2025 4* RB Marquise Davis commits to… Kentucky?
https://x.com/edwardscbs/status/1785680459910787170?s=46&t=k0ReKBmjV71IDatFTuosDQ
After a lot of recent crystal balls and Michigan buzz, Davis seems to randomly have committed to Kentucky. Gotta say that I’m getting really tired of an essentially irrelevant program being such a thorn in our side
lol what a joke. should have known once Sam and crew started full hype train for him
Welcome to The Tony Alford Experience, y'all
He just doesn't ever not miss. Count on it.
You should give up trolling, you're not very good at it...
Incredible posting history. Kudos for being around for 14 years on a rival's website.
When I posted that Alford was an elite coach but a mid recruiter, the TruBlue, and Meeshigan crowd said I was trolling, despite the objective facts. Seeing is believing, and this scenario will play out year after year. Alford already had a relationship with Davis and can’t pull him to UM and loses him to KY.
Again, Alford is a great coach but needs help with recruiting.
This was an NIL loss, not a recruiting loss. But go off.
What was the NIL offer from KY, and what was UM offering? With your claim you must know those details, please share. If you don’t think this is a recruiting loss regardless, you’re simply incorrect.
Michigan won't pay players to show up on campus, but will pay them to stay/perform.
Kentucky probably offered a "signing bonus" + some BS guarantee and the kid jumped.
I don't think they really pay them to stay either with what happened with DJ Waller. Our NIL is way better than it was but the stuff about how Michigan's Football NIL is one of the best in the country from Sam/Seth is overblown.
I don't think that Michigan's is one of the best, but I don't think what happened with Waller is any indication of Michigan not being good at it. It's no different than the job market. Just like most companies, we lose people to competitors that overpay for someone that we don't think is worth that much money
You keep making comments like this. How much do you want Michigan to pay for someone like Waller? Honestly.
Is there a limit in your eyes? What’s the price? What if someone pays more than what Michigan feels that player is worth, we’re still going to sit here and trash Michigan’s NIL because we’re not overpaying players?
Just because we aren’t throwing obscene amounts of money at high schoolers and backups doesn’t mean our NIL program isn’t very good. There’s likely a price they have that they’re willing to pay and if they’re offered more than that elsewhere, they’re okay seeing them leave.
DJ Waller hasn't done anything yet. We can't be paying all the starters and still give a huge bag to some guy who has hardly played and might be a starter or rotation player. Just like with Sabb, Bama will always pay more for their 1st safety than we will for our 3rd.
Yeah but what did DJ Waller do to command big NIL money? He got hit in the chest with two horrible passes from our QBs. Then proceeded to fumble one back to the other team and drop the other. I’m not saying he isn’t going to be a good player, but UK got a glimpse of him and thought he was worth throwing the bag at. Oh well. Saab was a much bigger NIL loss.
It’s pretty clear he was favoring Michigan. The national recruiting experts were putting crystal ball projections in and On3 had the odds at over 89%. Visited 3 times in the last month. Then he committed to Kentucky out of nowhere.
Seems pretty obvious that this was NIL related and has very little to do with Alford and his recruiting ability.
With your claim that his claim is “simply incorrect”, you must know the details! Please share or you’re simply incorrect.
Much like Keon Sabb, Waller was in a real fight for a starting job and may have to wait until 2025 to lock it down. By all accounts, Jyaire Hill had a very strong Spring. An SEC program that can offer him a guaranteed starting spot has a leg up on Michigan, granted Bama more so than Kentucky. That's worth plenty to the typical player with NFL ambitions.
Add in that he's worth more to his new team than he was to Michigan and it stands to reason they would offer him more in NIL too. If Michigan outbids UK and Hill beats out Waller, they are overpaying. Does that cause issues with his teammates? He cashed in before proving himself, why do I have to wait? NIL poses plenty of new problems aside from just funding.
Another buckeye troll....Heads up, fans do not hire coaches so maybe keep your negative thoughts to yourself or 11Whiners.
Did he not recruit Henderson?
He did. Alford signed 13 RB’s across 9 classes as shown below. This is the definition of being a mid recruiter at a school like OSU or UM. If this is elite to others, they are entitled to their view.
2016: McCall played RB, WR & CB; Antonio Williams transferred to UNC
2017: JK was a 3-year starter & the only one to get drafted
2018: Snead was removed from the program; Teague had a role for a few years & went undrafted
2019: Chambers moved to LB, Crowley medically retired
2020: Miyan was a 4-year contributor (consolation for missing on Bijan), solid rb.
2021: Henderson's a 4-year starter; Pryor transferred to Cincy
2022: Hayden was RB 3 and transferred
2023: Lost Mark Fletcher to Miami
2024: James Peoples & Sam Williams-Dixon
Which of your student athletes are you referring to as mid? I don't follow your school's recruiting very closely.
I refered to his recruiting body of work as mid, but you already knew that. He put 1 RB in the league in 9 years. How UM fans can see his body of work and gas him up to be a great recruiter is mind boggling. If you want to look at the specific players, they are posted above, label them as you choose.
In the first post Alford year, OSU has or is favored for both Bo Jackson and Jordan Davidson, the 5th and 7th ranked RB’s in the class. Alford never sniffed signing 2 RB’s in the top 7.
Neither did Mike Hart.
Hart wasn’t an ace recruiter.
So someone can be a great coach even if they are average at recruiting? It’s literally the point I made about Alford.
