Wojo on Harbaugh: "This is what you signed up for"
There are some very interesting comments in this piece. Luginbill has a few solid comments as well.
“You have to recognize the landscape has changed, the process has changed, tactics have changed,” Tom Luginbill, ESPN’s national recruiting director, said Tuesday. “Just because you’re Michigan, you can’t do it like you did five, 10, 15 years ago. If you do, you’re gonna be left behind. Harbaugh isn’t crossing a line. This is what he is — he’s quirky, he’s unique, and when I talk to kids, the most important reaction is, he’s authentic.”
That cuts right to Wojo's point: The holier-than-them attitude made fans feel good, and they enjoyed sniffing at the undignified ways of Urban Meyer and Nick Saban, even as the Wolverines got their behinds bashed in.
January 27th, 2016 at 9:02 AM ^
January 27th, 2016 at 9:15 AM ^
Swenson's highlight film and the story of the coaches wanting him to come to camp to evaluate in person(and him refusing, which based off of the highlight film is an understandable gamble) are what brought me around from, "I can't believe they took the offer." to reflect Brian and Wojo's assessment of "I get this is a business, but I hope they're more organized in the future and get ahead of the story next year." ESPN is not exactly known for journalistic fairness, but in this case anyone who has watched football or played football can look at the highlight film and go, "Huh?, was it a walk-on offer?" Plus if the end of the story is him going to Wisconsin or Northwestern instead of Michigan, I think a lot of people are going to end up wondering what the big deal was.
All that said, it's not unreasonable to want the staff to handle this stuff better in the future, while still recruiting balls to the wall. It's not like the two are mutually exclusive.
January 27th, 2016 at 6:28 AM ^
Exactly. Listen, I don't want Michigan to start offering recruits hookers and blow and bags of cash to win NCs. But if getting to that level means hurting some feelings and pushing the edges of the rules without breaking them and "getting down into the mud" with the big boys, I'm all in.
I'll say one other thing... I'll bet 99.9999% of the MIchigan fans on this board who have crossed their arms and turned up their noses at Harbaugh's "dirty" tactics will still cheer like crazy if Harbaugh takes us to the Rose Bowl or CFP this year. Maybe more...
January 27th, 2016 at 6:54 AM ^
i would bet 100% of the fans on this board will cheer like crazy for those wins....
January 27th, 2016 at 7:44 AM ^
January 27th, 2016 at 7:51 AM ^
I'm fine withe the hookers and blow as stipulated.
January 27th, 2016 at 8:50 AM ^
Exactly. The fan base is experiencing a few mild growing pains right now. The JH recruiting style may not suit some fans, but nothing dirty or illegal happened.
January 27th, 2016 at 8:14 AM ^
I don't think it's actually that simple a binary: nose up at his recruiting tactics or cheer like hell for the team. You ever been a part of an institution of any kind that does things you aren't necessarily thrilled about but still believe in their overall mission?
January 27th, 2016 at 8:26 AM ^
January 27th, 2016 at 9:00 AM ^
Hear, hear. It's OK -- well, I thought it was OK -- to overall support Harbaugh and not like his track record of lack of communication, since honestly it's not that big a deal. We've known about it since going through his Stanford days and I think it's in bad taste but it by itself is not a reason to reject the coach overall. But that doesn't mean I have to like it. I think he can do better because the scope of this "scandal"(which is WAY overblown by the media) is transcended only by the ease at which Harbaugh could prevent it from being a problem in the first place. We have to do this to win because there's literally no alternative like. . . oh, sending an e-mail in a timely fashion? I mean, he's doing just about everything else right and for the upside, this isn't asking for much. IMO, anyway.
It's just a communication issue, it's not even a violation, so going full SEC on it is just a wee bit alarming. It just feels weird at how the defense of Harbaugh is so much more aggressive and extreme than it even needs to be. I mean, I'm thinking I'm glad I don't share an office with any of these people.
