Michigan Football: What To Make Of Offers Contingent On Camp Attendance

Four-star receiver Lamont Wade made waves recently by dropping Michigan football from his list of schools after the program apparently made his offer contingent on camp attendance.

Usually when Michigan football is in the news, it’s for something we can rally behind and be proud of. Every now and then, that’s not true. This might be one of those times.

Four-star wide receiver Lamont Wade tweeted on Wednesday that he dropped the Wolverines from his list of contenders after he was told he needed to attend a camp at Michigan to keep a valid scholarship offer.

Wade even went so far as to call Michigan his dream school.

https://twitter.com/Goony_38/status/760901999902625792?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

Wade was fairly open about the whole thing on Twitter, responding to fans about his thoughts on the situation.

Michigan got caught up on the wrong end of things last season when Jim Harbaugh reportedly pulled a scholarship offer from long-time offensive lineman commit Erik Swenson, who had been pledged to the Wolverines since he was a sophomore in high school.

In that case, I sided with Swenson while admitting that it’d be hard to firmly choose a stance since Michigan couldn’t legally comment on the matter.

"From a human standpoint, it’s hard to let Jim Harbaugh off the hook on this one. I know we’re always supposed to look past shadiness he might cast, but pulling an offer from someone who’s been committed for more than two years seems to undermine the humanity."

This is a little different than that. Lamont may have admitted Michigan was his “dreammmmm school,” but it’s not like he was committed to the program. Competing for a scholarship is exactly what happens anyway. The only issue that comes up is that Harbaugh offered Lamont on Sept. 1, 2015, the start of his junior year.

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To offer someone a scholarship and then later clarify that they need to attend a camp to keep that offer probably seems fishy to some, but we don’t know what (if any) stipulations were included with that original offer.

Maybe the staff saw something during Wade’s junior season that made them want to get a closer look at him before keeping an offer on the table.

Harbaugh has called the recruiting process a “meritocracy,” meaning you get what you work for, and the strongest survive.

“We’re very much out there, we don’t hide how we operate and with what we do,” Harbaugh said. “It’s a meritocracy. In everything we do in our program.

“It’s going to continue to be that.”

So far as I can tell, Harbaugh didn’t stray from that philosophy here. In fact, he basically reinforced that that’s still the status quo for his program, and the opinions of others aren’t going to change that.

Unpopular as it may be for some, we have to continue to come back to the fact that high school athletes can make an infinite number of commitments during the recruiting process, and rarely do we bat an eye when we see so-and-so decommit from a school. Is it fair to hold programs and coaches to a higher standard?

Next: Top 10 running backs in Michigan history

Either way, this won’t take long to blow over. Football is close, and Michigan’s recruiting class is doing just fine.

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