It Works?
Once again, another horror story ending with a program with egg on its face. This one involves a possible lawsuit from the recruit suing the NIL collective..." Florida quarterback recruit Jaden Rashada requested a release from his national letter of intent Tuesday night after a $13 million name, image and likeness deal fell through, according to multiple reports."
The numbers throw out there by these programs to entice recruits aren't even real.
Iowa's collective just folded, due to legal concerns, causing top local prospect Kadyn Proctor to choose Alabama.
PSU ended up with a class almost identical to ours, with their "superior" NIL program, and based on the players that Michigan is still in the hunt for, we could pass them in team rankings.
ND lost the crown jewel recruits Keely to Alabama, and Peyton Bowen to Oregon for a few hours and then ultimately OU.
I've observed that there's no "template" for doing NIL right, when it comes to recruits, because that's expressly NOT what NIL is supposed to be.
So we, as Michigan fans look at our roster: Top players NOT transferring out after their freshman seasons (especially if they show potential). Seniors returning over NFL draft prospects (not top rounds). Multiple top transfers selecting Michigan...
Look at those transfers closely- The fact that a 3-star freshman from Nebraska is in one season one of the top transfers means that he was missed as a recruit, in 2022. LaDarius Henderson, a three star recruit transferring in was originally a low 3-star recruit as well, though he is a top 15 transfer, and the #2 OL who entered the portal, though again woefully underrated by the recruiting sites..The season prior, we brought another OL who was overlooked in the rankings: OLU (who wasn't even ranked as a recruit)..
Keep in mind that these players are proof positive that, once enrolled, whether a player can or can not play is in no way affected by their recruiting ranking. More than one of our "big name" returnees for the one more year program fit the same profile:
Put down the recruiting charts and actually judge the player on how the players play on the field, without constantly shading them due to some score that carries nothing tangible to the next level.
While people continue to make proclamations, the gap between OSU's recruiting and ours is about as wide as the gap between Michigan and TCU's recruiting...
Knowing this, and working out the wins and losses between these three teams should provide clarity and while recruiting, and rankings are important, much more goes into wins and losses.
It's not as simple as a numbers game, as, watching the OSU game, would you have believed that, other than at Will Johnson's CB position, OSU outranked us (recruiting wise) at every single position on the field: Higher ranked QBs, RBs, WR's OL, DL, secondary and LBs. The same was true when we played TCU and had higher-ranked recruits at every position.
The same was true at UGA, where 3 five-star QB recruits (Brock Vandagriff, J.T. Daniels, Jake Fromm ) were not the answer and a 4th (Justin Fields) transferred.
Their QB recruiting has been spectacular...on paper...So why did they have to settle on walk-on QB Stetson Bennett?
As his HC Kirby Smart said about Bennett after his second straight national championship: "Everybody misses on him, including us".
Saying all that to say this:
It's no accident that going back to Stanford and Richard Sherman, Jim Harbaugh and his coaching staffs have a propensity to find the recruits that the recruiting rankers miss. They augment those players with the handful of highly-ranked kids who fit (Donovan, Will, and JJ, as examples), add some grad transfers , as well as young proven transfers like Hausmann, and Hinton, who fit.
Why is this so impossible going forward? Keep in mind that the idea of missing out on recruits is now a thing of the past, as you get a second chance to recruit these players out of the portal.
Signing day means far less in obtaining developmental talent than it did prior to 2021. The best teams keep their talent, and bring back more upperclassmen, to let that talent mature and develop.
We should take heed to Wisky and stay in our lane, since that has been working. Wisconsin, you ask?
Well, Wisconsin had a looong run of dominant OLs, and one of the nation's best running games despite mediocre QB play, low-level OL recruiting, and solid but not spectacular RB recruiting...Well in 2020 they added a top 5 RB nationally (Berger), their highest-ranked QB commit ever (Mertz), and mutiple four star, and thier first 2 top 100 OL commits (including 2021 five-star OL Nolan Rucci, and Logan Brown, who based on many who posted here at the time, was a harbinger that Michigan's OL was "taking a step back" ? .
So they took a jump in the recruits they took...How has that Wisconsin OL and running game looked recently? The QB play...did it take a leap with top 5 QB Graham Mertz at the helm?
We all know those answers...
But honestly, I think people speak with so much certainty regarding recruiting that maybe we all don't.
