Recuiting with Hiring

Anyway, I do believe we will see some surprising things in the next few days!  Harbaugh is an amazing hire and he too is viewed as THE SECOND COMING, but I do believe (cue the song) "Baby, You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet!"

Comparing Harbaugh and Meyer in their first year of recruiting is apples and oranges for so many reasons, it's ridiculous. The Harbaugh and Franklin comparison is more apples to apples but obviously helps that Franklin was coming over and recruiting all year from another university, and one that recruits similar athletes as PSU. The last thing Harbaugh was worried about until about a month ago was college football recruiting.

I think the difference is institutional momentum. PSU had loads during the Franklin hire. Despite the scandals, the program was riding high on excellent coaching and pride. OSU had one terrible season that followed a decade of domination. Regrettably, we've been backsliding since 2008. This can be rectified obviously, but I think the Harbaugh messiah effect will kick in when Michigan is proven to not be a punching bag week in and week out.

harbaugh has been out of cfb for 4 years. franklin hadn't left and urban took 1 year off. both franklin and urban had previous relationships w these guys. harbaugh started with nothing. if anything this will only drive jimmy harder and make the 2016 class an absolute monster.

Harbaugh has the I can get you to the Super Bowl factor that both Urban and Franklin don't have. I was comparing Harbaugh to Saban who is the gold standard for Michigan football and program rebuilding and he got 6 4 star commits in his first class so Harbaugh would need 5 more by signing day. Saban's first staff and Harbaugh's first staff were pretty comparable in firepower FWIW.

but outside of the Michigan fanbase, people still need on field results before they hop on the bandwagon. Let our guys do their thing and everything will fall into place in due time.

If it's about the program and not the coach then Florida wouldn't be waiting on 3 5 stars to announce on signing day. They haven't done anything since 2009. I'm not worried about recruiting though because Harbaugh got eight 4 stars in his 3rd class and that was pre NFL and Super bowl experience to sell.

Looks like Brian Kelly only added 2 4 stars despite being hired December 10th, 2009. The class was already pretty stacked but it provides a good case that the first class doesn't really mean much on how good of a recruiter you are. His next classes were pretty good.

I looked at Franklin's class in depth 10-12 day ago and based on his hire date and the first 2 commits (and their offer sheets) they were Vandy flips.  I didn't look at the offer sheet of the remaining 7 but I believe those 7 were two 4 stars and five 3 stars. 

As I wrote in another thread what killed us here was UM's season was essentially over in early October and the recruits Hoke had fled en masse.  If he had put in a decent showing for another month, he could have kept recruiting with a straight face that he would be back next year, and avoided some of the flips.  You dont bring back a coach and expect him to effectively be lame duck within a month and a week of his new season.  Throw in the tire fire of Brandon and the concussion stuff and we were a corpse to be picked at.  It was open season on UM recruits for 2 months in a row and then no coach for 1 month.  Meanwhile PSU had a coach who was turning things around - and I dont know the time frame between when their old coach left for Houston and Franklin was hired but I am sure it was not 1 month.

If Hoke had looked somewhat viable thru the first week of Nov, we probably have 10-11 kids in this class left over from Hoke and Jim is trying to fill 4-5 spots in total.

Meyer and OSU is a whole different animal.  Premier program, in a premier state for talent with kids dying to go to the school to play football, coming off a decade plus of success, and 2 coaching staffs at once.  With a guy out of college football for only 1 year.

There are no true apples to apples.  The one downside of hiring a succesful NFL coach is and staff mostly from the NFL is you don't have any relationships built.  Only Durkin and Drevno really had them and none (save for R. Smith who we are a longshot for) is bringing in any kids.  If Harbaugh came directly from Stanford this would have been an easy fix.  Even with the issues I laid out above.

I just looked it up - Bill O'Brien was interviewed on 12/29 and hired on Jan 2, 2014.  So PSU was without a coach for 9 days, all during a dead period. 

