The Considerable Attrition of Stanford's 2010 Recruiting Class
Tony Jefferson (L) and Kain Colter (R) left Stanford's class for very different reasons.
I swear I'll be posting a full recruiting mailbag this week, but when looking at Michael Spath's article on Jim Harbaugh's recruiting style, this merited a closer examination:
At Stanford, The Cardinal produced a slew of decommitments during Harbaugh's tenure (18 alone in 2010), and we've been told that when Harbaugh accepts a commitment, it is often the early stages of the vetting process, and that over the next few months both coaching staff and recruit could come to the conclusion it is not the right fit.
If such were to happen at Michigan, fans would have to ask themselves if they are OK with a recruiting strategy in which players are recruited and offered a scholarship but ultimately told prior to Signing Day that it would be best for all involved to part ways.
Stanford's elite admissions turned away a few prospects, and one could argue it was the school not Harbaugh that had final say, but a staff should have a pretty good feel from the onset which players have the grades to be admitted and those that do not. At Stanford, Harbaugh was willing to accept pledges from an abundance of borderline prospects.
18 decommitments in one class! On its face, that's alarming, especially in the context of Michigan taking this many early commitments. To get a clearer picture of what happened at Stanford and what we can expect from Harbaugh at Michigan, I took a look at the decommitment stories of every one-time 2010 Stanford commit I could find to see what really occurred.
The good news: Harbaugh didn't just kick 18 players out of his class to make room for better players. In fact, a good number of these decommits were players Harbaugh didn't want to lose. There was no Elliott Porter situation. The bad news: while Harbaugh didn't seem to go so far as to yank anyone's scholarship outright, a couple of the tactics he used probably won't sit well with Michigan fans, and understandably so.
I've separated out the 2010 decommits into categories. I believe Spath's source for the 18 decommits figure is this Bleacher Report article. There's only one player on the list (Tyler Brosius) whom I couldn't verify was ever a Stanford commit in the first place; neither Rivals nor Scout even listed him as holding an offer. Here's the rest:
Prospect Chose A Better Opportunity
Several of Stanford's 2010 commits had one of the more common reasons for a commitment flip: they got what they found to be a better offer from another program and made the switch.
- Four-star CA S/LB Tony Jefferson, now on the Arizona Cardinals, committed to Stanford in September of his junior season. He backed off the following January, saying he wanted to keep his options open while citing concerns over Stanford's strict admissions, and ended up at Oklahoma.
- Four-star CA LB Jordan Zumwalt fielded heavy interest from both Los Angeles schools while he was a Stanford commit, and on Signing Day he switched to UCLA, in part because it was closer to home.
- Four-star MD CB Louis Young committed to Stanford without taking a visit, had second thoughts, recommitted, had second thoughts again, and eventually wound up at Georgia Tech.
- Three one-time Stanford commits—four-star GA WR TJ Jones, three-star UT S Chris Badger, and three-star KY OL Tate Nichols—flipped to Notre Dame during the process. Jones switched after an official visit to South Bend, while the other two made their decisions shortly after receiving Irish offers.
- Three-star OH CB Courtney Avery changed his commitment to Michigan after earning a camp offer in the spring.
- Three-star TX DT Will Hampton started fielding increased interest, decided he wanted to take visits, narrowed his choices to Notre Dame and Northwestern, and eventually chose the Wildcats.
That's eight of the 18 who simply decided to pursue what they found to be a better opportunity elsewhere.
Standard Recruitment Issues
For one reason or another, something came up during the course of these players' recruitments that led them to end up elsewhere:
- Four-star FL OL Torrian Wilson changed his commitment to Louisville when his primary recruiter at Stanford, Willie Taggart, took the head coaching job at Western Kentucky. He also said his mom wanted him closer to home. There's good evidence that was the driving factor—he'd later flip his commitment again, this time to UCF.
