Newsome: "I'm committed to Michigan"
[bumped from the diaries -ed] Rivals:
Newsome has been the focus of widespread speculation that he's going to end up somewhere other than Michigan. After not wanting to talk about recruiting on Saturday and Sunday, he opened up a little bit on Monday. "I'm committed to Michigan," Newsome said. "Me and Bryce McNeal were going around bragging how we're going to beat Randall Carroll, who's going to USC, Cierre Wood, who's going to Notre Dame. We were bragging about things like that." Newsome said he really hit it off with McNeal. "It was great to be around a guy that's going to be a future teammate hopefully," he said. "He's a great guy. Bryce is a good, good guy. He's one of my boys now. We're going to really stay in touch."
The military academy is really going to help his progress. Nice to hear he is firm on his committment. It is also good news that him and BM are getting close because come Februrary those relationships really matter when it comes down to signing day where we all know anything can happen.
[Me again. 1) Don't think we're quite out of the woods yet. 2) Sounds like Newsome smoked that camp.-ed]
don't think we're out of the woods yet, what do you mean?
There are still way too many rumors about him wavering to be ignored. And his statement "I am committed to Michigan" could be better. Of course he is committed to Michigan now, you have to be committed in the first place to decommit. There is also the issue that he refused to talk about it for so long. If he was completely solid on his commit, he would be a lot more upfront about it than he is being.
This is reassuring, but I agree with Brian. We aren't out of the woods yet.
on wtka, the newsome's said they'd be out of the media from the beginning. each time sam has talked to them they've said nothing has changed and that kevin isn't talking to any other coaches or making any other visits. he hasn't actually given a reason....
Fair enough. It's still going to be a looong wait until signing day for me though.
It's not against the rules at all. The NCAA knows about it. They've known about it since schools started doing it and there's absolutely no way they COULD do anything about it, even if they wanted to...which they don't.
Think about it -- You're a Michigan booster and you decide out of the goodness of your heart to give those hard-workin' boys down at Fork Union (or Hargrave or Milford Prep or Maine Central Institute or any of the other 500 prep schools) some financial aid. Afterall, we're at war! God bless America and salute the troops and we need good fightin' boys. So you decide to become a Fork Union (or Hargrave or Milford or any of the others...) booster as well. If that scholarship money just happens to pay for a kid whose going to Michigan, well, that's just a coincidence. It's not like you're cutting the check to the kid. You're paying for a scholarship at a prep school because you like the cut of their jib.
The NCAA doesn't care. The kids that go to most of those schools are getting a first-rate education. The kids who go to the military schools are also getting a good shot of discipline.
When I was in college, I was a Deadhead. There were a couple of recruiting pubs. that would pay me to do these little blurbs on high-profile players. So I'd time the scouting trips usually around spring or fall tour. I could fund a trip to Boston or New Jersey or Philly or New York or maybe somewhere in Georgia and Florida by taking two extra days and visiting about a dozen different schools and getting a photo and some interviews with these guys. This was in the early 90s, pre-WWW.
I took a trip to Avon, CT and did a profile on three guys at Old Avon Farm. I'm from North Carolina, which has great colleges, but terrible high schools. This was my first experience with a New England prep school and it just blew me away. It was like walking around Dook's campus. They have a Web site, check it out. They had Sun workstations available for their students. Their library was nicer than my college library (I went to a sorry-ass pretend college).
They were in the same athletic conference with schools like Choate and Hotchkiss and Taft and Deerfield. Tuition was something like $25,000 a year at the time. They actually offered full scholarships for their ringers. It wasn't hard to figure out who I was there to cover. The team came out and it was a bunch of 5-8 white guys who looked like they had just finished soccer practice. Standing among them would be five or six black guys from south Florida. The team they were playing had them as well.
They didn't have a pressbox, so they put me up in the booth with the PA announcer and the assistant coaches. One of the coaches told me that every school in the conference was allowed a certain number of players on "need" scholarships. If those players just happened to be 6-5, 300 pound left tackles from Belle Glade, FL...so be it.
Why would the NCAA have a problem with it? Those are kids that are getting Ivy-league caliber educations.
Am I the only one who noticed the word hopefully?
"It was great to be around a guy that's going to be a future teammate hopefully,"
That to me says he may still be waivering.
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