OT: OSU 2019 4* RB Sampson James Flips to Indiana
Intro/Summary
- His 247 Page (James's National Rank is 163)--same high school as Brandon Peters
- Twitter announcement
Some Thoughts
I've posted because of how unusual it is (and honestly a bit of 'lol OSU'). Your first instinct is to say he was pushed out, but this wasn't the case--in fact, they were caught off-guard by the flip if you believe the OSU commenters in the reddit thread. And there's none of the usual smoke: academics were good enough and there are no known disqualifying troubles with the law. The last article I linked speculates that it's distance from home, but we're talking about Indiana and Ohio, so I don't buy it.
There's zero evidence to support the idea, but my personal hope is that Ohio State's Zach Smith mess is starting to catch up with them on the recruiting trail. I doubt you'd get a kid to go on record about that, so I'm not sure how you'd even know if it was a factor.
October 8th, 2018 at 3:47 AM ^
Don't dismiss distance. A lot easier to drive home 1 hour than 3 hours. Also, possibly saw playing time available at IU.
October 8th, 2018 at 4:04 AM ^
Not to mention they had some recent success at the RB position with Devine Redding, Jordan Howard, and Tevin Coleman.
On the other hand, Sampson James (#163 OVR; #8 RB) could risk going to Ohio State and getting lost in the depth chart. Just recently OSU had a former 4* RB Antonio Williams (#169 OVR; #7 RB) grad-transfer to UNC due to a lack of playing time, and he now starts for the Tarheels.
October 8th, 2018 at 4:18 AM ^
"Devine Redding, Jordan Howard, and Tevin Coleman."
Kevin Wilson was coaching at Indiana when it had those great offensive years with those RBs. Kevin Wilson is now coaching at Ohio St.
October 8th, 2018 at 6:14 AM ^
Because he was fired from IU for being a dirtbag.
October 8th, 2018 at 8:26 AM ^
And hired at OSU by Meyer, because you know winning Uber Alles!
October 8th, 2018 at 10:31 AM ^
The point was, this flip is likely not because of past RBs performance at Indiana. Ohio St went from 41st in offense 3 years ago, 31st in 2 years ago, and jumped into the top 10 last year in the first year after Kevin Wilson was hired. If he was looking for something like what Indiana has produced in the past 5 years with RBs he would stay at Ohio St.
October 8th, 2018 at 12:04 PM ^
True, but my overall point is that Sampson James might have decided to be a big fish in a smaller, closer pond by choosing IU. Recent history shows that IU can successfully feature a RB on a national level, whereas OSU has former 4* RBs as 3rd/4th string guys.
October 8th, 2018 at 5:58 AM ^
Wouldn't he have been aware of the geographical distance before committing? One hour vs. three hours doesn't seem like a big enough difference when you're talking about a place you'll be for four years, anyway. It's still within driving distance.
Depth chart I could maybe see, if OSU made some promises to him in recruiting that they haven't kept.
October 8th, 2018 at 7:09 AM ^
Maybe Google Maps wasn't working on his phone???
October 8th, 2018 at 10:23 AM ^
Deep, deep comment man. You're a thinker.
October 8th, 2018 at 11:23 AM ^
....and you're an ass!
October 8th, 2018 at 4:15 PM ^
Take time to think if your opinion means much to me.
October 8th, 2018 at 6:40 AM ^
Maybe but 3hrs? My son is the biggest mommy’s boy you’d ever meet, yet chose to play baseball 4 hours away over Toledo which is 45 minutes. FWIW mommy is gonna bankrupt us shipping care packages to Illinois.
October 8th, 2018 at 8:05 AM ^
Going bankrupt ... Tell me about it. My son chose to go to ASU instead of someplace closer to Michigan. The plane tickets home 1-2 times per semester (for long breaks and holidays) plus the care packages are definitely putting a dent in the check book.
October 8th, 2018 at 8:46 AM ^
Maybe you could try a flat rate box from USPS? If you get a big one you can put a lot in with no change in price for a high weight.
October 8th, 2018 at 9:15 AM ^
We've already switched to the flat-rate boxes from USPS. The issue is the "what" he keeps asking us to send, on top of the medicine that he re-orders but forgets to have shipped to Tempe instead of to home.
October 8th, 2018 at 3:30 PM ^
Not when your wife is shipping dry ice and meatloafs lol.
