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Depending on your perspective, Wednesday could be either the best or worst day on the college football offseason calendar. It is National Signing Day, ground zero for the hype, celebration and criticism of the college decisions of 17- and 18-year-olds, the end point for a multi-year recruiting process that never ends for coaches. It's a distraction from X's and O's and player development, but it is crucial to success, thus creating a never-ending game of one-upmanship on the recruiting trail."I think recruiting is the least desirable part of a college coach's job," the Michigan coach said. "This is particularly true in regard to the blue chip player. Let's not kid ourselves, when it comes to the blue chippers the recruiting tactics often become ridiculous. And there are abuses, although they're not often as bad as some people might think."
The year was 1973, and the Michigan coach was Bo Schembechler, describing the worst part of his job to a UPI reporter. The sentiment was timeless and could apply just as well to the 2016 recruiting cycle, otherwise known as the Year of Jim Harbaugh. In fact, it seems as if Schembechler was perfectly describing the recruiting tactics of his future protégé, who played quarterback for him from 1982-86 and became the Michigan head coach starting with the 2015 season.
Since returning to Michigan in his role as the new Bo, Harbaugh has ruffled the feathers of coaches across the country, aggressively disrupting the Big Ten and trying to close the gap with Urban Meyer and Ohio State and reaffirm the status of Michigan, a proud, historically successful program that has been mired in an aimless slump for a decade.
And so Harbaugh traveled the country to conduct satellite camps, advertising himself as a sort of football evangelist, pushing Michigan into the news cycle throughout the 2015 offseason while spreading his own personal football gospel to perspective recruits and audiences around the country. Since the end of the season, he has attended class, had sleepovers and climbed a tree with recruits, proving to be the most social-media-ready coach in a time in which Nick Saban is dabbing and Notre Dame is driving its equipment truck across the country to recruits' houses.
On Monday, Harbaugh continued his push by publishing an essay on The Players' Tribune under the headline "Who's Got It Better than Us?" that described his upbringing and his personal attachment to Michigan and Ann Arbor. It was, essentially, his final public recruiting pitch.
On Wednesday, Harbaugh will cap off the process with a celebrity-filled "Signing with the Stars" event in which the recruiting class will be announced with the help of Tom Brady, Derek Jeter, Ric Flair and others.
Recruiting is a necessary evil, and while many coaches may despise the time and effort it takes to land talented high school prospects, that won't stop them from diving in head first and contributing to the absurdity. It has been proven time and time again that national championships are won on the recruiting trail; recruiting rankings may be inexact, but they're a solid predictor of success overall.
But recruiting isn't won or lost on signing day. Recruiting is a year-round job. Nobody understands that better than Harbaugh, who, through his reputation as a coach at Stanford and with the 49ers, an understanding of how to capture attention and sheer force of personality, has fully embraced the modern 24/7 recruiting landscape with a Trump-ian knack for making headlines for himself on a daily basis, whether they're positive or negative. He doesn't even have to talk to the media to do it, because the press is happy to pick up on his every move, whether it's his love for Judge Judy or Cracker Barrel, or every tweet from the recruiting trail.
Harbaugh has thrust Michigan back into the spotlight, making sure that Michigan is seen as a national power to be reckoned with again. It's working.
On the day before signing day, Michigan sits sixth in the 247Sports composite rankings, and it will likely rise higher. Several prospects remain on the table, most notably Paramus, N.J., defensive tackle Rashan Gary, the nation's No. 1 overall recruit. Harbaugh hired Paramus Catholic head coach Chris Partridge to his staff last year and promoted him to linebackers/special teams coach this year, a move that is paying off in a big way. It's no coincidence that Michigan is dominating the state of New Jersey, with four of the top eight players in the state committed and Gary possibly on the way too.
Michigan has effectively embraced a national strategy, which is essential given that Michigan is a middle-of-the-road state for prep talent. As of Monday, the Wolverines had 25 commitments. Only one is from Michigan, while five are from New Jersey and six are from Florida, with others ranging from Alabama to Colorado to California. Michigan typically steals a few recruits from Ohio, but that is not even true this year.
Over a decade of mediocrity, recruiting hasn't always been Michigan's problem. Brady Hoke signed classes ranked No. 4 (2013) and No. 6 (2012), according to the 247Sports composite ratings. Those came too late for him, as they helped form the foundation of the Wolverines' success in Harbaugh's first season. The Rich Rodriguez era was a disaster, but he signed top-10 classes in each of his first two years, setting the stage for Hoke's first-year Sugar Bowl appearance.
