Michigan Football Camps in TX, FL, CA
I just wanted to update my post from 16 days ago. Rivals has confirmed that Michigan will hold multiple football camps outside the state of Michigan this year. Two are confirmed in Texas and one in Florida. The California camps have yet to be confirmed. You really have to like the creativity of this staff! They are putting significant effort in trying to get elite players in the south to come to Michigan. Those are fertile recruiting gounds that our staff has put a great deal of emphasis on this year and next.
P.S. Old post from March 8th follows so you don't have to search for it.......
March 8th, 2015 at 10:57 AM
Michigan Football Summer Camp in CA?
I read a very interesting topic this morning on a Rivals message board regarding summer camps for Michigan Football. The poster is very credible. A University of Michigan graduate that has built a very successful company around building and developing databases of H.S. athletes for universities and recruiting services. He stated that a source indicated that Michigan was in the process of setting up a summer camp in CA much like Penn State did last year in GA with Georgia State as the host.
There was some speculation that it could be The University of San Diego where Harbaugh used to be the head coach. Additional speculation was the possibility of a LA school where there is some of the best talent in the state or the Bay area which would draw many of the top prospects in Northern CA. He also noted that a person close to the program indicated that he would not be surprised if 50% of the '16 recruiting class would be comprised of TX and CA athletes. He went on to say that the current staff has the most connections in the following 5 states: CA, TX, FL, MI, & OH.
Some of you may recall that the SEC was not very happy with Penn State's James Franklin and his tactics last year with regard to co-hosting a camp in GA. I have linked a couple of those articles. In addition, I hope JH does set up a camp in CA and draw some elite talent from the state.
http://recruiting.blog.ajc.com/2014/05/03/georgia-state-and-penn-state-to-do-football-camp-together/
these camps benefit michigan but also the players who are trying to improve and gain exposure for scholarships- creating rules to prohibit them seems unjustified.
other schools have the opportunity to to run similar camps if they think the camps are an advantage.
kids from nearby states like OH can travel to ann arbor but perhaps an east coast camp in new jersey would be a possibility.
i imagine that there is only a limited amount of time that can be devoted to player camps by the staff.
obviously, best talent from all over. Makes a lot of sense from a travel perspective, to kids who might not be able to prioritize a trip to Ann Arbor for whatever reason. Bring the coaches to the kids to start building interest. Then they would be more likely to use an official visit.
The downside is that it also empowers DanTonio to clean up in-state recruiting. That's not terrible as I actually am starting to like the tough competition we have within state lines, but he gets a lot out of his players.
I think its a nice way to start jump starting the talent pool. Obviously if Harbaugh can knock off some 10-win seasons heads will start to turn but you can see the length of time it would take to get that sort of inertia going (as it was long ago). Love the creative thinking using all of the boundary space within the rules. That, right there, is the Michigan advantage.
Holding a couple of out of state camps for a few days this summer isn't going to let Dantonio clean up. Michigan will still have their normal camp in AA and still recruit like normal. This is a total win for sure.
"He went on to say that the current staff has the most connections in the following 5 states: CA, TX, FL, MI, & OH."
Dantonio has never cleaned up in recruiting or even gotten a top notch recruit that we were both competing for until the wheels fell off last year.
This is exactly what has to happen to level the playing field with the SEC regarding football recruits. You just can't get around the numbers! For those of you who haven't seen the following site... please check it out, you'll understand why this is a necessity. The SEC and Texas and California have a distinct advantage because players are easily (and earlier) able to make unoffical visits. This is one of the big reasons we added Rutgers and Maryland (check out the recruits from those states).... of course in addition to thier media market, size, AAU membership, fit etc... You now have Michigan, OSU, Penn State (and okay, as of late, MSU) alternating playing ouside of New York and DC (with Virginia recruits right across the border). The only way to increase exposure.... outside of future expansion (Georgia Tech, Virginia...etc) is to have camps in these areas. I don't care if the local teams get upset.... they are just as welcome to set up camp in the Big Ten footprint. This is good for conference parity, just as limiting the number of scholarships in the past helped parity between individual football programs. Plus with the coaches we have, we would be stupid not to. As quoted above.... (top contacts: TX, CA, FL, MI, OH) that is exactly what we need. Michigan has to become a national recruiter (while not losing it's base).
Quick run down: Total recruits (average/year) by State (2008-20013)
TX- 358 15.3%
FL- 320 13.7%
CA- 236 10.1%
GA- 158 6.8%
OH- 152 6.5%
AL- 84 3.6%
LA- 83 3.6%
PA- 68 2.9%
IL- 63 2.7%
MI- 60 2.6%
http://www.footballstudyhall.com/2013/9/11/4718442/college-football-sta…
If you add up recruiting percentages by state per conference you have the following.... (ie. if there are two schools in the same state, but different conferences, then they both get the percent from that state... ie. no dividing and hence summation is > 100%)
Top 27 states:
SEC: 50.2
ACC: 32.3
BIG 10: 22.9
Big 12: 16.9
PAC 12: 14.6