October 8th, 2018 at 11:05 AM ^
Where in Illinois? Genuinely asking, because there are a couple delivery services in Illinois for college towns where you can just pay them to buy the stuff and deliver it without having to pay shipping fees.
October 8th, 2018 at 3:26 PM ^
A little slice of nowhere called Robinson. Juco baseball equals way more than division 1 baseball. Nice little town and a program that has a reputable history of getting guys to the next level, but literally in BFE.
October 8th, 2018 at 4:12 PM ^
"Don't dismiss distance."
This may be the reason Clemson gets Quavaris Crouch.
October 8th, 2018 at 3:58 AM ^
I don't think any OSU fan is going to sweat it that we lost a recruit to Indiana. The timing is weird since he took a visit for the OSU/Indiana game and obviously watched it in person. I also think it has absolutely 0 to do with Zach Smith, or else he would have left in August. OSU is in for a lot of other highly ranked RB's in the 2019 and 2020 class especially. Would have liked to have kept him in the class, but it is what it is.
October 8th, 2018 at 5:43 AM ^
Who are you guys in on? The article I linked wasn't too high on the guys you're pursuing. Cain looks like Texas, for example, and the article thought you'd probably look to a young man in the mid-300s.
Yeah, I agree that the Zach Smith thing probably didn't have much impact.
October 8th, 2018 at 5:51 AM ^
So why are you here justifying it to Michigan fans?
October 8th, 2018 at 9:46 AM ^
he was sitting on the cooler with nothing better to do.
October 8th, 2018 at 3:28 PM ^
That was literally lol. Well done.
October 8th, 2018 at 11:39 AM ^
He very clearly in the post states that it's his hope.
Hope that there may be an effect of your joke of a human head coach enabling domestic abuse for nearly a decade, lying about it, and when caught lying about it, trying to lie himself out of that, and humiliating himself, his university and the entire state of Ohio; which was then compounded by OSU removing itself from being considered a serious academic institution and instead defined as a meathead locker room college just a small step above Youngstown State for not firing this coach after said offenses.
October 8th, 2018 at 7:47 PM ^
That is one of the longest sentences I have read in a while--
October 8th, 2018 at 5:52 AM ^
You might be right, but it isn't impossible that the player's mother put pressure on her son due to Urban's repeated lies and bad demeanor and it took time to make the flip.
October 8th, 2018 at 6:22 AM ^
He probably watched the OSU - Indiana game and found himself rooting for Indiana. It happens.
October 8th, 2018 at 7:36 AM ^
I mean, I was.
October 8th, 2018 at 8:35 AM ^
Me too haha...I like Indiana for some odd reason. Great school, committed to running a good program and they always seem to put up a good fight.
October 8th, 2018 at 7:17 AM ^
He flipped within 24 hours of taking his OV to Columbus. That's highly unusual. If he had just decommitted, I'd say something happened on his visit. Since he flipped, it looks like that's what he intended to do and was giving OSU a chance to convince him to stick.
October 8th, 2018 at 8:22 AM ^
Come on, guys. Obviously, the Indiana bag man was willing to outspend the OSU bag man.
October 8th, 2018 at 10:32 AM ^
A point that makes sense.
October 8th, 2018 at 12:44 PM ^
"Coach, you still gonna be here in two or three years?"
"I don't know. These fuckers want me to not enable domestic abuse and lie about it. Can you believe that?"
"Okay, I'm going to Indiana then."
October 8th, 2018 at 7:30 AM ^
Ha. I was waiting to see how long it would take for an OSU fan to post this- that it was because OSU was in on "a lot of other highly ranked RB's". Right..
October 8th, 2018 at 8:15 AM ^
Of course, we have always considered their fan base to be shameful, but it is very validating that now the entire nation acknowledges that OSU's university leadership, coaching, and fan base are the most embarrassing of all. In Columbus, football reigns over truth. We are just a handful of weeks away from the most gratifying football justice imaginable. Michigan beats Ohio State in their stadium, and Urban Meyer disgracefully 'retires'.
October 8th, 2018 at 3:58 AM ^
"if you believe the OSU commenters in the reddit thread."
Believe commenters?
If you believe commenters on the internet (especially on here) Brandon Peters was in a real competition with Shea Patterson.