- Four-star TE Blake Barker, who hailed from Cambridge, MA, changed his commitment to Harvard, telling Rivals he wanted the right combination of academics and proximity to home.
- Four-star MO RB Brandon Bourbon also decided he wanted to play close to home, swiching to Kansas just days before NSD after being committed to Stanford for six months.
Senior Year Injury
This is where things start getting uncomfortable. In two documented cases, Stanford stopped contacting recruits after they suffered injuries during their season season. That's how Kain Colter, a three-star athlete, wound up at Northwestern instead of heading to Palo Alto:
During his first game that fall, Colter heard a "pop" after throwing a post route. An MRI revealed a torn labrum and biceps, but he kept playing as a running back and receiver while rehabbing a shoulder that eventually needed surgery.
Stanford originally stuck by him, but then their correspondences dwindled. They wanted his MRI results and claimed he would have to wait for clearance from the admissions office. Interesting for a kid who carried a 4.2 grade-point average.
Finally, Spencer said, "They just stopped calling. It was a bad situation. I wanted them to man up and talk to Kain."
Colter decommitted in late December. Three-star FL OG Joe McNamara had a similar experience:
The 6-foot-2, 270-pound McNamara, a three-star prospect rated the 28th-best offensive guard in the country by Scout.com, was excited to become a Cardinal. That's when his recruitment started taking a turn for the worse.
Tearing his ACL roughly a week before the season started, forcing McNamara to sit out his entire senior season, McNamara wanted to be sure Stanford was still behind him. After no returned calls or emails, McNamara had to start from scratch.
"The thing that took the longest was finding out if Stanford was in or out," McNamara told Badger Nation Monday. "They never came out and said I was out of the picture but at the same time, there was no communication. I would say probably November was when I re-opened the recruiting process."
McNamara wound up at Wisconsin. If there's a positive to be found in these two cases, it's that Harbaugh never formally pulled either player's scholarship, and both opened up their recruitments with enough time left in the process to find suitable landing spots. It's tough to sugarcoat the complete lack of communication from Stanford's end, however.
Stanford Ceased Contact
Somewhat related to the above, the main way it seems Harbaugh indicated to recruits it was best for both parties to go their separate ways was to stop talking to them.
- Three-star GA S Daunte Carr opened up his recruitment because he hadn't heard back from the admissions department with less than a month to go before Signing Day. He later committed to Arkansas.
- Three-star NV LB Evan Palelei committed in the spring of his junior year, then decommitted in early September of his senior year because he "lost contact with them over the summer." Palelei eventually signed with Navy.
The Late Grayshirt
- In arguably the most concerning situation of them all, the Stanford staff informed three-star TX TE Zachary Swanson that he'd have to take a grayshirt with about a month to go before Signing Day. He chose instead to sign with Virginia.
I can't find anywhere what happened in the case of three-star OG Harris Williams, who flipped to Boston College in July after originally pledging to the Cardinal in late April.
So?
A lot of the attrition in this class occurred for reasons outside Harbaugh's control, but there are definitely red flags that come up. Falling out of contact with recruits as a way of not-so-subtly pushing them out the door isn't a great look, especially in the case of injury; even worse is blindsiding a prospect with a late grayshirt.
We'll see if Harbaugh operates in a different way at Michigan, where he won't have to worry as much about potential attrition within his classes due to problems with admissions. While this stuff doesn't quite rise to the SEC level of recruiting malfeasance, it's not going to go over well in Ann Arbor if Harbaugh isn't more open with recruits about their place in the class as the process moves along.
What do other recruiting classes look like?
This is important. When these kids were committing, Stanford was coming off of 5-7 and 8-5 seasons. The entire program was going through major changes strategically and in perceived prestigiousness. Other, more highly touted recruits, saw that the grass was getting greener down on the farm. Harbaugh may have offered kids he was seriously planning on signing to begin with, but later saw that better talent was taking sincere interest when the 2009 team turned things around.
