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.
Shit.
HILARIOUS.
Our admissions policies for transfers are a fucking joke.
#SorryNotSorry
Fuck.
“Winning’s the great deodorant!”
John Madden
“… and conversely, when you have a bad record, everything stinks, and everything starts to unravel, and everything falls apart.”
JM
Dammit. But at least the myth that Ono was going to come in and address this issue immediately has been put to bed with this latest fail.
I kept telling folks it was a myth that he even has the power to change this, but nobody wanted to listen.
It isn't admissions either.
Its each individual department/college gets to make their own determination.
Regardless of the technical mechanisms in play the University as a whole can change this policy. We're not talking about some nation state where each department has a monarch and there's no central authority. Michigan could institute a policy change and the departments would have to adjust. They haven't and it seems largely because there isn't the political will to do so.
"We're not talking about some nation state where each department has a monarch and there's no central authority."
To a large extent, yes we are.
...and inside a department, each professor is like a nation state and the professors as a group can fire their boss.
Came here to say exactly this. We joke about the Michigan superiority complex but it is alive and well within the mid to upper level admins.
My suspicions are that deep down they know their jobs are bullshit but they wield the imaginary power ruthlessly lest someone calls their bluff.
This describes all middle-management.
Tell me you don't work at a university without telling me you don't work at a university.
Work around any university in any capacity and the political will to change is something that just does not exist in a university setting. It's why projects at universities take so long to implement with a high chance of failure.
it's LSA for fuck's sake. hell, i got my UM degree in general studies. how do UNC classes not transfer. it's an egotistical joke i think.
“Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice shame in me”
This is embarrassing and partly on Juwan. He needs to know for a fact that a kid is going to be able to transfer in successfully before he takes a commitment.
He was coming from a very highly regarded academic institution. I doubt that anyone could be sure what the result would be until the process runs its course.
I think it's crazy blaming Juwan for this situation.
In regards to people wondering about whether Ono can change anything, remember he hasn't been president for a year. Even if he is working on it, it would seem like something that could take time because of bureaucracy.
lol.
So many questions.
• Exactly what courses and credit hours that Love earned at UNC were rejected by the decision makers in whatever academic department at U-M that's the problem?
• Why exactly were those courses/credit hours rejected?
• Are they rejecting Basket Weaving 101-type courses? Does Love not have foreign language credits required by U-M?? Does UNC not require its students to take basic courses in math or science that U-M LSA (or whoever) requires?
• Or is this a case of relevant courses at UNC being rejected by U-M administrators because of semantic differences in course descriptions, or minor differences of topics covered in class?
• From the standpoint of protecting U-M's academic reputation and the integrity of its degrees, why is it acceptable for U-M to accept a number of minimum qualifying high school athletes who would never come close to being accepted based on high school transcripts alone, but it is not acceptable to accept all the credit hours earned by college students at other accredited institutions who belong to the AAU like Michigan does?
I have two degrees from schools at U-M, and I had to earn a minimum number of credit hours in LSA to get admitted to both of these schools. I have never felt my degrees were cheapened by the fact that some high school athletes were admitted to LSA even though their transcripts alone wouldn't have gotten them in, nor would I feel my degrees would be cheapened by LSA admins being more flexible when considering potential transfers like Caleb Love.
it's ego, stupidity or some combination of both.
"From the standpoint of protecting U-M's academic reputation and the integrity of its degrees, why is it acceptable for U-M to accept a number of minimum qualifying high school athletes who would never come close to being accepted based on high school transcripts alone, but it is not acceptable to accept all the credit hours earned by college students at other accredited institutions who belong to the AAU like Michigan does?"
Because admission is based on university wide standards that aren't rules, administered by central administration.
Transferring credits is based on department rules, administered by each individual department/college.
it doesn't make it acceptable. it makes it inconsistent.
Whether something is called a rule and something else is called a standard doesn't change the fact that those constraints are created and implemented by people—they're not handed down on stone tablets by God.
People create rules and people can change rules, just as they can bend standards.
My understanding is that it’s not that credits are “rejected” per se so much as that:
1) you need to have earned a minimum number of credits at Michigan for Michigan to award a degree (Apparently lower at other schools?
2) Michigan is unusually strict about accepting “like” classes for requirements. E.g. if the program you are entering at Michigan requires Underwater Basket Weaving, but you took Submerged Tote Bag Looming, tough shit, doesn’t count for your required inundated vessel creation credit.
We all knew this would happen. Whatever credits he had at UNC were shaky by definition. This was definitely Howard's fault for even bothering with him.
This is Howard’s fault?
So he should just not try and recruit transfers who don’t come from the Ivy League? This is 100% Michigan admissions fault. How they don’t have this figured out by now feels criminal.
I feel awful for Howard. Feels like he is trying to lead a top notch program with one arm tied behind his back.
Admissions has nothing to do with deciding whether credits transfer.