October 8th, 2018 at 5:41 AM ^
I think the competition was real but the predicted outcome was probably never in doubt. I don't recall all that much to the contrary.
October 8th, 2018 at 5:57 AM ^
It was so real that he ended up third string.
October 8th, 2018 at 6:35 AM ^
Due to injury in week one and great performances from his competition in the subsequent weeks. I don't think that's too crazy a narrative.
October 8th, 2018 at 6:44 AM ^
If you think that Peters was close and that only a supposed injury is why he is third string, I don’t know what to tell you. He was a starter last year, JH knows what he has in Peters and this year it’s a third string QB.
October 8th, 2018 at 6:47 AM ^
Yeah, I believe it. I know you don't know what to tell me, but it seems like a Harbaugh thing to have in the best-prepared/uninjured guy at second string for a given week.
October 8th, 2018 at 7:15 AM ^
I still think Peters could be a very good QB. I know he looked bad in the bowl game and the only pass he's thrown this season was an INT. But he's one of these cerebral guys who probably needs several years in a system before he's truly ready for prime time. Guys like Todd Collins and Tom Brady were outstanding QBs but never really played until they were what, redshirt juniors? They might have looked just as questionable, had they been pressed into service as redshirt freshmen (just look at what happened with John Navarre; got a bad rap because he had to start before he was ready, played pretty well as an upperclassman but could never shake that stigma).
The problem for Peters, of course, is that McCaffrey already looks better than him and is a year younger. So even if the redshirt junior version of Peters is, say, a B+ quarterback, that's not going to really be enough for him to start if the redshirt sophomore version of McCaffrey is an A-.
October 8th, 2018 at 10:41 AM ^
You're right HHW,
Peters was never going to start again at Michigan, unless serious injuries happened to the QBs ahead of him. There never was a real chance of him beating Shea Patterson. The only reason there was talk of a "real competition" with Patterson is because of 'meritocracy' that Jim Harbaugh always publicly says.
I read some inside information, real insider information, last January, that Brandon Peters will never see a significant snap again at Michigan. Basically it said, Brandon Peters is done at Michigan.
October 8th, 2018 at 11:28 AM ^
I mean, I don't see how these things are incompatible with each other.
Patterson is clearly a better QB than Peters, and so is McCaffrey. The best player is starting. The second-best player is the backup. How is that not a meritocracy? How is that evidence of there not being a genuine competition? Seems more likely there was a competition and Patterson proved to be the best QB on the roster, McCaffrey the second-best, and Peters third (or, at least, good enough to not burn Milton's redshirt to be third-strong).
There is a very good chance that Peters will not play another meaningful snap at M, but that's because better players have already beaten him out for this season and at least one of those guys will still be around for the rest of his Michigan career. It's not because of some grand conspiracy to deny Peters his shot. I don't know what insidery insider stuff you claim to have read, but it seems like it was just some dude's opinion that Peters isn't as good as Patterson or McCaffrey, and that's what we've seen on the field.
October 8th, 2018 at 3:59 PM ^
Milton can play without burning his redshirt.
And regardless of how it looks, it was decided long before any kind of competition that Peters was never going to see a meaningful snap at Michigan again--unless there is a very bad string of injury to QBs ahead of him.
You have to pay to get real insider information. You can't expect to find it free on a blog.
But really, if you had listened to Don Brown, andJim Harbaugh, i.e., people that know the game, you would hear how they talk about Dylan McCaffrey, to know where he was with the team, without having to pay to get beyond a paywall.
October 8th, 2018 at 6:27 AM ^
I don't think very many people took the reported competition all too seriously after the supposed neck-and-neck competition between Speight and O'Korn. Personally, when I first learned that Patterson was coming to M, I figured Peters would still be the favorite to start since he was a talented prospect in his own right and already had multiple years in the system. But I abandoned that expectation pretty quickly once I watched Patterson's film from Ole Miss. I think the same basic thing happened with lots of other regular posters: the more familiar people became with Patterson, the more obvious it appeared that he would start this season. (Peters' lousy performance in the bowl game probably sped that along too, though I'm a bit hazy on the timing of all those things).
October 8th, 2018 at 6:08 AM ^
Kind of like how you're hoping people here will believe you're not a troll on his 20th account?
October 8th, 2018 at 6:35 AM ^
Your hot takes were horrible as skypanther and even worse now. Don’t go through life drunk and stupid.