Either you honor your offer to the kid or not. Seems pretty black and white to me.
Recruiting is not a black and white process as you say, it would be nice if it were. How many kids decommit and why don't they "honor" the commitment?
Great gif. I've been in love with Natalie since first finding her on The Tudors. I would so love to dissapoint her. Hoping she makes it out the the dungeon next season on GoT.
As for Harbaugh it's hard to believe he just cuts off contact with players. He's the definition of in your face.
So do you think multiple recruits lied about communication shutting down?
To action with her for 3-5 seconds.
I'm not sure you're comfortable with the implications of your argument that schools and prospects bear equivalent responsibility in recruiting. If a prospect showed over and over again that he was unable or unwilling to keep his word when he committed, schools would very rationally back off from recruiting him; if a coach demonstrates the same pattern of unreliability or duplicity (not saying JH does, but assume arguendo), wouldn't it be rational to also separate him from the program?
Either way, I think there are plenty of reasons to be more forgiving of high schoolers who decommit than of coaches who pull their offers. Among other things: massive information asymmetries between high school kids and collegiate coaching professionals; a significant likelihood that the prospect himself is not wholly in charge of his recruiting situation (parents, high school coaches, etc.) and thus shouldn't bear full blame for a change in circumstances; and a huge disparity in opportunity cost depending on when the commitment dissolution happens (i.e. if a Michigan cornerback prospect decommits a week before NSD, Michigan at worst signs a class with one fewer CB; if, on the other hand, Michigan unilterally pulls the same prospect's offer a week before NSD, there's a chance that the kid could wind up without a scholarship at all or getting locked into a minimum of a year at a school far from home / far below his potential).
I guess I was responding to the notion that a commitment is like a contract between equals. If you don't think it's important for either side to honor their commitments -- that each should merely maximize their leverage regardless of the promises they made before -- that's a perfectly valid and logically coherent viewpoint, but it kind of defeats the whole idea of "commitments" in the first place.
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Duude. Calm down bro.
Well, if you have 85 girlfriends at a time maybe. A better analogy would be trying to establish buisness in a 3rd World country where all the successful companies are bribing officials to get the correct paper work and approval to complete deals. You could go in with an attitude that bribing is unethical and you won't participate. Your liklihood of success iwould also likely pretty low.
Why would a kid not get a scholarship at all? Signing Day is when the signing starts, not when it ends. A kid still has plenty of time. Yes, a lot of schools are full, but there are still a ton of schools that will have scholarships available for various reasons. Rudock had plenty of options. And I doubt the remaining schools would really be so beneath a recruit who's getting let go in the first place because he doesn't appear to be all that good.
I'm not condoning what Harbaugh apparently did, and I actually think in a lot of ways it's worse to leave the kid hanging than to just revoke the scholarship offer so at least they know the situation, but I don't think the situation is as dire for a recruit as you make it sound.
Others unethical conduct should have no bearing on your ethics. Otherwise it becomes a vicious cycle. You should have a set of ethics and principles and work under them. You can only govern your own ethics.
people's ethics when we're lacking a lot of relevant information, including anything from their side.
I get the feeling we judge other coaches by comparing their recruiting practices to Hoke's. He stuck by his commits, but he also didn't allow them to take other visits. It was a two way street. We know what he told recruits when he accepted their offers. It's very fair, but it's not the only ethical approach to recruiting.
Harbaugh lets commits take other visits. Obviously he's telling them something different than Hoke when they accept their offers. We don't know exactly what is said, but It's fair to think it's still a two way street and his commitment to them may not be the same as Hoke's.
Is hoping a recruit will decommit the ethical equivalent of pulling his offer? is it worse? Is it even wrong? There are lot of reasons for the interest to cool, some have nothing to due with needing his place for a higher ranked recruit. Ceasing contact doesn't seem like the best way to go about it, but there's no good way of letting a kid know you'd rather they went elsewhere. At least this way they won't be misquoted in the press with no chance to defend themselves.
