UM Football Recruiting - by WM Wolverine

[Whitley]

I find it interesting that they bring a new coach in and he has 10 years of NFL experience and has some head coaching experience on the Power 5 level.

Looks like JH is not afraid to have a lot of guys with experience on multiple levels.

QB Coach in Atlanta (2003-2005) when Vick was there. So maybe another case of seeing some spread techniques implemented with the offense?

[Jeff Buchanan]

Price of what?

Here's my view ......

To me, it's pretty well established that to win at the elite level, football program infrastructure has to support that objective. Academic institution administrators have to sign off on the football program being the front porch of their university and, in a sense, define the university. The cost of that can be staggering in terms of coaching salaries and facilities. I've always felt that Michigan has historically navigated those waters well. The U is first and foremost an academic institution. Would you say that about Alabama, FSU, Clemson?

The kind of money that is in play in the CFB industry - and it is the money that has come to define it as such - collectively is in the trillions of dollars. Along with that comes corruption if the phrase money corrupts has any meaning and to me it does. Corruption in the CFB world is not just NCAA rule breaking. Those cumbersome rules I personally have little respect for but they set boundaries within which people bound by them should be operating.

Beyond NCAA rules, there are matters of integrity and again, people making millions feel the rules nor high ethical standards don't necessarily apply to them. You and I can both list dozens of CFB figures who have either operated in rule bound and ethical gray areas or flat out just ignored the rules or the appearance of unethical behavior altogether. Close to us, Jim Tressel and Joe Paterno come to mind.

I'd like to think Jim Harbaugh, as the standard bearer for M's football program, won't break the rules, operate in the rule's gray areas or behave unethically nor will any employee within M's Athletic Department do that. But success, the fame that comes with it, and the money that people get paid to succeed is a powerful enticement to succeed by any and all means available. Ask UGA's HC, Kirby Smart, about that. Ask from whose CFB coaching tree does he come?

I'll point out again that Michigan's athletic programs, with one blemish on its record of good behavior, has done a very good job of acting within the rules whether or not they make sense and above all, behaving ethically. Our distractors mock us when we tout this but I'm proud of it.

The price, therefore, of playing football at an elite level might be creating an environment that could be willing to look the other way when short cuts are taken on the way to a national championship.

[iam416]

Well, M is now spending money on its football program as if they have an endless supply. So, that's good.

As for "rule-breaking" -- here's the thing -- if you think the elite programs are out there breaking rules left and right to get recruits, and you think that is a significant advantage, then when M gets top recruits the implication is clear. I mean, sure, we all like to say "my school would never do that" -- but if they're beating out Alabama for recruits -- and you take it as an article of faith that Alabama is paying kids top dollar -- then you're saying that HARBAUGH!!!! is such a great recruiter and this kid is such a great kid that he turned down $100K to come play for M! And you're not saying it about one kid, but 6 or 7 kids every cycle.

I want to be clear -- I'm not equivocating -- but I am saying that it's very difficult to square "everyone cheats but we don't" w/ "awesome recruiting class!"

FTR, I do think that the B10 is significantly different than some SEC programs, but if someone told me that Rashan Gary or Raekwon McMillan was given walking around money during their recruiting visits and then "help" while they were players, I'd be completely and totally unsurprised.

[Jeff Buchanan]

talent, this is tough debate. I'm pretty sure neither of us is trying to win it; we've been down this path before. It's hard to pin down boundaries with regard to rule breaking and ethical conduct in CFB and then piss on people for breaking them. I believe you've always made a decent defense of behaviors among osu coaches and players when faux outrage emerges among osu haters over one of them for rule breaking or unethical behavior.

The issue at hand, and I should have been clearer about this from the outset, is roster management - again a rather hazy concept - but in one instance, the Solomon recruiting saga, the perception that it was going on at UGA was negative factor for UGA in Solomon's final decision of where he would play. It shaded the perception of UGA running an ethical v an unethical football program.

I'm well aware that M was perceived by outsiders of being guilty of this when they forceably decommited multiple kids at the end of the 2016 recruiting cycle. That turned out to be a big nothing burger but still .....

The Solomon recruiting saga is another level of reveal about the ugly side of the recruitment of the HS stars. Details are at the link below as they are reported by Brian at mgoblog. It is this article that prompted my two posts above. I think it demonstrative of the cost to UGA, Kirby Smart and his DL coach Tracy Rocker of what might be perceived as questionable behavior on the part of the whole UGA football program.

The article makes it clear that Solomon and his people chose Michigan over UGA because of the perception that UGA treated it's recruits/players as disposable assets in a business decision rather than as kids who were good at football and also wanted a decent education and a college degree that was worth something.

I want Michigan to be perceived as the later and to date, It's pretty obvious they are.

http://mgoblog.com/content/unverified-voracity-forgot-about-guy-already

[iam416]

Re Solomon, I tend to agree with Brian's assessment that statements about why a recruit went to a given school are almost always garbage -- unless they say they just liked it better or it "felt like home." Solomon probably had to justify his decision to leave Georgia to Georgia faithful.

In any event, HARBAUGH!!! manages the roster as hard as anyone. I don't think M is at 85 at the moment, so Solomon's scholarship is forcing SOMEONE off the team. Someone is being cut. And, for that matter, they did pretty much the same thing last year with recruits that Georgia did, especially those awesome SWARM!!!! signees.

