Michigan Football: Clink hire is helping with Myles Pollard

If Michigan football was helped in any recruitment by the hire of Steve Clinkscale, it was probably with three-star cornerback Myles Pollard.

In college football, anytime you have a change on your coaching staff, it’s going to have an impact on the recruiting trail. It’s just the nature of the beast.

Whether that impact is positive or negative depends on the coach and the circumstances. But a new coach can also mean re-setting the board, which isn’t necessarily the case for Michigan football as it goes from Maurice Linguist to Steve Clinkscale.

Clinkscale is the new passing-game coordinator on defense and his hire was a great pickup by Jim Harbaugh, who lost Linguist unexpectedly to a head-coaching job.

Yet, one thing that makes the transition smooth is the fact that Clinkscale was already recruiting one of Linguist’s top targets — Myles Pollard.

Pollard is ranked 418th overall in the 2022 class according to the 247 sports composite rankings. He’s also 37th among cornerbacks and 18th in the state of Tennessee.

The prospect out of Brentwood was getting a lot of attention from Linguist and the Wolverines. And while the loss of a position coach can hurt a recruitment, it sounds like the addition of Clink is helping the Wolverines, who are now viewed as the clear leader with Pollard according to a tweet from Sam Webb of the Michigan Insider.

Clink had Kentucky in the mix and one of his first acts was reaching out to Pollard, who is going to take an official visit to Michigan in June.

Pollard also has a tight relationship with five-star cornerback commit Will Johnson, who is also really happy about the hire of Clink.

Johnson had this to say to Sam Webb of the Michigan Insider: “The guys that are on the verge of committing…I’d say (Clinkscale’s hire) helped it a lot more.”

Pollard seems to be one of the guys Johnson is talking about. He’s also among the top targets left at cornerback. Listed a three-star recruit but at 6-foot-2, 185 pounds, he can really play and it wouldn’t be surprising to see him move up in the 2022 rankings.

Oklahoma is the team that seems to be looming large. But Florida is also going to get a visit along with Auburn.

That means the Wolverines have a lot of work to do, but in a positive sense, the coaching change seems to have helped, not hurt with Pollard.