It's easy to applaud coaches when they go out of their way to honor offers to injured recruits. It doesn't follow, however, that any other course of action is unethical. I'd be happy if all coaches followed Beilein's example. Few do though. I don't like what Harbaugh reportedly did there. I guess I'm not going to like everything he does.
know that they might not get the scholarship that they committed to and still they stay with them because they are Alabama. If Michigan does it when they are at the point of playing in the playoff possibly every year (see OSU and Alabama) then they can get away with it too. Same goes for 5 star players, they can wait till sigining day because they can go anywhere.
I agree with the sentiment, but when millions are at risk (salaries, athletic dept. income, etc.) hard and uncomfortable decisions are made. I prefer coaches to stand by their kids (Beilein for example), but I won't kill a coach who sees a different scenario than the one he signed up for and proceeds to move in a different direction. Once the kid has signed, I have problems with cutting a kid lose or dictating unfair terms.
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agreed
Also agreed. Ace makes it sound like straight up revoking the offer is worse than cutting off contact, but I think it's the other way 'round, especially when that recruit talked about how the part that took the longest was wondering what the hell was up with Stanford.
Or at least with the injured players, just wait until they are on campus & attending class, then ask them to sign a form that they are quitting football due to the injury.
Am I right, Buckeye fans? Gimme a "yee-ha" or whatever yokel call is in fashion in them there parts.
So much wrong here I can't even begin.
Looks like Harbaugh is potentially building you a nice glass house up there in Ann Arbor.
Our medical folks got a look at him and decided that the damage was worse than what we thought We did offer him a medical hardship scholarship. The young man and the folks at Auburn seem to think he will heal and he wil be able to play for several years. We'll see what happens after a few years if he is still able to play and is starting. I wish him the best and hope our staff was wrong.
Enough said.
You make a committment, you stick by it.
Kids should not commit if they're not willing to stand by it, as well, but they're kids. Hopefully, they'll learn as they grow and mature.
And the recruit can either honor his "committment" or not. Is it still that black and white?
They are 17 and 18 year old kids, for the most part. They SHOULD stand by their committments, as well. Yet they are immature. Not an excuse, but...
For an adult on a coaching staff making hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars per year, I expect them to honor their committments.
Personally, I'm not only a supporter of Michigan athletics, but I'm an alumnus of the University. I expect all members of the University to act responsibly... even when others might not.
I think we would be naive to think Harbaugh won't test the limits after what we've seen from him already, and it's going to cause some cognitive dissonance for many of us. The truth is he is a highly competitive guy who is going to do what it takes to be the best. Unfortunately, there's a real risk that that trait is accompanied by some tactics that don't sit well with most of us. I'm hoping that doesn't end up being the case, but can anyone really claim to be surprised if it does?
Tell it like it is, Franklin
Agree 100%. Look, Hoke did everything the right and honorable way, and Michigan nation was in full revolt by the end of his three years. We wanted a guy who will win. Harbaugh is that guy. Will Harbaugh's way be different than Hoke's way? Of course. But I don't think it will necessarily fall into the SEC or OH territory.
Just because tactics may change does not mean that one must act irresponsibly. I don't expect him to, either.
territory. I don't think that is bad. The reality is they should change the phrase "committed" to something more accurate like, "has been offered and intends to sign his letter of committment in April of next year, but that could change due to many factors". College football and possibly still college in general, I dont know anymore, is the point in life where you no longer get an award for participating. And for just participating your award is just as big as the guy or gal who excells. Coach Hoke knows how being everyones friend worked out. If you aren't winning to receive a real trophy, then you wont last long as a coach in college football, and if you are that man shouldn't you do what it takes, legally, to win? Obviously all the offers JH has extended can not be honored, I would think that he is saying something to recruits when they receive them to this fact, and I am sure there are some players, see 5 stars where he says you keep your grades up and stay out of jail and we will honor your offer no matter what.
