SI article on Michigan Recruiting w MGoBlog mention...

The Brand. The Brand. The Brand.

did the value of your Mgo stock just rise and did you just... wait for it... profit!

What are some other high profile MGoBlog mentions?  

This blog must make some appearances on ESPN...

Your objections are weak and prejudiced. In paragraph order:

If you read the table, it is a table of Rivals rankings, while Mandel manifestly is pulling information from all the major services, particularly Scout. The table isn't his fault.

Not even sure what you're arguing re: 2006. Yes, Henne, Hart and long were key parts of that team; As it happens, the 2004 and 2005 classes were important contributors to the talent on that team. They were not freshmen. Aren't you agreeing with him? Shouldn't you?

Regarding that one BCS bowl: This is Michigan, most of us think we should go to BCS bowl games more than once every five or six years. And he links that problem to recruiting. Why does he need to mention that there were two 20+ classes prior to the bowl? What relevance does that have? Mike Martin, Ryan Van Bergen, and Junior Hemingway were not a part of those classes, and they were three of the most important people on that team.

Why does it matter that Ohio State had one class that ranked 25th? What does it have to do with the story? When you write at a professional level, you aren't supposed to cram every bit of information available on a topic into a paper and hope it fits; you are supposed to write about a story and address information only as it pertains the focus of the topic. OSU's one bad class is irrelevant--for most of the 00s they hammered us in recruiting, and now that Urban is there they are recruiting very well. Mandel's point? Michigan's right there with them. 

Mandel is a writer. You are a critic. And you went to the article looking for things to hate, rather than actually digesting what was said. If the word idiot applies anywhere, it is not to Mandel for this article.

I was just about to post the same before I read this.  Mr. Mandel has just seriously upped his credibility in my mind.  

Who'd have thought?

On a serious note there is a flip side to the "Ohio recruiting nationally" angle that they fail to mention.  Once Urban stopped looking first at the Ohio kids the way Tressel did he opened the door to Michigan to move back in.  Tressel's philosophy of Ohio first, last and always may not have gotten OSU as many kids from the south but it did effectively wall us off from recruiting here.  Now that the approach has changed the HS coaches have opened doors to us that were closed down here for many years.

I grew up in the South.  The two sides will never agree.  The simple math, from an unbiased source, is:

Nice weather year round is easier on athletes, allowing them to train year round (remember most of these kids aren't from much and hiring a personal trainer / paying for a gym membership is out of the question).  

The opposite works  for Midwestern linemen.  You'll always hear about the "big uglies" of the Midwest but that doesn't mean the South produces none of them.  

It's a weather and training thing, not a DNA thing.  Unless of course you are talking about race.  

It's all about mother nature.  If you're a kid in the South, you can play outdoor sports year-round.  Being active on a more consistent basis from a young age produces tangible results later in life.

If you look at the US Track and Field team sprinters, they basically all come from areas with mild winters, with the majority from Florida and California.

It's also not DNA that sees Kenyans and Ethipians dominate distance running.

Woodson, Derrick Alexander, Jon Kolesar, Greg McMurtry, could go on all day....

1) Mario and Taco possibly.

I agree that Michigan still has a few holes to fill.

1. You are correct about Ohio and their D-Line recruiting being very good. Pipkins and Poggi are gifted, and will help Michigan on the d-line. However, there are two recruits out there in the 2014 class who would push Michigan to elite status:  Da'Shawn Hand and Malik McDowell. Hand is not only the top ranked strongside defensive end, he is the consensus number 1 2014 player in the nation, regardless of position. Getting Hand would be like getting Jadeveon Clowney. However, I'll be surprised if we can pull him out of the south . . . I think he goes to Alabama or Virginia Tech, or possibly South Carolina. McDowell is also very good. Because he is in Michigan, at Cass Tech, he is really almost more important than Hand. It would not be good to lose him to another program, especially Ohio.
2. Corners can still improve. We're not yet elite, and have work to do.
3. Same with Wide Receivers. And while we've had some good ones in the past, I'm not sure I'd call Michigan WR U. We have a ways to go there.

I think we're fairly healthy elsewhere. One more year of solid recruiting on the O-Line will get depth and experience to where it needs to be. We definitely need to get back into the pattern of a QB in every class.

I like his news. Great to hear! Maybe he will participate to some degree in the spring practices

But but ess eee see speed man! Its all in the speed. No blocking, pass throwing or play calling just speed!

