it's course and kinda out developed the finale so the finale made no sense for the series
Was this particular ending not planned from the start? If that's the case, the writers did a good job making it look like it was. I continue to maintain that writing a great ending is just as important, if not moreso, than all of the other things that go into writing a good story. If you can't tie it all up in a satisfactory way, there's no point to what came before.
tOSU? Get the fuck outta here with that shit
THANK YOU.
Seriously, I don't understand why anyone would refer to them by that stupid name.
Essentially anything is better. thatOSU, anOSU, "one of Ohio's many mediocre State universities", the Columbus cesspool, the Tressel/Meyer black hole of ethics, Les Wexner and Jeffrey Epstein's hunting grounds slash hangout spot...
We can all do better.
It's May. Relax, Sidney. Have a cream soda...
We had what, two whole days between woe-is-us message board threads about lousy recruiting?
We will be fine. Michigan is never going to recruit exactly like Ohio State, Bama and Georgia precisely because we aren't Ohio State, Bama or Georgia. We aren't going to get six or seven 5* players a cycle. Instead, we'll have to suffer through having a bunch of four stars, watching them develop and then many of them will go on to the NFL draft. It'll be miserable.
Don't read this if you want to continue wallow in misery:
Michigan has produced a high number of draft picks which points to good recruiting and good player development. Most of these other programs also have good (or great) recruiting and good (or mediocre) player development.
How has Michigan played when stacked head to head against these other programs? Not just OSU, Bama, UGA that you mentioned, but all the schools who rank highly in producing draft picks. I'm looking at schools who rank in the top 25 of these draft picks produced. This collegefootballnews article looks at draft success over the last five years. So, going back five years, here’s how Michigan has performed head to head in the 2017-2021 seasons:
Michigan Vs.
(1) Alabama 0-1
(2) Ohio State 1-3
(5) Florida 1-1
(6) Georgia 0-1
(7) Notre Dame 1-1
(11) Washington 1-0
(11) Penn State 2-3
(16) Iowa 2-0
(18) Wisconsin 2-3