UM Football Recruiting - by WM Wolverine

[hack]

I don't think that's what Talent was talking about. No doubt, however, that Hoke's staff should be relentless in chasing talent but doing it in a way consistent with the school's values.

[Jeff Buchanan]

My point here is that ruthless closing, the type that might be required to land what is generally regarded as the best talent, is a closing style that I hope Hoke and Mattison scrupulously avoid.

I think there is a general perception that one does what needs to be done to produce winning football. IOW, cheating pays. That the NCAA is so freaking ineffective in keeping programs from misbehaving makes it easy for recruiting staffs to do just that. The credibility of the sport suffers when that sort of thing is rampant. I'm hoping that Hoke and Mattison won't choose to muck around in that sort of way and I'll be happy to have Michigan play average football if they don't.

[iam416]

I didn't take issue with your assertion that M wouldn't venture into paying recruits.

I took issue with the notion that, short of that, Hokattison won't do everything in their power to bring in talented kids.

[lineygoblue]

Repeating a text message I sent to my friend Jeff earlier today...

To read some of these comments, one could be led to believe that Michigan has totally whiffed on this recruiting class.

[Jamie H]

I think both Talent and Jeff are right. Hoke will not be able to survive without going hard after the to recruits. And he should do so, but it isn't worth doing anything shady just to get a kid. If that is the only way to get a kid and you lose him because you won't go there, well too bad. Move on to the next one. I don't want Hoke bribing kids by offering jobs to their girlfriends or whatever Saban is doing now.

[Rocky Bleier]

Repeating a text message I sent to my friend Jeff earlier today...

To read some of these comments, one could be led to believe that Michigan has totally whiffed on this recruiting class.

No, but Michigan has whiffed on their last 4 recruits, and after having a huge lead on osu have now been passed as Urbie offered every good player in the Big Ten's footprint. It's a good class, but it could have been better. As someone said the other day, there was a time when we were wondering if we had enough scholarships for all the players who were interested.

[SeattleLionsFan]

It's a great class! It was a better class last August.

[lineygoblue]

I think Coach Hoke has recruited an excellent class.

When he became coach, he identified the areas where Michigan needed to get better.

He successfully identified those areas, and has recruited to fill those areas of need.

I have absolutely no doubt that he will continue that trend with the 2013 class.

Meyer has a lot of built-in advantages in his position. There are kids in Ohio who would commit to a big yellow dog, if he were the head coach of the schmucknuts. It goes with the territory. I really think a lot of Michigan fans are guilty of making the pope out to be much bigger than he is.

Even an underachieving Michigan team that lost to App State on their home field found a way to beat the mighty Urban in his own state, with the Heisman winner at QB. He's not unbeatable. He will be tough, to be sure. But, not unbeatable.

I don't know what else to say. If you guys want to continue to puff up this guy to make him bigger than he is, I guess its okay with me.

[iam416]

Woah, woah. Hold up just a second there, Hoss. UFM is NOT unbeatable???? WTF is OSU paying that clown for?

[Mackenzie]

If that's what it takes to close on 4 and 5 star 18 year olds, in order to get the talent it takes to compete, I'll settle for "shitty football" played by a team with character.

Ditto.

[WM Wolverine]

Horrible finish to this recruiting class but M started extremely well. They are still in great shape and have an excellent class overall. They'll have plenty of needs to address in '13 thanks to a horrible class in '11.

[Rocky Bleier]

Liney,

How is saying that the class could have been better with a good finish the same as saying it's not a good class? How is saying that Meyer closed the gap well the same as puffing him up? Do you hear people giving you the middle finger, too?

[geo weidl]

Horrible finish to this recruiting class but M started extremely well.

Disappointment yes, but would it have been any better if we had started horribly?

[Hannibal]

IMHO the biggest mistake of this class was taking the "Dunn or bust" approach. We needed a stud tailback. Slow playing Burbridge when we needed talent at that position was a mistake too. The other misses are normal for a football program.

[iam416]

I agree with that, but to be fair to Hokattison, they had Dunn flipped. But that does illustrate why you want Plan B options.

From what I can tell, Hokatisson recruits a lot like Tressel. They seem measured with their targets -- they recruit them hard -- but it's measured. I think you get something like 60 OVs per season. Tressel would only use 30-35 per year -- for those kids that were really interested in OSU and that OSU was really interested in. I'm not sure how many OVs M has used -- but I would guess it's way under the limit.

UFM takes a very different approach.