Exit Before He Arrived: Caleb Love
Why does this keep happening, says the only school where this regularly happens:
NEWS: Former North Carolina guard Caleb Love has decommitted from Michigan, a source tells @On3sports.
— Joe Tipton (@TiptonEdits) May 17, 2023
One of the top guard transfers is now back on the board.
Story: https://t.co/98l5jeMloO pic.twitter.com/0avNvoi99z
It is possible there is some explanation other than the one that keeps doing this to Michigan's transfers. I really hope so, but I'm not going to bet on it.
A year after Michigan's policies sank the transfer Terrance Shannon, the school with the only admissions department that acts this way appears to have done it again. The #16 overall recruit of 2020, Caleb Love must have thought his North Carolina credits would transfer to Michigan, a fellow AAU member, when he committed here on April 7. He also must have believed Michigan couldn't possibly be obtuse enough to let this happen again when Love shot down (with a now deleted tweet) rumors that his plans had hit a snag.
If there was a belief that Santa Ono could fix this, that's now dead as well, if he ever could do something about it.
The loss of Love is another severe blow to a program that missed the Tournament last year for want of a high-usage defensive wing like Shannon, and was already looking shaky this year thanks to Hunter Dickinson signing a top-market free agent deal with Kansas.
Michigan's Byzantine transfer policies have been a long-term issue for the school's athletic programs. Going back at least 30 years, transferring undergraduate credits have been under a severe chill effect, with the burden placed on the student to convert their previous coursework to Michigan equivalents, plus a high minimum of credits that must be taken in Ann Arbor.
One or two semesters usually aren't an issue—see football transfers Ernest Hausmann and Josiah Stewart--but mid-career athletes tend to have a particularly hard time. Their problem here isn't "Admissions" per se but the individual schools, e.g. LSA, which make the students submit their transcripts, wait a few weeks, then find out they're a year or more away from graduating than they should be. There's an appeals process, which might explain why rumors of Love's transfer being up in the air were quickly shot down by Love, with today's news triggered by a denial of appeal. Other schools may have similar processes, but Michigan's schools are particularly obtuse and opaque about it, with credits exchanged at rates well below reasonable, and little to no interest in expediting the process for recruited candidates.
Grad students are also not a problem (e.g. Olu), but completing a hurried degree after entering the portal is its own challenge, as a player's old school isn't particularly motivated to help the process. That was the Shannon situation, and also might have been what tripped up Love, who entered UNC in Fall of 2020 and presumably, like most athletes, took summer courses along the way. Most schools have a good enough working relationship with their athletic programs that they can work with transferring athletes, or at least work quickly enough to set expectations before the program recruits a guy.
With the transfer portal now a major part of major college athletics, Michigan's transfer office needs to call Illinois and ask how they managed to make Terrance Shannon work, and find out exactly what it cost them in academic integrity. Who knows, maybe it's worth missing the dance.
There is swearing in the comments after the jump.
What the fork is going on with Michigan basketball
You might be able to get away with sub-elite NIL or with difficult admissions standards for undergraduate transfers and build a competitive college basketball team in this era, you can't get away with both. If I'm Howard and the NBA comes calling I'm sad to say I'd be out! No top 20 cbb coach will come here if conditions don't change. The expectations are flat out unrealistic.
How many transfers across multiple sports have made it in already? This may be more of a Caleb Love issue than an admissions issue.
If football or basketball can't bring in an athlete because a certain number of Michigan credits have to be earned to get a Michigan degree, that's the price you pay for status. Fine with me.
32 year old story, so take this FWIW. I was admitted to UofM college of engineering. Admissions didn’t say anything about my 11 credits from MSU (I took 3 math classes there in high school.) Sometime during my freshman year, the College of Engineering said we’ll give you 6 credits. Back then UofM was semesters and MSU was trimesters. 11*(2/3)=7.4, so I was mildly disappointed at only getting 6 credits, but whatever. Fast forward to my senior year, I’m all set to graduate in December with exactly 128 credits needed for CoE. The college informed me that they reviewed MSU’s syllabus and found they were lacking something so they reduced my 6 credits to 5. It was too late to adjust my schedule and add a credit, so I took a 1 credit intro to Geology class in winter term to graduate in May. I also took 3 courses that I transferred to grad school so I was able to get a Masters in 2 semesters, so it all worked out, but it felt pretty shitty at the time.
