Michigan Football continues to use baseball as recruiting tool

Michigan football has taken advantage of a growing baseball program on campus and could again with recruits in 2021 and 2022.

In the world of recruiting, you have to use whatever tools are available and for the Michigan football program, one tool that it keeps using is the Wolverines baseball team.

Michigan football has been very open about letting players who are interested in football and baseball take part in both sports. It’s not something you see very much anymore, especially not with all the specialization and the concern about injuries. Also, all the offseason time makes it hard for other sports outside of football.

But college baseball is doable, if the staff is willing to make it work and one recruit from 2020, Eamonn Dennis, came to Michigan as a football and baseball player. Gage Garcia is another two-way recruit who will compete in football and wrestling.

While this doesn’t always make a huge difference, it could help U-M with a pair of targets, one in 2021 and one in 2022.

In this cycle, four-star wide receiver Jayden Thomas could be a possible fit as football/baseball player for the Wolverines as 247 sports reported last month ($).

"“Yes, they have (given me the opportunity to play football and baseball).They said I could play football and baseball if I wanted to. I talked to Coach Gattis and (Michigan Baseball Assistant Head Coach) Coach (Nick) Schnabel.”"

Thomas is 6-foot-1 and 198 pounds. He also ranks 184th in the 247 sports composite rankings for 2021, as well as 36th among wide receivers. He’s certainly a top target for the Wolverines right now and with Xavier Worthy’s recruitment seemingly headed towards Oregon, he’s a legit option.

Notre Dame is another rival for him and the Irish may offer the same chance to play baseball, but Michigan is one of the rare programs in the North that can compete at a national level, as it showed with its run to the championship series in 2019.

And that success, as well as the option to play baseball could help Michigan football land an elite signal caller in the 2022 class and that’s four-star MJ Morris. At 6-foot-1, 175 pounds, Morris is athletic and the No. 2 dual-threat quarterback according to the 247 rankings for 2022.

Michigan is in the mix for Morris but landing the No. 5 prospect out of Georgia isn’t going to be easy, not with a slew of SEC schools in the mix. But as Brice Marich of The Michigan Insider reported ($), the staff is open to the possibility.

As far as quarterbacks are concerned, you have to do whatever you can to get their commitment, so if that means allowing Morris to play baseball at Michigan, I’m all for it.