2 is possible, and trends on likely if the player is willing to give up some academic progress.
You need 48 credits completed after 2 years to be eligible to play. Michigan will accept up to 60, and most people will have finished ~64 by that time. If there are any issues with getting to 48, you have the summer to make up any differences.
There will only be an issue if a player has taken a large number of remedial or otherwise non-transferable classes (such as esoteric seminars). The big problems for upperclassmen (transferring 3/400 level courses and hitting the 60 credit transfer limit) usually aren't issues for sophomores.
That team was great and certainly an offensive juggernaut, but they weren't quite good enough defensively. They still would have had a great chance at a championship, but that was a great Louisville team they ran into.
I surmise that Juwan and Warde disagreed on the exact role the head coach should have in fundraising. Warde wanted Juwan to be front and center for the campaign, while Juwan (like in the NBA) saw that as an administrative responsibility.
Interesting name that popped up yesterday is Connor Essegian from Wisconsin. He had a bit of a sophomore slump but was excellent as a freshman.
The issue of course is that as a sophomore he will potentially require a bit more work to get in. He may be the rare type to have the affinity for Michigan to do this however.
Specifically, the NCAA grades "progress towards the degree" for undergrads against a standard of finishing the degree within 5 years. In addition, freshmen are exempt from this requirement. The rule Michigan adds is to limit the number of transferrable credits to 60. Generally for basketball, this translates to:
No issue for freshmen
Sophomores need to successfully transfer 48 credits, or commit to making up the difference in summer school
Juniors must successfully transfer the full 60 credits, plus commit to making up an additional 12 credits (total of 72)
Seniors with no degree are a non-starter (would require 96 credits when you can only transfer 60)
I wouldn't write off all sophomores, but you can see how juniors are difficult to get in, as asking them to commit to summer school when they may not have to elsewhere is a challenge.
Football is helped by the semester divide here. For football, players can get a head start on their careers through early enrolling (and therefore have more credits ready to transfer when the time comes). And football gets a full semester in addition to summer school to make up any differences, whether to complete the degree (like LaDarius Henderson) or get to the appropriate number above (like Myles Hinton).
I think you're on the right track with the comparison to working at the NBA level, but maybe in a slightly different way. I think Howard tried to coach Michigan like an NBA coach works. He favored certain players (i.e. giving preference to Jett and others) and generally neglected the bottom of the roster. At the NBA level, you have to placate your stars or they will walk. And washed veteran free agents and G-Leaguers are essentially free, so you can always pick up a player to sit on the bench.
However at Michigan, the first slowly, then quickly deteriorated our culture, while the second ensured we never had a solid bench.
Then, with regards to roster construction, Howard tried to build a team with:
A maestro point guard
Versatile scoring wings
Elite post scorer
It takes quite a long time to develop the maestro PG, and once we got on the grad transfer train, it was hard to get off. We put all our eggs in the Dug basket, which fell apart this year when he became more of a scorer than passer.
Versatile scoring wings are a very hot commodity, and at the college level there is a low floor when you go for this approach. A big issue we had was that we could not find wings that could do all we wanted - score, defend, rebound, and pass. Instead of picking a skill, we ended up with players that can do none.
An elite post player is the ultimate luxury in college. We were very lucky to have one in Dickinson. I can't fault Juwan too much for Dickinson deciding to walk, but we really didn't have any backup plan. Reed was nowhere near ready to fill that role this year.
Overall, it seems like Howard wanted to build his roster around some of the rarest, most in-demand skill sets. The team ended up looking awful as we failed to either attract or retain that talent and were forced to turn to subpar players to fill those giant gaps.
I think the big thing is that the quick game is something that requires a ton of reps to get right. And Michigan generally uses those reps in the run game in practice and games. For JJ specifically that's an (correctable) issue at the NFL level, but this is something Michigan observers like SpaceCoyote have noted.
Benkert does great stuff. I don't even play Madden, but I love watching his Madden videos because he explains real football/quarterback play very well. He does a great job explaining coverages and how to attack them.
The downside of our low attrition culture where we have had excellent roster management (transfer portal usage and stocking overall numbers to prevent weak areas) and a high quality of play is that it's incredibly difficult to break through for playing time. This is even more exaggerated on the OL. El-Hadi is a Top 100 recruit who will be in his 4th year out of HS when he earns a starting job. Gentry will be in his 3rd year after his mission (5th year total). That level of patience only appeals to a select few, especially when it comes at an NIL discount.
And we did pick up Andrew Sprague and Blake Frazier who are very highly regarded in this year's class.