This is the most uppity ass shit ever. News flash. Classes at Michigan ARE NOT that special.
That literally sounds like a reoccurring nightmare I still have till this day.
Epic fail. This lessens the chances of other transfers considering us. It’s two years in a row. This sucks.
Your Love is like a rollercoaster, baby...
All you do is ride.
If the university wants its athletic teams to be able to compete at the highest levels, they need to fix this. I'm not sure which sports should be included -- clearly basketball and football, probably hockey, and ???.
And if the university is ok with not being able to compete at the highest levels and doesn't want to fix this, they should make that absolutely clear -- to everyone.
They'll likely only get it when the upper bowl @ Crisler is empty and the lower bowl is @ 50% capacity...and even then its no guarantee.
Make it clear with ticket prices too. Don't charge me 60 dollars for an upper level seat to a "premium game" With a roster full of former IVY league and MAC transfers.
90% of the athletes at Michigan would not get in to Michigan if they weren’t elite athletes. In all sports. Stop the fucking charade. There is value in an extraordinary violinist or someone who can sing beautifully, and someone who can drain buckets or smoke quarterbacks. Get over ourselves on what is elite and get this solved.
So is it the admissions department or College determining the credits that is the issue here? By admissions are you saying he did not get in at all? Seeming to conflate them makes me see this as finger pointing to the generic bogey man vs the basketball program. Seems like player is saying “no deal” given loss of credits is too much. I mean did anyone expect him to come for 1 year and get a UM degree? I have no idea but figure there has to be some min credits. Just unsure what the expectations were and what the big deal is if he came for 1 year and did not leave with a degree. I mean, can’t he come back later if he wants to leave for NBA/pro? What’s the big deal. And regarding Shannon … fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.
The college determining credits is the issue, not admissions.
It's not just that Shannon and Love weren't satisfied with the small number of credits transferring. It's that the small number of credits transferring would make them academically ineligible to compete.
Athletes have to show sufficient progress towards a degree based on their number of years in college. If Love had 90 credits at UNC, but UM only accepted 30 credits, all of a sudden he's going into his 4th year with only 30 credits, making him academically ineligible.
So frustrating especially in the portal era.
God, sometimes I hate this university. At least we hired a trash person's trash son!
This means more Terrence!
Since each University department is an unassailable unaccountable fiefdom, create (or recruit) one that will allow reasonable credits to transfer and funnel transfer players to that department. Hang out the carrot of extra funding to make it happen.
I'm sure there's a low enrollment department on the edge of elimination that would love to get a lifeline. Caleb Love: Philosophy Major.
Tough shit if the other departments don't like it, they don't give a fuck if you don't like what they do.
Problem is... "All the other departments" don't like it, then they get the President fired and the policy rescinded.
In a lot of ways - the faculty are the university Presidents boss. They are not just employees the university administration can order around.
So we KNOW that this was a credits transfer issue or is this speculation?
Caleb majored in Exercise and Sports Science at UNC which likely would be a transfer into Kinesiology. This is the major that many of the athletes take. It is ridiculous that department doesn’t have much more flexibility on transfer credits accepted. I could understand it for more difficult or rare majors, not this.
The department has all the flexibility and decision making power. This is the department refusing to take the credits.
Can we just create a school within UM for athletes that lets people in on physical ability and give up any pretense that academics are important for them? Nerds are usually terrible at sports so we can't hold athletes to those same standards.
I get that Michigan is throwing up an academic brick wall that virtually no other school puts in front of its revenue sports, but if you are Juwan Howard, don’t you at some point prior to this year have to stop beating your head against said wall and figure out another way to build your program?