You realize the problem with Alabama isn't that they're overcommitting but that they're oversigning, right? Oversigning is much worse IMO.
sure over signing is worse obviously. I am just preparing for what I believe will happen at some point, JH will most likely oversign especially if other teams are doing it and it doesn't get banned by the NCAA. He is a competitor and that is competing at this point in college football.
I hope you're wrong. I would be extremely disappointed. Even yanking an offer just before Signing Day would be less egregious but still really shitty. At least that recruit wasn't a part of team yet and has other options.
Exactly. People need to decide if they want to win and build a national power again or do they want be OK and feel good about themselves. The coaches who have won national titles going back to 2001 are : Urban Meyer, Jimbo Fisher, Nick Saban, Gene Chizick, Les Miles, Mack Brown, Peter Carroll, Jim Tressell and Larry Coker. Do any of these guys give off an "icky" feeling? The only one not icky (at least on the surface) was Mack Brown but getting top talent at Texas in that era was taking candy from a baby and he had Vince Young. I'm not saying Harbaugh needs to be like these guys but let's be happy we have a respectable, stand-up guy in charge who truly cares about the school, the kids and their families, and won't do anything to compromise the integrity of himself or the institution. Don't think for a minute however that Harbaugh won't do what it takes to build a champion, even if it means hurting some kids feelings or potentially reneging on a non-binding verbal agreement when conditions change.
Admirable, but in that case, do you wish we had just kept Hoke?
The post is slightly unnerving, but it's really not that bad. It's not oversigning. And no, it may not be completely level, but recruits do change their minds all the time as well. Either way, regardless of where a recruit is committed to, it'd be wise of them to have fallback plans. I know I waffle on pulling the trigger too much sometimes, and if I was a recruit with dreams of the NFL, I'd be finding out as much as possible about every possible school. Unless maybe I was 17...
I categorically reject the notion that you cannot win without treating kids well.
THIS. I'm going to come right out and say it... I would prefer Lloyd Carr 9-3 seasons earned the right way every single year to anything shady ever. If we win in a manner I consider dirty, it will feel hollow.
Now this is something that can be evaluated. I wouldn't be very happy being a Bo Pelini Nebraska team. I wouldn't accept oversigning. What happened in the post Ace talked about? Eh, I thought it was bad. I'd definitely prefer that it doesn't happen and I'd hope Harbaugh would be put under some pressure. I would definitely accept a few recruits who the staff thought they don't need anymore because of higher-ranked guys knocking on the door if they had already committed. Would rather the staff waited until the next cycle to start picking higher-hanging fruit even if signing up a couple mediocre players cost us a win (don't see how it'd cost more than that for a couple guys who are just so-so).
EDIT: Reading who Gameboy was originally replying to and what he said, I'm not sure we really disagree at all actually. I don't think Harbaugh should be fired if he does like he did in Stanford in 2010, but I would like to hear some pointed questions from the media that would cause him to back off of doing that in the future and hopefully a conversation with Hackett behind closed doors (that we would probably never catch wind of).
Win what exactly? The Hoke question was a serious one. What win percentage or number of B1G titles over X number of years would you be happy with? Can you name a coach who is winning conference titles regularly that treats kids well according to your criteria?
Again, it's great that you have standards, but it's easy to have standards on overcommitting without having standards on winning. Clearly teams who do shady shit are at an advantage.
I'm more concerned with the approach of reneging than the reneging itself...Coach can't tell the young men on the team to be stand up guys and deal with difficult situations forthrightly if he is going to leave injured/unwanted recruits (and their families and their HS coaches, etc) wondering what is going on with their scholarship offers. That's not cool no matter how you slice and dice it.
Further, doing this invariable puts the program at risk if/when HS coaches decide not to let coach visit or recruit other talent on the team. IMO the only way to get away with this is to be a well established power program (OSU, Bama, LSU) instead of a struggling to get back there program.
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