I also agree with Brian in that if you want a roster with 82-85 players, you have to be super aggressive with roster management. The Nick pioneered it. We were all outraged. Now we do it -- and I very much mean UFM and HARBAUGH!

[Da Geezer]

Regarding the Johnson hire:
1. What is a guy with his credentials doing coaching at a high school? Is he being paid by a previous employer?
2. I view this hiring the same way as I viewed the hiring of Cris Partridge. Much was said that Partridge was hired as a way of getting Gary. But... Partridge has turned out to be a fine coach and a top-level recruiter.

Is the SEC still using one-year renewable scholarships? If so, it seems to me that it would be easier to "cut" players who are not panning out, and hence to manage a roster. With all the hand-wringing about satellite camps, it seems to me that using a short duration scholarship is a great advantage to those schools doing it.

[iam416]

The SEC is 1-yr, but I'm not sure it makes a great deal of difference. M certainly manages its roster with a fair amount of aggression. Now, they don't have the nuclear option -- we won't renew -- but they do what other schools do and inform the kids that it'd be in everyone's best interest if they looked elsewhere.

I don't think The Nick does much (if any) non-renewing. The optics of that are too bad. So kids transfer -- just like they do at OSU.

[Detroit Dan]

Buchanan-- I think "trillions of dollars" is an exaggeration. A quick google search reveals that college football revenue topped $3.4 billion for the first time in 2013.

And "Division I athletic spending over the past 11 years totaled "an estimated and jaw-dropping $171.3 billion" [http://www.usnews.com/opinion/op-ed/...s-bowl-season]

[Jeff Buchanan]

.......Solomon probably had to justify his decision to leave Georgia to Georgia faithful......

In the quotes that Briain posted from Jeff Sentrellof Dawgnation who interviewed Sabrina Caldwell (Solomon's mother)to get her side of things, it was the Mom, not Solomon, who said the practice we know as roster management and how it was carried out at UGA and specifically in the cases of Texas RB and longtime UGA commit Toneil Carter and SEC All-Freshman kicker Rodrigo Blankenship whose scholarships were pulled or not extended was a factor in Solomon's decision not to sign with UGA.

As I understood this piece, someone other than an 18 year old kid, someone with the maturity and smarts to look after Solomon, likely steered him away from UGA. That was largely because of a perception that UGA/Kirby Smart et. al. did not seem to have the best interests of their players in mind but rather winning and assembling the best roster to do that.

My view is that aggressive roster management is one of those behaviors in the ethical gray area. Is winning more important than the best interests of the young men who they are responsible for guiding and developing? It's a hard question. I favor Harbaugh leaning to a kid's best interests and I think he does.

[iam416]

Whether it was Solomon or his mother, a post hoc justification in recruiting doesn't really carry much weight with me. I think Brian said as much in his write up.

For what it's worth, I believe that recruits' publicly stated reasons why they chose school X are almost always post-hoc backfilling after a decision has been made. Georgia wasn't the choice but Rodrigo Blankenship isn't the reason why.

I think you're whistling past the graveyard re HARBAUGH!!!! .... based on ample evidence. But we disagree and that's fine.

[Jeff Buchanan]

......I think you're whistling past the graveyard re HARBAUGH!!!! .... based on ample evidence. But we disagree and that's fine.

I don't think we are that far apart on this. If you go back to my original post, the underlying impetus for it was the mgoblog piece about the Solomon recruitment and the family's distaste for what we are calling roster management. That distaste, and as stated by Solomon's Mom, having been a factor in him not signing with UGA.

I get and don't really disapprove of roster management used to optimize the perceived talent on a given roster. It makes sense ..... but only when it is done in a way that those affected by it don't perceive it as some kind of screw job.

Doing it in a way that is going to be seen as acceptable is 90% of the job of doing it. I think Harbaugh understands that as it pertains to the 2016 and 2017 classes. To me, that means making sure you are taking care of the affected players options after you've decided to manage the roster. Saban understands that, meyer understands it.

All types of opponents - fans, reporters looking for dirt, competing recruiters - will throw shit on the wall in hopes that it will stick. In the case of roster management, those doing it need to make sure it's being done with the best interests of the team AND the affected players such that nothing sticks. There are plenty of ways to do the later. Kirby Smart didn't think that was necessary in the cases of the two players he jettisoned. Clearly it was.

[Rocky Bleier]

Paul Finebaum, shill for Shady Nick Saban, actually went on Outside the Lines with John U. Bacon and accused Harbaugh of cheating. The man is a paid prevaricator of the highest order:

http://www.espn.com/video/clip?id=18691987

[iam416]

Buchanan:

Yeah, we probably agree way more than we disagree. I think Kirby will be more careful going forward.

[Rocky Bleier]

Crickets from Finebaum:

http://ftw.usatoday.com/2017/02/louisiana-high-school-coach-nick-saban-alabama-brandon-harris?hootPostID=17d6f68e5ba2c6b75a39df4fb040898b

[hack]

I think the stories are frequent enough and targeted enough to know a few things about this, and that there are tons more ways of cheating than buying recruits. Some of the Tressell stuff just would never ever fly in Ann Arbor. And there are more ways of luring in recruits using gray areas. What Michigan does under Harbaugh is fine with me. He knows the place and the standards he must meet, about which the university is very serious.