Counterpunt: As someone in higher ed, I suspect this is not the case. I suspect that it really boils down to the fact that no one is leading/doing the work to update practices w/r/t transfer transcripts. That seems far more likely than the blanket explanation that UM’s higher academic standards is the primary hold up.
I guess I am the only person left that is OK with Michigan having higher academic standards than everyone else? The efficiency of the process should be way better than it is - athletic transfer candidates should be expedited because of the unique nature of athletic transfers. But apart from that, I have no problem with academics trumping athletics where transfers are concerned.
This is brutal. I'm sure Coach Howard loves Michigan but they aren't doing him any favors right now. He is probably going to be on the hot seat after his year, and getting Shannon and Love could have made life way easier for him. Basketball is in a really bad spot. They are playing a total different game than the rest of the schools if they can't take these transfers.
Finally! This justifies a trip to Ann Arbor Torch & Pitchfork.
so here we are, once again, arguing whether (james jones voice) "the greatest university in the world" should just kinda ignore at least some of what makes it a great university because we need a point guard.
Once again the (in hindsight) perfect comment from Cardale Jones can be paraphrased and applies perfectly: “He ain’t come here to play school.”
There’s academics and then there’s athletics. When there’s millions of dollars being made off athletics, and the better you do the more you make, that’s called a business - and should be run accordingly.
EDIT - And for the pearl clutchers worried about UM’s academic reputation and standards, I can tell you my degree from UM is in no way diminished by Caleb Love getting admitted to play basketball.
There’s academics and then there’s athletics... and academics is a couple of orders of magnitude bigger in terms of money.
And for the pearl clutchers worried about UM’s academic reputation and standards, I can tell you my degree from UM is in no way diminished by Caleb Love getting admitted to play basketball.
just FYI, you'd make a better case if you didn't take a partial shot at ohio state's academic reputation in your first paragraph.
Okay Michigan isn't going to change their policy. The solution is to take guys early or as grad transfers. Sucks, but the coaches have to work with that limitation.
In both the Shannon and Love cases I think they cost themselves by entering the transfer portal too early. Shannon was at TT for at least 6 semesters, from 2019-2022, and could have probably graduated over the summer and joined in the fall. Understandably, TT took him off scholarship when he entered so he couldn't finish his degree. I figured that would have taught them that when they decided to take Love, who again was there for at least 6 semesters 2020-2023 and probably could have graduated this summer.
What I don't understand is why can't this be determined months ago ? It is a case where he has some classes to finish and require a minimum grade and awaiting that grade ? Shannon still ended up at Illinois, too, so this is more confusing. Watch Love transfer to a good school like a Duke and watch the further cognitive dissonance here.
It’s a guess but think we were going to struggle to be a .500 team with him. He was a mercenary who was going to eat up a lot of shots, not in an efficient way, and was not a standout defensively. So we may or may not be slightly more unwatchable now. Felt like this would be Juwan’s last season as Mich coach, so for me the real question is what do we want to aspire to be as a program, in 2024-25 going forward and how do we best achieve that?
Fire our admissions department and start anew.
Seriously at this point with all of the athletes getting paid who gives a shit if the guy is missing a credit or two. I know NC got bad press for not having any of their athletes go to class or learn to read, but unless the guy is illiterate let him in.
Back in the day I knew a bunch of baseball players, hockey players, wrestlers and a few football and basketball players. I was even buddies with a shotputter. Some were super smart, some not-so-smart. and some were not smart at all. I think we have higher standards than most/many, but we still let in guys who barely met the minimum. This admissions thing is b.s.
yes, fire the admissions department. all of them. because basketball.
idiot.
I transferred to LSA from another UM-AA college when Jim Harbaugh was playing QB, and I had to take an extra semester and a half of classes NOT to meet any specific graduation requirements for my major, just to get numbers of credits. Because classes in other UM colleges weren't and apparently still aren't good enough for the fine folks at LSA.
I had the same issue in the 90's - My credits would not transfer from a quarter based semester system so I had to retake 2 years worth of base LSA at WCC prior to transferring into Michigan. Painful.
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