Harbaugh, however, is trying to restore Michigan to the days of Bo, with a modern spin. He fits the culture of Ann Arbor, given that Schembechler was his mentor, and he's better equipped to capitalize on recruiting successes than either Rodriguez or Hoke, given his track record as a coach on the field.
Schembechler loathed recruiting. He believed the time demands were responsible for shortening the careers of coaches, and on multiple occasions he expressed a wish that head coaches would be banned from recruiting off campus, that those trips would be delegated to assistants. Many coaches likely believe it, but Schembechler had no problem saying it.
"Here's the problem," Schembechler told the Detroit Free Press in 1979. "If Woody Hayes goes into a home, I've gotta go into a home. If Dan Devine's there, I gotta go. If Joe Paterno's there, I gotta go, too. You can't let the kid feel you don't think enough of him to visit him yourself."
Schembechler, of course, desired to win more than he hated to recruit, so he fully invested himself in it, in an era in which his every move wasn't followed online Harbaugh is taking Schembechler's philosophies of begrudging acceptance of recruiting and fully throwing himself into it. Harbaugh is relentless, forever doing anything possible to convince a player that Michigan is the only place he belongs.
It doesn't work for everybody. Harbaugh's aloofness turns plenty of people off, and he's not going to win over every living room. But recruiting is a contest of who can get the most attention. Not only will Harbaugh visit a recruit; he'll make sure that everyone is aware that he is visiting the recruit. It's a local story when most coaches visit a recruit. It's a national story when Harbaugh does it. He will spread his gospel, and he will make sure that his visits are tweeted and put on Instagram thanks to some special quirk that nobody else is doing, because when that happens, both local and national media inevitably pick it up and Michigan will stay in the news.
Harbaugh has, of course, also ruffled the feathers of some prospects, with a couple players decommitting after Michigan supposedly backed off its interest late in the game with upgrades potentially on the way. It's the type of thing that unfortunately happens often in recruiting, and Harbaugh's aggressive approach to recruiting in general will lead to him getting more criticism than most.
Harbaugh can't publicly discuss specific recruits until after they sign, but last Friday he responded to a question about these types of situations by saying: "We're very much out there, we don't hide how we operate and with what we do. It's a meritocracy with everything we do in our program. It's going to continue to be that."
The absurdity of the recruiting system has gotten more notice in recent years because of how the 24/7 news cycle is capable of magnifying every issue, but complaints have been going on for decades. In truth, recruiting is in many respects not much more bizarre than it was 40 or 50 years ago.
In the summer of 1961, then-Alabama assistant Howard Schnellenberger headed north to Beaver Falls, Pa. Fall practice may have been starting, but Bear Bryant had a more important assignment for Schnellenberger: Get Joe Namath to Tuscaloosa. In his book Passing the Torch, Schnellenberger writes that he spent eight days in Beaver Falls before Namath's mother invited him to stay for dinner. By the time he convinced Namath to fly to Alabama, he said he was nearly out of money and had to write bad checks just to get back to campus with the prized quarterback, 10 days after leaving. Bryant, of course, closed the deal and signed Namath.
Recruiting has always been packed with absurdities. It's built on relationships, but it's also built on outworking the competition. It's been that way for decades, only it wasn't until recently that every move of a coach and player was immediately broadcast to college football fans in every corner of America thanks to the rise of recruiting news websites and social media.
"The system is killing us," then-Tennessee coach Johnny Majors said in 1981. "It destroys the family life of the coaches and ruins what should be one of the greatest years for a high school athlete. It's so hypocritical. We treat a recruit a way he'll never be treated again for the rest of his life. We should shorten the recruiting season from nine months to three, with no recruiting during the high school season."
It's possible that the modern magnification of the process -- with armies of recruiting reporters and fans hanging on every word of high school seniors -- will dictate further changes at some point, but it's hard to imagine recruiting ever undergoing a massive overhaul that drastically reduces the time spent on it. Coaches need great players to win, and thus they need to compete with each other to sign them. They may not like it, but as long as they have to, they're going to find every possible way to gain an advantage legally (or, of course, illegally), just like they would on the field.
Every once in a while, a coach comes along to further push the boundaries, to get a little bit more creative, find loopholes and think outside the box, thus inspiring more rules. In 2016, that coach is Harbaugh. It may seem ridiculous, and it may at times appear unethical. But the thing that has changed most since the days of Schembechler is how the audience consumes recruiting, and every bizarre new story is merely an offshoot of that.
Given the way the 2016 recruiting cycle has played out, nobody understands that better than Harbaugh, who has adapted to the current climate better than anyone and has made Michigan the most talked about school in the country in an era in which 24/7 attention is everything.