You’re telling me the people who decide who gets in and how many credits they start out with have nothing to do with… how many credits they start out with…
I don’t know how it works at Michigan, but I work at a large public university and the admissions office has absolutely nothing to do with which credits transfer. Admissions says you’re in or not, the college you’re enrolling in says what classes you’ve taken will count toward the degree they’re going to grant you.
Small college. Same here--Admissions plays no role. Registrar's office relies on academic departments to determine which transfer courses earn credit.
Admissions decides if you get in.
The College of Engineering, LSA, Ross, etc. decide if and which credits to accept into their program.
It's simple math. You have to take a minimum of 60 credits at Michigan to be admitted as an undergraduate transfer. Howard had to have known Love had too many banked and/or didn't want to sacrifice any he had already earned towards a degree in order to be admitted. This is a head coach not doing or delegating proper oversight. The rules are the rules and have always been the rules. Don't blame the school for enforcing its own requirements. If you want to change the standard, that's an entirely different debate.
My daughter just transferred to UofM -- LSA with 34 credits... so I don't know where you are getting the 60 credits thing...
Unless you are saying 60 credits after your 2nd year...
Not totally sure, but he might be saying that if you are admitted as a transfer student, you must then take 60 credits *at Michigan* to earn your degree, no matter how many you have already earned. So if you've already completed, say, 90 credits at another institution, you *still* have to take 60 at Michigan. Every school does something like this, though the numbers may vary. You don't want to allow someone to take 7 semesters at one college, then transfer in for one semester and earn a degree from a different school. (Unlike, say, high school, where your degree is from whatever school you are attending when you graduate.)
I think we can stop bringing up the student athlete academic fraud that happened in Chapel Hill in 2010.
"The university introduced new standards, protocols and rules to prevent misadministration within academic departments in the future. As a result, UNC exited probation and regained full standing by June 2016."
Count me as not confident that an athletic program that was putting on obviously fake courses that were so bad they actually got in trouble (!!!) has changed their stripes and is on the straight and narrow now.
My girlfriend had several football players in her grad program. And they did almost no work compared to other members. The idea that these big time programs are on the straight and narrow - whether its Michigan, Alabama, Stanford, UNC, FSU or whoever - is naive. Some players take it very seriously, others don't.
I don't know what the SAT/ACT scores for the football or basketball teams are now, but the last time I saw a study done on this topic, the averages were significantly lower than were the scores for the non-athletic student body as a whole, i.e., a double standard.
This is baseless poopoo.
The claim that this was admissions at all is also baseless, but totally fine apparently.
It’s definitely not baseless. It’s been rumored for weeks and Webb explicitly said it’s admissions related.
I'm responding to the OP. It's not only not 'inevitable,' but Love was convinced he could pull it off until a couple of days ago. And NC's credits being 'shaky' is pure invention. The issue is the stringency with which the UM gazes on transferred credits. There's no way Juwan would have announced a move that both player and coaches wanted if it hadn't looked like the move was quite do-able.
Ok? And I’m responding to HollywoodHokeHogan who said “this being admissions related at all is baseless.” It’s not. There have been rumored admissions hurdles for weeks. Coupled with our history of transfers having to back out last minute because of admissions issues, it’s certainly not baseless.
They should have learned from the Shannon situation and Love should have stayed at UNC and graduated in the summer then come to Michigan. Entering the portal and committing early probably made UNC decide to pull his scholarship when he was close to being a grad transfer.
He did stay at NC; and that 'probably' is doing a whole lot of work there, friend. How do you know that they didn't learn from Shannon? Is '4th phase' assuming they're blithering idiots? Some of these posts court absurdity.
how do I know they didn't learn from Shannon? Because this is deja vu from last summer. Literally the exact same situation with a kid at the exact same stage of his academic career. I'm not sure how more clear that could be.
Not sure what you meant "he did stay at NC", he doesn't have a degree from UNC. Which is what I'm advocating for. I'm guessing between 6 regular semesters and 3 summers worth of classes he cold have graduated in August.
Michigan assumed they could get him as a grad transfer. They keep assuming that they can recruit a guy off another roster and their school will magnanimously continue to pay for them to finish their degree.
Michigan's coaching staff knows the 60 credits in residence requirement. This isn't new. It's been in effect for decades. They knew Love was less than 60 credits from graduating. They/we can all advocate for that rule to change or exceptions to be made, but you don't build a roster around a plan that the longstanding rules just won't apply to you because reasons.
This is Mike Williams declaring for the NFL draft after 2 years in college under the mistaken belief that exceptions will be made and everything will just work out. We can debate if the rule makes sense, but while it is in place we have to deal with it.
Nice Onion paraphrase. Sadly.
The university’s pose of academic rigor looks very dubious given the administration just directed departments to hand out automatic As as a strike breaking measure.
It sucks, but after getting burned with Shannon last year, why were we even trying this with Love? It seems pretty clear that we're only going to get 1) frosh/sophomores or 2) grad transfers.
That's exactly it. Should Michigan let in Juniors? Yeah probably, but if you're the staff you can't just keep trying it and saying "well, maybe this time they will let him in."
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