Mailbag question: Recruiting let down?

So recently you posted an opinion on recruiting, saying that you thought coaches weren’t following through all the way with prospects. That you thought we’d start out strong and then not keep in touch enough with certain recruits, and “fade away at a critical time”. I have certainly seen evidence of this myself.

We have been mentioned among the leaders for so many top recruits this year, and then all of a sudden they surprise commit somewhere else. What bothers me even more is how many recruits that had Michigan among their leaders, are now listing programs like MICHIGAN STATE !?!?!????! As their new leader.

When several of these recruits list MSU’s academic prestige and support as one of the contributing factors to them being their leader, this bothers me even more. No recruit that Michigan is recruiting should ever list that as one of their top factors and then be more interested in another program other than Michigan, unless of course it’s a program like Virginia, Stanford, Cal, etc.

This is not so much a shot on State, they’re a very good school, but let’s face it, Michigan’s just better academically. It’s one of the absolute top in the country if not THE top among public schools. Furthermore, this translates to academic support for athletics as well. So my question is can you elaborate further on your opinion stated above? Do you know this approach to recruiting by the coaches is a fact? Does it apply to every recruit, even those at the top of our board, or just the ones further down?

Thanks,

Nate

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Thanks for the question.

Occasionally, Michigan’s high standards contribute to recruiting woes.

Many recruits have gone elsewhere, Notre Dame and Michigan State come to mind, because potential recruits would have problems getting into Michigan’s business school. But at a place like Notre Dame, even though this university has great academics and high standards, football recruits were informed that they would be enrolled in their business school, whereas at Michigan admission to the prestigious business school seems more difficult. With regards to the recruiting, as with most of our blogs, this is 100% an opinion, based solely on our observations and from talking to recruits and their parents.

It seems to us, that Michigan is using the saturation method of recruiting. Offer a large number of recruits early, get as many as possible of campus, and weed them out as time goes on.

What we are hearing is that when Michigan does decide to drop kids, or back off them, coaches just stop calling and writing. They do not communicate with the players or parents.

In our experience, Michigan is not the only school using this method and there is not a right or wrong way to recruit, just different. This process discussed above of stopping communication (or “unprocess” if you will), involves recruits, the high school coaches who deal with the college coaches on a daily basis, and the parents of the recruits. Football powers do not want to get a bad reputation on the recruiting trail, because this could create future damage for recruiting other players from a high school where maybe the recruiting result from a previous recruit has left a bad taste.

Ohio State, for one, is very up front with recruits, telling players and parents their intentions. Remember E. Mealer being told by Ohio State he would not be offered and this allowed Michigan a shot at him.

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Written by CoachBt and ErocWolverine