The opt out issue is way more than just the top players. Players across the board are only participating in the events they're good at. And even then, it's about avoiding downside risk as your linked article said. For example, Roman Wilson didn't run a shuttle or 3 come after claiming off the charts numbers via the Freaks List last year. Why do anything to change a positive opinion?
Insider sites have said he's considering coming back. In the new age, declaring is not as settled as before, as college players are allowed to have agents in some fashion anyway, and paying back a couple months' worth of agent pay isn't as difficult.
Zenitz also reported the Adegoke news. In that case, Adegoke had yet to inform his coach however. In this case, Morgan has told the team at Louisiana he is leaving. And I am much more confident in our ability to win a bidding war with Louisiana than with the Houston Texans.
Unfortunately for us, he has a strong national reputation due to his recruiting ranking and his great play in the playoffs (especially the championship game). Also, since he was a highly recruited prospect from IMG, he already has relationships with a lot of elite programs. With Moore and Paige coming back, his role is a bit reduced this year than expected. I'm sure other programs have been hammering him with big NIL offers and a starting spot.
It sucks, and crushes our safety room for '25, but it's possible he is looking for a way to get to the NFL by then anyway.
Yep Sheridan kept things going in 2020 before he saw the Wile E Coyote dropoff in 2021. A reunion could be successful, especially with better players in place at Bama as opposed to Indiana (where depth of talent really hurt them).
Chip is also in consideration for the Seattle Seahawks OC job. Macdonald is also looking at Alabama OC Ryan Grubb and Lions Passing Game Coordinator Tanner Engstrand.
'15 OSU messed around a bunch before turning it on vs us and ND. So their overall SP+ numbers aren't that great even if their team at their peak was elite.
I played with some numbers (forced a linear model onto BillC's returning production percentages) and got the following for implied lines for next year:
Only 2.6% of teams fall under 40%, but they fall by an average of 9.8 points.
Hey that's us!
So if Michigan is 10 points worse, our SP+ score would fall from 31.3 to 21.3. This would put us ranked 8th if things shake out similarly to last year.
I'll take it (as long as the sky doesn't fall any further).
Dickinson was underpaid at Michigan. Contacts in the DC area connected to Maryland/Georgetown tampered him into the portal by offering him a substantial raise. Once he hit the open market, Kansas came in and put together a better pitch (money + winning) than anyone else.
Michigan potentially could have staved off his portal entry by paying him more. But if it ever came down to our pitch vs Kansas's, he'd choose Kansas.
I think it's more to mark their departure than to really convey a decision. Henderson and Barrett also posted "declarations" even though they're both out of eligibility too.
Agreed. When confronted with a similar situation on the OL last year, we stacked our roster with Henderson, Nugent, and Hinton, who all proved crucial in our title.
Thanks for sharing. We've too often conflated two things with regards to NIL:
Overall payroll
Payroll allocation (i.e. talent retention vs talent acquisition, whether via recruiting or portal)
Michigan made a bold move towards funding retention over acquisition, but that is only a payroll strategy and can only do so much to make up for an overall payroll deficit.
This shows we successfully pulled off the championship by playing moneyball. I think the university agrees however that it is incredibly difficult to maintain that level of success, especially once others copy your strategy.
When they say money doesn't matter, they mean not jumping for a marginally better offer when they're getting a substantial amount (say $50k+) from the school they prefer.
Michigan struggles when we offer substantially less compared to our competitors.
Well based on how the article is written, Wiltfong has already seen Underwood's commitment video. And Wiltfong has not moved his crystal ball from LSU...
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He's got some Michael Porter Jr quick trigger to his game. Welcome!
I'm pretty sure it's UMHoops actually
2 is possible, and trends on likely if the player is willing to give up some academic progress.
You need 48 credits completed after 2 years to be eligible to play. Michigan will accept up to 60, and most people will have finished ~64 by that time. If there are any issues with getting to 48, you have the summer to make up any differences.
There will only be an issue if a player has taken a large number of remedial or otherwise non-transferable classes (such as esoteric seminars). The big problems for upperclassmen (transferring 3/400 level courses and hitting the 60 credit transfer limit) usually aren't issues for sophomores.
The alternate position Will Johnson should be playing is wide receiver, not punt returner.
There is a rumor he in fact is not yet a graduate. Not sure if that has been clarified yet or not.
Regardless, he should be close enough to graduate over the summer like Nimari Burnett last year if he so desires.
Lol he should be graduating. He's been in college since 2020.