"I think the coffee could be a bit better"
"GOTTA STEP ON NECKS AND SLIT THROATS TO WIN IT'S A TOUGH WORLD GET A HELMET YOU'RE A SANCTIMONIOUS HYPOCRITE STFU OR GTFO"
"Uh, huh?? You're suggesting I resign over coffee?"
January 27th, 2016 at 9:04 AM ^
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January 27th, 2016 at 9:45 AM ^
Could not agree more with this stance. There is a lot of agression around here and a big, fat false choice being offered. I get people are frustrated and see Meyer's and Saban's programs at the top of the heap and assume that what they do, so must we, However, there's no reason to be getting this overheated, when I think at the end of the day it boils down to wanting the staff to be more organized so that we don't leave kids feeling fucked over and get this type of coverage.
Like it or not, Michigan has a spotlight on it and expectations for the program are different. This means some organization to go with a competitive philosophy is a requirement and not a nice to have. Wojo has the right take on this, IMO.
January 27th, 2016 at 9:08 AM ^
"I don't want Michigan to start offering recruits hookers and blow..." Me either. I want them to offer it to fans.
January 27th, 2016 at 9:25 AM ^
needs more upvotes.
January 27th, 2016 at 9:40 AM ^
heeded the call.
January 27th, 2016 at 9:45 AM ^
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January 27th, 2016 at 9:46 AM ^
It sure would make tailgates more interesting.
January 27th, 2016 at 6:30 AM ^
He's right. The whole world has changed. Whether we like it or not, we're living in a world where the media follows everything with a microscope and people hang on the words and whims of teenagers who post everything on social media. I don't really like all of the changes, but that's the way it is. Of course, people like Mike Valenti are going to meltdown over it -- he had an absolutely epic tantrum on 97.1 yesterday -- because they know Michigan's recruiting aggressiveness means pain and suffering for them. That said, maybe things will smooth out going forward and we can have our proverbial cake and eat it, too. But maybe not, and we should probably prepare ourselves for that.
January 27th, 2016 at 10:03 AM ^
But communication (and social media, and the 24-hour news cycle...) is just a part of it. There are parallels between what's happening here (with recruiting) and what happened at the end of the Carr era. The game, in some respects, passed him by, and he refused to adapt, because that wasn't the Michigan Way. The game, in some respects, passed U-M by. This is one of the reasons Martin went after RichRod, thinking we'd modernize our program a bit.
Fast forward, the game (or more specifically, recruiting) has changed and U-M was once again in danger of being passed by. Hoke, being the good and honest person that he is, filled his classes early and stood pat with those recruits. Unfortunately, nice guys don't always win football games (although he seemed to have no problem recruiting talent).
I see it as being similar to the marketing triangle:
Except it's more like a line spectrum. You can have squeaky clean and do it "the right way" (e.g., Northwestern), or you can have wins at any cost (Bama or Kentucky ball). Most fans would probably prefer to have both (win often, the right way), which isn't impossible but is much more difficult in 2016 that it was in 1985. Our fan base wasn't happy with "the right way" and 5-7, so we brought in a coach who operates more in the middle of the spectrum than we're accustomed to.
Growing pains. Better communication and organization should prevent recurrence.
January 27th, 2016 at 6:32 AM ^
January 27th, 2016 at 6:39 AM ^
Ummm this years success has nothing to do with his recruiting ability. That is your whole point, correct?
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January 27th, 2016 at 6:46 AM ^
January 27th, 2016 at 6:57 AM ^
How do suppose Jake Rudock ended up in Ann Arbor? Without Jake, Michigan would not have been 10-3. In baseball terms, Jake is probably worth at least 2 or 3 wins above his replacement.
January 27th, 2016 at 7:20 AM ^
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January 27th, 2016 at 7:39 AM ^
A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth Is putting on its shoes.