Once again, another horror story ending with a program with egg on its face. This one involves a possible lawsuit from the recruit suing the NIL collective..." Florida quarterback recruit Jaden Rashada requested a release from his national letter of intent Tuesday night after a $13 million name, image and likeness deal fell through, according to multiple reports."
The numbers throw out there by these programs to entice recruits aren't even real.
Iowa's collective just folded, due to legal concerns, causing top local prospect Kadyn Proctor to choose Alabama.
PSU ended up with a class almost identical to ours, with their "superior" NIL program, and based on the players that Michigan is still in the hunt for, we could pass them in team rankings.
ND lost the crown jewel recruits Keely to Alabama, and Peyton Bowen to Oregon for a few hours and then ultimately OU.
I've observed that there's no "template" for doing NIL right, when it comes to recruits, because that's expressly NOT what NIL is supposed to be.
So we, as Michigan fans look at our roster: Top players NOT transferring out after their freshman seasons (especially if they show potential). Seniors returning over NFL draft prospects (not top rounds). Multiple top transfers selecting Michigan...
Look at those transfers closely- The fact that a 3-star freshman from Nebraska is in one season one of the top transfers means that he was missed as a recruit, in 2022. LaDarius Henderson, a three star recruit transferring in was originally a low 3-star recruit as well, though he is a top 15 transfer, and the #2 OL who entered the portal, though again woefully underrated by the recruiting sites..The season prior, we brought another OL who was overlooked in the rankings: OLU (who wasn't even ranked as a recruit)..
Keep in mind that these players are proof positive that, once enrolled, whether a player can or can not play is in no way affected by their recruiting ranking. More than one of our "big name" returnees for the one more year program fit the same profile:
Put down the recruiting charts and actually judge the player on how the players play on the field, without constantly shading them due to some score that carries nothing tangible to the next level.
While people continue to make proclamations, the gap between OSU's recruiting and ours is about as wide as the gap between Michigan and TCU's recruiting...
Knowing this, and working out the wins and losses between these three teams should provide clarity and while recruiting, and rankings are important, much more goes into wins and losses.
It's not as simple as a numbers game, as, watching the OSU game, would you have believed that, other than at Will Johnson's CB position, OSU outranked us (recruiting wise) at every single position on the field: Higher ranked QBs, RBs, WR's OL, DL, secondary and LBs. The same was true when we played TCU and had higher-ranked recruits at every position.
The same was true at UGA, where 3 five-star QB recruits (Brock Vandagriff, J.T. Daniels, Jake Fromm ) were not the answer and a 4th (Justin Fields) transferred.
Their QB recruiting has been spectacular...on paper...So why did they have to settle on walk-on QB Stetson Bennett?
As his HC Kirby Smart said about Bennett after his second straight national championship: "Everybody misses on him, including us".
Saying all that to say this:
It's no accident that going back to Stanford and Richard Sherman, Jim Harbaugh and his coaching staffs have a propensity to find the recruits that the recruiting rankers miss. They augment those players with the handful of highly-ranked kids who fit (Donovan, Will, and JJ, as examples), add some grad transfers , as well as young proven transfers like Hausmann, and Hinton, who fit.
Why is this so impossible going forward? Keep in mind that the idea of missing out on recruits is now a thing of the past, as you get a second chance to recruit these players out of the portal.
Signing day means far less in obtaining developmental talent than it did prior to 2021. The best teams keep their talent, and bring back more upperclassmen, to let that talent mature and develop.
We should take heed to Wisky and stay in our lane, since that has been working. Wisconsin, you ask?
Well, Wisconsin had a looong run of dominant OLs, and one of the nation's best running games despite mediocre QB play, low-level OL recruiting, and solid but not spectacular RB recruiting...Well in 2020 they added a top 5 RB nationally (Berger), their highest-ranked QB commit ever (Mertz), and mutiple four star, and thier first 2 top 100 OL commits (including 2021 five-star OL Nolan Rucci, and Logan Brown, who based on many who posted here at the time, was a harbinger that Michigan's OL was "taking a step back" ? .
So they took a jump in the recruits they took...How has that Wisconsin OL and running game looked recently? The QB play...did it take a leap with top 5 QB Graham Mertz at the helm?
We all know those answers...
But honestly, I think people speak with so much certainty regarding recruiting that maybe we all don't.