Fun fact: he was actually a 4* safety in high school as well, but decided to only play basketball in college.
That team was great and certainly an offensive juggernaut, but they weren't quite good enough defensively. They still would have had a great chance at a championship, but that was a great Louisville team they ran into.
National championship teams ranked by KenPom Efficiency Margin (teams that defeated B1G teams for their titles bolded)
B1G teams have generally played better champs, including some of the real juggernauts.
How's this for a SWAG projected roster:
Starting lineup:
Bench:
I surmise that Juwan and Warde disagreed on the exact role the head coach should have in fundraising. Warde wanted Juwan to be front and center for the campaign, while Juwan (like in the NBA) saw that as an administrative responsibility.
Interesting name that popped up yesterday is Connor Essegian from Wisconsin. He had a bit of a sophomore slump but was excellent as a freshman.
The issue of course is that as a sophomore he will potentially require a bit more work to get in. He may be the rare type to have the affinity for Michigan to do this however.
Specifically, the NCAA grades "progress towards the degree" for undergrads against a standard of finishing the degree within 5 years. In addition, freshmen are exempt from this requirement. The rule Michigan adds is to limit the number of transferrable credits to 60. Generally for basketball, this translates to:
I wouldn't write off all sophomores, but you can see how juniors are difficult to get in, as asking them to commit to summer school when they may not have to elsewhere is a challenge.
Football is helped by the semester divide here. For football, players can get a head start on their careers through early enrolling (and therefore have more credits ready to transfer when the time comes). And football gets a full semester in addition to summer school to make up any differences, whether to complete the degree (like LaDarius Henderson) or get to the appropriate number above (like Myles Hinton).
I think you're on the right track with the comparison to working at the NBA level, but maybe in a slightly different way. I think Howard tried to coach Michigan like an NBA coach works. He favored certain players (i.e. giving preference to Jett and others) and generally neglected the bottom of the roster. At the NBA level, you have to placate your stars or they will walk. And washed veteran free agents and G-Leaguers are essentially free, so you can always pick up a player to sit on the bench.
However at Michigan, the first slowly, then quickly deteriorated our culture, while the second ensured we never had a solid bench.
Then, with regards to roster construction, Howard tried to build a team with:
It takes quite a long time to develop the maestro PG, and once we got on the grad transfer train, it was hard to get off. We put all our eggs in the Dug basket, which fell apart this year when he became more of a scorer than passer.
Versatile scoring wings are a very hot commodity, and at the college level there is a low floor when you go for this approach. A big issue we had was that we could not find wings that could do all we wanted - score, defend, rebound, and pass. Instead of picking a skill, we ended up with players that can do none.
An elite post player is the ultimate luxury in college. We were very lucky to have one in Dickinson. I can't fault Juwan too much for Dickinson deciding to walk, but we really didn't have any backup plan. Reed was nowhere near ready to fill that role this year.
Overall, it seems like Howard wanted to build his roster around some of the rarest, most in-demand skill sets. The team ended up looking awful as we failed to either attract or retain that talent and were forced to turn to subpar players to fill those giant gaps.
I think the big thing is that the quick game is something that requires a ton of reps to get right. And Michigan generally uses those reps in the run game in practice and games. For JJ specifically that's an (correctable) issue at the NFL level, but this is something Michigan observers like SpaceCoyote have noted.
Benkert does great stuff. I don't even play Madden, but I love watching his Madden videos because he explains real football/quarterback play very well. He does a great job explaining coverages and how to attack them.
The downside of our low attrition culture where we have had excellent roster management (transfer portal usage and stocking overall numbers to prevent weak areas) and a high quality of play is that it's incredibly difficult to break through for playing time. This is even more exaggerated on the OL. El-Hadi is a Top 100 recruit who will be in his 4th year out of HS when he earns a starting job. Gentry will be in his 3rd year after his mission (5th year total). That level of patience only appeals to a select few, especially when it comes at an NIL discount.
And we did pick up Andrew Sprague and Blake Frazier who are very highly regarded in this year's class.
The opt out issue is way more than just the top players. Players across the board are only participating in the events they're good at. And even then, it's about avoiding downside risk as your linked article said. For example, Roman Wilson didn't run a shuttle or 3 come after claiming off the charts numbers via the Freaks List last year. Why do anything to change a positive opinion?
https://x.com/JBudDavis/
Insider sites have said he's considering coming back. In the new age, declaring is not as settled as before, as college players are allowed to have agents in some fashion anyway, and paying back a couple months' worth of agent pay isn't as difficult.