Depending on your perspective, Wednesday could be either the best or worst day on the college football offseason calendar. It is National Signing Day, ground zero for the hype, celebration and criticism of the college decisions of 17- and 18-year-olds, the end point for a multi-year recruiting process that never ends for coaches. It's a distraction from X's and O's and player development, but it is crucial to success, thus creating a never-ending game of one-upmanship on the recruiting trail."I think recruiting is the least desirable part of a college coach's job," the Michigan coach said. "This is particularly true in regard to the blue chip player. Let's not kid ourselves, when it comes to the blue chippers the recruiting tactics often become ridiculous. And there are abuses, although they're not often as bad as some people might think."
The year was 1973, and the Michigan coach was Bo Schembechler, describing the worst part of his job to a UPI reporter. The sentiment was timeless and could apply just as well to the 2016 recruiting cycle, otherwise known as the Year of Jim Harbaugh. In fact, it seems as if Schembechler was perfectly describing the recruiting tactics of his future protégé, who played quarterback for him from 1982-86 and became the Michigan head coach starting with the 2015 season.
Since returning to Michigan in his role as the new Bo, Harbaugh has ruffled the feathers of coaches across the country, aggressively disrupting the Big Ten and trying to close the gap with Urban Meyer and Ohio State and reaffirm the status of Michigan, a proud, historically successful program that has been mired in an aimless slump for a decade.
And so Harbaugh traveled the country to conduct satellite camps, advertising himself as a sort of football evangelist, pushing Michigan into the news cycle throughout the 2015 offseason while spreading his own personal football gospel to perspective recruits and audiences around the country. Since the end of the season, he has attended class, had sleepovers and climbed a tree with recruits, proving to be the most social-media-ready coach in a time in which Nick Saban is dabbing and Notre Dame is driving its equipment truck across the country to recruits' houses.
On Monday, Harbaugh continued his push by publishing an essay on The Players' Tribune under the headline "Who's Got It Better than Us?" that described his upbringing and his personal attachment to Michigan and Ann Arbor. It was, essentially, his final public recruiting pitch.
On Wednesday, Harbaugh will cap off the process with a celebrity-filled "Signing with the Stars" event in which the recruiting class will be announced with the help of Tom Brady, Derek Jeter, Ric Flair and others.
Recruiting is a necessary evil, and while many coaches may despise the time and effort it takes to land talented high school prospects, that won't stop them from diving in head first and contributing to the absurdity. It has been proven time and time again that national championships are won on the recruiting trail; recruiting rankings may be inexact, but they're a solid predictor of success overall.
But recruiting isn't won or lost on signing day. Recruiting is a year-round job. Nobody understands that better than Harbaugh, who, through his reputation as a coach at Stanford and with the 49ers, an understanding of how to capture attention and sheer force of personality, has fully embraced the modern 24/7 recruiting landscape with a Trump-ian knack for making headlines for himself on a daily basis, whether they're positive or negative. He doesn't even have to talk to the media to do it, because the press is happy to pick up on his every move, whether it's his love for Judge Judy or Cracker Barrel, or every tweet from the recruiting trail.
Harbaugh has thrust Michigan back into the spotlight, making sure that Michigan is seen as a national power to be reckoned with again. It's working.
On the day before signing day, Michigan sits sixth in the 247Sports composite rankings, and it will likely rise higher. Several prospects remain on the table, most notably Paramus, N.J., defensive tackle Rashan Gary, the nation's No. 1 overall recruit. Harbaugh hired Paramus Catholic head coach Chris Partridge to his staff last year and promoted him to linebackers/special teams coach this year, a move that is paying off in a big way. It's no coincidence that Michigan is dominating the state of New Jersey, with four of the top eight players in the state committed and Gary possibly on the way too.
Michigan has effectively embraced a national strategy, which is essential given that Michigan is a middle-of-the-road state for prep talent. As of Monday, the Wolverines had 25 commitments. Only one is from Michigan, while five are from New Jersey and six are from Florida, with others ranging from Alabama to Colorado to California. Michigan typically steals a few recruits from Ohio, but that is not even true this year.
Over a decade of mediocrity, recruiting hasn't always been Michigan's problem. Brady Hoke signed classes ranked No. 4 (2013) and No. 6 (2012), according to the 247Sports composite ratings. Those came too late for him, as they helped form the foundation of the Wolverines' success in Harbaugh's first season. The Rich Rodriguez era was a disaster, but he signed top-10 classes in each of his first two years, setting the stage for Hoke's first-year Sugar Bowl appearance.