I'm completely with you. That whole prejudice is ridiculous.

The thing is, speed is roughly analagous to talent. When Michigan is "slow," it's not because they are trying to grow slow-moving man-mountain neanderthals that have no speed, it's because they are low on talent, period. When Michigan has talent, they have speed--but nobody ever mentions that. In the 1/1/08 Cap One Bowl, Michigan had speed everywhere on the field because they had TALENT everywhere on the field and seriously outplayed a Florida team that was between national championship seasons (that is, lots of talent there). 

When Michigan played Bama they got punched in the mouth because neither line was very good and both of Bama's lines were excellent. Sure, Michigan wasn't threatening Alabama on the edges when on offense (neither did anyone else) but that's not because Michigan was fielding slow five-stars. It was because their best athletes, apart from ultra-fast Denard, were low-talent guys. We weren't even starting our #1 RB, and the guy who would have been the top receiver in a low-end group (Stonum) was off the team.

The most recent defining example of "fast" vs "slow" is that OSU-Florida BCS championship where OSU got annihilated. Supposedly because they were slow. Well, it's true that their fastest offensive player got hurt after running a kick back for a touchdown (he ran it slow--if he had been faster he wouldn't have gotten hurt!). And it's true that their offensive line was porous. But it's not like Florida was that much of an upgrade over Michigan in NFL talent that year; Lamar Woodley, David Harris, and Leon Hall among others were all fast enough to become defensive mainstays in the NFL. But don't call that Michigan team "fast."

"Speed" is an excuse for the weak-minded. Talented players have a strong tendency to be fast; talented teams are fast teams, under-talented teams are not as fast. 

ND was lacking everywhere.  Their vaunted D-line got run over by Bamas NFL level o-line.  But using Bama (best recruiting and coached team in the SEC over the past 5 years) vs. ND (a solid but incredibly lucky and overachieving team in 2012) as the basis of comparison is not a fair nothern football vs. southern football guage. 

The biggest difference between SEC and the rest of the country in my opinion is not overall speed...this is a myth.  It's the speed of the big uglies in the trenches on the d-line.  There are 4.4 - 40 speed guys at WR and cornerback at every big time program.  It seems, however, that the SEC has a monopoly on 300 lb monsters on the d-line that run a 4.6.

LSU and Bama most noticeably and South Carolina and Florida to a slightly lesser degree seem to have d-lines that can control the flow of the game.  The ND front 7 that was supposed to be SEC level proved not to be.

Meyer it seems is trying to build his team around that dominant D-line philosophy he had at Florida with his recruiting at OSU now.  Hoke seems to be building around a monstrous O-line haul, but I am sure being the old d-line coach he is, he would love to bring in 5 star talent there as much as any coach in the country.

Point being, it seems the "SEC Speed" meme does hold some water when looking at the D-lines.  They just have freaks up front that OSU, Michigan, Notre Dame, and other northern schools don't seem to grow at home, as evidence by Meyer going south.  Must be something in that bayou water or soul food. 

I'm 97.1 free for 2 months now. I must say it feels good. How did I kick the habit you might ask? John Grisham books on tape...It's the equivalent of a nicotine patch.

He cherry picked his information!?  Well I never would have thought that!  And even with Rivals, 247, and ESPN, how can he make his point?  Rivals has us #6 and like 20 points behind Ohio at #4.  Looks pretty similar to me.  247 has UM at 7 and Ohio at 5.  247 composite has UM at 4 and Ohio at 2 (and it should be noted that Ohio has no 5 stars on the composite).  ESPN has UM at 5 and Ohio at 4.  Where in any of the even cherry picked data does it say UM isn't elite.  If Ohio is elite by these measures, then so is UM.  He's just crying for help, trying to grasp onto any little straw that might suggest that his hated rival is doing anyting but leaving his team in the dust.  It's quite pathetic.  And he'll never debate a level headed UM on air because they screen all the callers and he cherry picks for MSU trolls saying they're UM fans.

He's a radio troll, just like Sharp is a Freep/internet troll.  He is employed due to Michigan folks frothing at the mouth, waitinhis next outrageous statement, thus boosting their q ratings.

Just ignore it.

Why even listen? The guy knows nothing of sports and is far from funny or entertaining. He reminds me of a pissed off little brother that can't get ahead.

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