It's probably Flory Bidunga
Me sowing: upvoting articles like this every year
Me reaping: seeing costs go up due to ever increasing demand
Wow I didn't realize Lathan Ransom has been at Ohio St for that long
Zenitz also reported the Adegoke news. In that case, Adegoke had yet to inform his coach however. In this case, Morgan has told the team at Louisiana he is leaving. And I am much more confident in our ability to win a bidding war with Louisiana than with the Houston Texans.
Unfortunately for us, he has a strong national reputation due to his recruiting ranking and his great play in the playoffs (especially the championship game). Also, since he was a highly recruited prospect from IMG, he already has relationships with a lot of elite programs. With Moore and Paige coming back, his role is a bit reduced this year than expected. I'm sure other programs have been hammering him with big NIL offers and a starting spot.
It sucks, and crushes our safety room for '25, but it's possible he is looking for a way to get to the NFL by then anyway.
Great idea. We'll call it Memory Lane. We'll buy recipes from closed local restaurants, sell merch, etc. Nostalgia is so hot right now.
Yep Sheridan kept things going in 2020 before he saw the Wile E Coyote dropoff in 2021. A reunion could be successful, especially with better players in place at Bama as opposed to Indiana (where depth of talent really hurt them).
Sam Webb discussed it today if people are looking for a source:
247sports
The Milroe thing is a joke lol
Chip is also in consideration for the Seattle Seahawks OC job. Macdonald is also looking at Alabama OC Ryan Grubb and Lions Passing Game Coordinator Tanner Engstrand.
It's an interesting contrast to Herbert who had similar factors.
Hoodjer is out
'15 OSU messed around a bunch before turning it on vs us and ND. So their overall SP+ numbers aren't that great even if their team at their peak was elite.
I played with some numbers (forced a linear model onto BillC's returning production percentages) and got the following for implied lines for next year:
And some theoreticals all on a neutral field:
Hey that's us!
So if Michigan is 10 points worse, our SP+ score would fall from 31.3 to 21.3. This would put us ranked 8th if things shake out similarly to last year.
I'll take it (as long as the sky doesn't fall any further).
The quality on the BreakingT stuff was good? I'd heard mixed things unfortunately which stopped me from pulling the trigger.
Dickinson was underpaid at Michigan. Contacts in the DC area connected to Maryland/Georgetown tampered him into the portal by offering him a substantial raise. Once he hit the open market, Kansas came in and put together a better pitch (money + winning) than anyone else.
Michigan potentially could have staved off his portal entry by paying him more. But if it ever came down to our pitch vs Kansas's, he'd choose Kansas.
I'm pretty sure Torvik/Kenpom don't take into account Dug's absence. How many more points is that worth? 8?
I think it's more that a Cali kid doesn't want to live in Tuscaloosa if he's not getting coached by the GOAT
https://www…
Florida or LSU
https://www.on3.com/teams/florida-gators/news/jameer-grimsley-focused-on-2-decision-coming-soon/
Tom Loy (I know, I know) says OSU or USC:
I think it's more to mark their departure than to really convey a decision. Henderson and Barrett also posted "declarations" even though they're both out of eligibility too.
Agreed. When confronted with a similar situation on the OL last year, we stacked our roster with Henderson, Nugent, and Hinton, who all proved crucial in our title.
Thanks for sharing. We've too often conflated two things with regards to NIL:
Michigan made a bold move towards funding retention over acquisition, but that is only a payroll strategy and can only do so much to make up for an overall payroll deficit.
This shows we successfully pulled off the championship by playing moneyball. I think the university agrees however that it is incredibly difficult to maintain that level of success, especially once others copy your strategy.
You can buy the prints directly from the Daily:
https://store.pub.umich.edu/
Probably the biggest omission is Kris Jenkins. Is he considering a return?
I also wouldn't be surprised if Minter replaced Mac in Baltimore or became his DC elsewhere.
This is a Borges observation so I can't take credit, but look at these two plays.
First, with only a TE/RB to one side, watch how Washington defends with a CB on the TE and a LB on the RB:
Then, look at this play with Michigan lined up similarly. We send Edwards deep instead of to the flat. Imagine a LB trying to cover this:
When they say money doesn't matter, they mean not jumping for a marginally better offer when they're getting a substantial amount (say $50k+) from the school they prefer.
Michigan struggles when we offer substantially less compared to our competitors.
Well based on how the article is written, Wiltfong has already seen Underwood's commitment video. And Wiltfong has not moved his crystal ball from LSU...