Harbaugh, however, is trying to restore Michigan to the days of Bo, with a modern spin. He fits the culture of Ann Arbor, given that Schembechler was his mentor, and he's better equipped to capitalize on recruiting successes than either Rodriguez or Hoke, given his track record as a coach on the field.
Schembechler loathed recruiting. He believed the time demands were responsible for shortening the careers of coaches, and on multiple occasions he expressed a wish that head coaches would be banned from recruiting off campus, that those trips would be delegated to assistants. Many coaches likely believe it, but Schembechler had no problem saying it.
"Here's the problem," Schembechler told the Detroit Free Press in 1979. "If Woody Hayes goes into a home, I've gotta go into a home. If Dan Devine's there, I gotta go. If Joe Paterno's there, I gotta go, too. You can't let the kid feel you don't think enough of him to visit him yourself."
Schembechler, of course, desired to win more than he hated to recruit, so he fully invested himself in it, in an era in which his every move wasn't followed online Harbaugh is taking Schembechler's philosophies of begrudging acceptance of recruiting and fully throwing himself into it. Harbaugh is relentless, forever doing anything possible to convince a player that Michigan is the only place he belongs.
It doesn't work for everybody. Harbaugh's aloofness turns plenty of people off, and he's not going to win over every living room. But recruiting is a contest of who can get the most attention. Not only will Harbaugh visit a recruit; he'll make sure that everyone is aware that he is visiting the recruit. It's a local story when most coaches visit a recruit. It's a national story when Harbaugh does it. He will spread his gospel, and he will make sure that his visits are tweeted and put on Instagram thanks to some special quirk that nobody else is doing, because when that happens, both local and national media inevitably pick it up and Michigan will stay in the news.
Harbaugh has, of course, also ruffled the feathers of some prospects, with a couple players decommitting after Michigan supposedly backed off its interest late in the game with upgrades potentially on the way. It's the type of thing that unfortunately happens often in recruiting, and Harbaugh's aggressive approach to recruiting in general will lead to him getting more criticism than most.
Harbaugh can't publicly discuss specific recruits until after they sign, but last Friday he responded to a question about these types of situations by saying: "We're very much out there, we don't hide how we operate and with what we do. It's a meritocracy with everything we do in our program. It's going to continue to be that."
The absurdity of the recruiting system has gotten more notice in recent years because of how the 24/7 news cycle is capable of magnifying every issue, but complaints have been going on for decades. In truth, recruiting is in many respects not much more bizarre than it was 40 or 50 years ago.
In the summer of 1961, then-Alabama assistant Howard Schnellenberger headed north to Beaver Falls, Pa. Fall practice may have been starting, but Bear Bryant had a more important assignment for Schnellenberger: Get Joe Namath to Tuscaloosa. In his book Passing the Torch, Schnellenberger writes that he spent eight days in Beaver Falls before Namath's mother invited him to stay for dinner. By the time he convinced Namath to fly to Alabama, he said he was nearly out of money and had to write bad checks just to get back to campus with the prized quarterback, 10 days after leaving. Bryant, of course, closed the deal and signed Namath.
Recruiting has always been packed with absurdities. It's built on relationships, but it's also built on outworking the competition. It's been that way for decades, only it wasn't until recently that every move of a coach and player was immediately broadcast to college football fans in every corner of America thanks to the rise of recruiting news websites and social media.
"The system is killing us," then-Tennessee coach Johnny Majors said in 1981. "It destroys the family life of the coaches and ruins what should be one of the greatest years for a high school athlete. It's so hypocritical. We treat a recruit a way he'll never be treated again for the rest of his life. We should shorten the recruiting season from nine months to three, with no recruiting during the high school season."
It's possible that the modern magnification of the process -- with armies of recruiting reporters and fans hanging on every word of high school seniors -- will dictate further changes at some point, but it's hard to imagine recruiting ever undergoing a massive overhaul that drastically reduces the time spent on it. Coaches need great players to win, and thus they need to compete with each other to sign them. They may not like it, but as long as they have to, they're going to find every possible way to gain an advantage legally (or, of course, illegally), just like they would on the field.
Every once in a while, a coach comes along to further push the boundaries, to get a little bit more creative, find loopholes and think outside the box, thus inspiring more rules. In 2016, that coach is Harbaugh. It may seem ridiculous, and it may at times appear unethical. But the thing that has changed most since the days of Schembechler is how the audience consumes recruiting, and every bizarre new story is merely an offshoot of that.
Given the way the 2016 recruiting cycle has played out, nobody understands that better than Harbaugh, who has adapted to the current climate better than anyone and has made Michigan the most talked about school in the country in an era in which 24/7 attention is everything.