January 27th, 2016 at 7:58 AM ^
January 27th, 2016 at 8:15 AM ^
January 27th, 2016 at 8:43 AM ^
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January 27th, 2016 at 8:13 AM ^
January 27th, 2016 at 9:49 AM ^
Sounds like the Carr era.
January 27th, 2016 at 9:48 AM ^
Yeah you're right, we totally would have gone 11-2 with Wilton Speight as QB.
*Rolls Eyes*
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January 27th, 2016 at 10:08 AM ^
Of course it's a team game; nobody's arguing that. But the QB is critical to the team's success, and was especially so for this team. We played without our star safety/nickel for the bowl game and still only gave up 7 points. Do you really think we'd have gone 10-3 with the inexperienced QBs on our roster? He was a godsend.
January 27th, 2016 at 10:10 AM ^
If you can look at Wilton Speight side-by-side with Jake Rudock and you can't see how Rudock was clearly worth several wins to us this season then I can't help you.
The other 21 are there, but Jake was the single most important guy to this 10 win season
January 27th, 2016 at 11:23 AM ^
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January 27th, 2016 at 8:54 AM ^
Ummm this years success has nothing to do with his recruiting ability. That is your whole point, correct?I think he is saying that this comes part and parcel with the same coach who inspired an underperforming group of players to win 10 games. Harbaugh is nothing if not competitive. He will not tolerate a poor effort from anyone, recruits included. I think that's fine. My only nitpick is that he should make sure recruits know precisely where they stand, if they don't currently.
January 27th, 2016 at 9:11 AM ^
Section6 is Section 8. Uh, 2/3 losses were to msu and osu. No thanks.
January 27th, 2016 at 6:45 AM ^
But he also knows the brutal nature of competition, and this is the source of the controversy: He’s working it as hard as anyone, and doing it more publicly than coaches at Michigan have done in the past.
In a way this speaks to something which several people have mentioned here in the last few days that has been largely ignored in the rush to comment - although social media makes all this seem new, it is really old hat and has been practice at some level and in some form (not necessarily with Harbaugh's personality injected into it, of course) for quite some time now. Whereas we get anecdotes regarding, say, Bo not signing kids in the end for reasons similar to those attributed to Jim Harbaugh, we get 24/7 coverage of such events now.
January 27th, 2016 at 9:36 AM ^
Exactly--the process of recruiting is still the same, only our ability to follow it has changed. Nowadays, we can watch sausage being made 24/7, or rather receive constant online updates from people telling us how it is or should be made.
January 27th, 2016 at 6:46 AM ^
January 27th, 2016 at 6:50 AM ^
January 27th, 2016 at 7:55 AM ^
It was addicting to watch for me also. I wonder how much of this football culture, good and bad, exists at Cass Tech, Cleveland Glenville, etc.other football factories. Lane Kiffin praying with the family made me sick. The Army All American college announcement made me sad for Langi and the pressure these kids are under now. I think you need to be a unique individual to recruit these kids.
January 27th, 2016 at 6:46 AM ^
January 27th, 2016 at 8:51 AM ^
Surprised that Harbaugh hasn't tweeted this.
January 27th, 2016 at 9:13 AM ^
I'm not sure he considers what he's done "getting his hands dirty."
January 27th, 2016 at 9:29 AM ^
I'm not sure we should be looking to a fictional character, who's well known for torturing people, for advice.
January 27th, 2016 at 10:29 AM ^
Everyone knows fictional talking monkeys are much more preferable when looking places for advice.
January 27th, 2016 at 10:46 AM ^
January 27th, 2016 at 9:05 AM ^
Because if I want life advice on how to make decisions, I'm going to quote a hyperbolic fictional character from a show whose very premise is the glorification of moral compromise.
Harbaugh's getting crucified because he falls behind on his e-mail. Why are we going all Ministry of Love on this?
January 27th, 2016 at 6:49 AM ^
January 27th, 2016 at 6:56 AM ^
You want to play with the big boys you have to get your hands dirty.
Its not like he's buying people