“He put 1 RB in the league in 9 years.”
Lazy take. The first few years he inherited running backs who went to the NFL, Elliott and Sermon. You don’t want to give him credit because he didn’t recruit them, that’s fine. But you can’t count those years against him either in that case. So you’re down to 7 years. He then had JK Dobbins start for 3 years and sent him to the league. Weber started for a year and then backed up Dobbins, and was drafted. You then followed that up with Henderson for 3 years, and would have been drafted if he entered this year. But because Henderson is returning, it conveniently doesn’t go on Alford’s record.
SO. During Alford’s tenure, every starting running back at OSU has either been drafted, or WILL BE drafted. It’s a gross manipulation of technicalities to denigrate Alford’s accomplishments.
In 2020 no one he recruited developed into RB 1, so he had to get Sermon out of the portal. From 2021 to current he had Henderson, and none of his recruits were ready when Trey got hurt in any of those years. He missed on all of them. Depth matters, you have to have more than 1 RB who can play. You can call him a recruiting God if you like, but his recruiting has been the definition of mid. there’s a reason why he took a pay cut I OSU and they refused to extend his contract. It wasn’t because he wasn’t a great coach, he is. His recruiting, however, is not at a level to compete for championships, it’s mid
Blah blah blah
You are boring. Go back to 11 Weirdos.
2021 henderson was 1 and prior was 6.
Criticizing his recruiting when guys transferred because they were stuck behind Dobbins and Henderson for years is certainly a take…
UM money cannons not being able to compete with Kentucky, and that’s why they didn’t get a recruit, is also a take. Alford gets stuffed in a locker by Kentucky and the only thing not questioned is his recruiting because insiders got it wrong…..
From experience, the next thing he will do is go to South Florida to find a kid that pulls away to another school at signing day.
It’s not the money cannons. It’s Warde and the AD not promoting and directing the money to NIL. He hogs the money for the AD. Only school in America. And due to us having regents that hate sports, we chose Warde over Jim. If you actually think UK boosters have more money than UM boosters I don’t know what to say. These continue to be all self-inflicted, 100% controllable wounds. And no other school deals with this as poorly as Michigan. But gotta make the regents who hate sports happy.
Gene Smith initially encouraged boosters to donate to the athletics department rather than the foundations. It took too long, but they figured it out. What you describe as happening at UM sounds horrific.
Not being able to and deciding not to are two very different things. The current practice of throwing money at high schoolers, many of whom enter the portal or never pan out, isn’t a sustainable practice. Michigan deciding not to play in the mud while the system regulates itself doesn’t represent an inability to financially compete.
But again, that’s just an extremely lazy take from you.
Claiming with no basis in fact that UM lost him to KY due to NIL is the ultimate lazy take.
If UM can’t compete with KY for the #1 RB on their board due to NIL, how will they compete with the elite teams? Not having a NIL strategy for recruits wouldn’t be “staying above the fray”, it would just be killing recruiting.
The “basis” being that everyone had him going to Michigan, his own comments had him going to Michigan, and in the 11th hour he decided to commit to Kentucky. Just like Miami flipping those guys from OSU last year, it’s pretty clear when a lesser program swoops in with a big money offer.
“how will they compete with the elite teams?” I can’t hear you over the national championship rings
Congrats, UM won the championship. They were the best team in college football and deserved the win. As for competing with other teams, would you be happy as an LSU fan in 2020, 2021…….
Nice job exposing your hurt red ass. Sorry...scarlet.
“should have known once Sam and crew started full hype train for him”
He had two crystal ball projections, both to Michigan and both from NATIONAL guys. On3 gave Michigan an 89.5% chance at landing this commit, OSU was next highest at 3.1% with UK at 2.7%.
Weird to attribute this to Sam and other insiders starting a hype train when the kid made a (likely NIL induced) decision out of left field.
Is there any other major program with a Kentucky equivalent? Just bizarrely seems to win battles they shouldn't, get a number of transfers from the better program, etc.
and does jack squat with them...I feel like Kentucky would be a great school to go to i was a high three star who felt like i was going to top out in college and wanted to get paid. For a legitimatley good player though, you could go lots of places that would pay you similar NIL (not here) and you could have a hope of winning more than 8 games once in your career
I think Ole Miss is an apt comparison that’s easy to miss because they’re further along the path and happen to have a coach with a history of being a media lightning rod.
I can’t fault either program tbh. As things stand now, they’d both on the chopping block in the more extreme super league scenarios. But at the current pace, either could secure status on the level of say, Penn State.
Ohio state has Miami.
Don't underestimate the power of beautiful women and bourbon. If my 20 something self had the options, those things would have been high on the decision making list. Plus, they're probably tossing around the bag, it's the trifecta!
I get your last sentence. But, bourbon? Do they serve it in the dorms[1] there?
[1] Or, what Monkey House is describing.
Lol athletes don't stay in dorms at UK. They have their own apartment complex
I would be in Oxford myself. NIL, beautiful campus, beautiful co-eds, SEC football (you’ll get developed and drafted, specifically if you are an offensive player). Kiffin seems like he’d be fun to play for as well.
It's ideal except for the bad education, swamp heat, and racism.
Racism is everywhere. Just wears different masks and sometimes comes with a better payday for your trouble.
Not to mention their abundance and diversity of bugs.
20-year-olds are drinking cheap, shitty light beer and doing vodka and fireball shots. They aren't drinking bourbon.