Mailbag question: Recruiting the State of Michigan

Posted at 8:00am — 1/12/2010

Mailbag question: Recruiting the State of Michigan

It appears that Coach Rod and his staff have not done a good job establishing trust with the coaches in the state of Michigan in regards to the new Michigan program. I don’t understand why the Southeastern coaches would discourage Hankins from committing. He would receive a great education, be close to home for family members to watch him, and most important, he’s a Michigan fan at heart. I totally trust your team’s judgment on these issues, what is going on with Michigan not securing the top talent in Michigan and please shed some light on this Hankins/Southeastern coaching staff situation? After two years of reading this blog, it is by far the best and most unbiased site concerning Michigan football; please keep up the good work.

D. Phelps

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Thanks for the comments and also the kind words.

In our opinion Coach Rod and staff made the decision early on to emphasize recruiting areas where the staff already had connections. Those areas, were where the staff encountered success while at West Virginia and obviously the staff wanted to keep the pipelines open and flowing.

This meant hitting Florida, especially Southern Florida, very hard. This meant hitting parts of Ohio and Pennsylvania very hard. Those were areas that the staff had success with in the past. They also hit areas in Michigan, with previous Michigan connections, including Cass Tech and Inkster.

Some problems might go all the way back to the first introduction of the new staff to most of the high school coaches at the first spring coaches clinic.

We see Hankins as a decent player who is going to Ohio State. He can go there and not be relied on to play early and learn the system and get into the strength and conditioning program to get in better shape. Also, he could be a good player down the road where he might not be counted on until his third year. Where at Michigan he would probably have to play a little bit right away and be counted on a lot more because of depth issues, and he might not be ready for the task.

We also give Michigan State Coach Dantonio credit, he worked the Detroit PSL and Metro area very hard and it has paid big dividends. He has told high school coaches that he wants to recruit the State of Michigan first and when he cannot find what he needs then he will go elsewhere, but his first priority was the state.

Coach Dantonio has beat Michigan twice in a row and is using that as a recruiting tool to the area coaches and players that he can beat Michigan with the instate kids and does not have to go elsewhere to compete in the Big Ten.

That is why the other day we had an article where we believe the Michigan State game is one of the top three games, and possible the top one, on Coach Rod’s list of games to win this year. To stop the negative recruiting instate along with shutting down all the talk from the Michigan State fan base, coaches, players, etc., talking about how they are on top and have now taken over the state of Michigan.

One thing we want to say is when we give credit to other coaches this does not mean we are attacking Coach Rod. It means we can identify that other coaches are doing a good job as well.

Written by GBMW Staff

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