O'Brien was recruiting thru late Dec for PSU.  And PSU's season was not a clusterfuck of epic proportions like ours so he had at least something to sell (it wasnt a great season by any measure).

I personally would have liked to see harbaugh go after more players who decommitted the past few months. I know that he has been going after Clark and Weber hard, but what about guys like Campbell and Damien Harris? I would think that it would be easier to flip them back rather than start fresh and convince players who didn't have Michigan on their radar in just 1 month. If those guys who decommitted loved the program and AA enough to commit, wouldn't they love the idea of coming even more now that we have an elite coach? Just my two cents. But I think we'll have a surprise or two in the coming days, and finish out the class pretty respectably, at least that's what I'm hoping for.

Just because I am a curious sort - O'Brien had a recruit as recently as 12/28 (he interviewed with Texans the next day). 

Franklin recruits

• 1/12 (day of hire) 3* OL with Vandy offer - that's a flip
• 1/14  3* OL with Vandy offer - that's a flip

Then guys Franklin got but you'd have to go and analyze each one - were they a PSU recruit that O'Brian had worked on for a year or two?  Were they a Vandy recruit that Franklin had been working and now coud offer a better program to recruit than Vandy, etc/

• 1/20  3* DB  (Vandy offer)
• 1/20  3* ATH  (Vandy offer)
• 1/25  4* ATH  (Vandy offer)
• 1/26  4* WR  (Vandy offer)
• 1/30  3* DB  (Vandy offer)
• 2/3  3* DB
• 2/4 3* ATH

So was that a great class that Franklin built?  No.  He basically filled 7 spots that we see the first 5 were Vandy offers.  The last 2 look more like reaches as they had no Vandy offers.

If Jim had come directly from Stanford we'd have a bunch of commits who had Stanford offers just the same.

I have this crazy feeling the coaching staff already have all the commitments but letting the kids have there glory.

People are underestimating how shitty of season we just had and the effect it is having on recruiting. One of the worst and most scrutinized in the entire country. Terrible record, didn't meet expectations, no bowl, concussion gate, Brandon fiasco, student protests, Coke, fired head coach, etc. Practically every analyst on ESPN called the program a "dumpster fire", "institutional problems" (whatever that means). It was really-really bad. Yes, Harbaugh was a mega hire and he's already flipped 2 kids from blue-blood programs. Every kid that comes out for a visit is getting an ear full from his current coaches reminding him of what I stated above.  

We will get 15 kids, there will be a few 4 stars. Be happy with Cole, Gentry, Tyree and the rest. We will be in the playoffs before Penn State, I have no doubt.  

I do. Let's face it, next year's senior/RS Junior class was a top 7 class. They've underachieved. It's probably going to be a rebuilding year (without a legit QB stepping up). 2016's Senior/RS Junior class was a top 5 class and is, really, our only hope for an awesome season at this time.

Then after that, you have two senior classes (2014 and 2015) that were very very small and really void of serious talent other than Peppers and maybe Drake Harris. 2014 ranked anywhere from 20-35 based on who you follow. 2015's class has proven to be a disaster zone. 2016 and 2017's classes will both need to be Top 5 classes if we're ever going to compete with Ohio State in the next five years.

One thing to add, is that the advantage Franklin had over Harbaugh is that he already had relationships built with many recruits that we're committed to Vanderbilt. While Jim Harbaugh was in the NFL coaching he had zero access to college potential players. With Urban Meyer the same argument cannot be made but he was more involved in the college football process than Harbaugh being on SportsCenter doing the games on television.

advantage of getting through signing day. I understand wanting to be first but this really should have waited until at least Thursday to see the results.

If you want to talk about advantages these other teams/coaches had over Harbaugh, I think the big one is the coaches and their staffs were, in general, active currently or fairly recently, in recruiting and had built relationships.

The Harbaugh staff, has in general been in the pros. This will soon become an advantage but it was difficult to overcome the lack of relationships in a short period since others had years to build relationships.

That being said, there will be another thread in a couple days that will more accurately compare the classes.