Conclusion: Michigan will – in all likelihood (e.g., 90%+ probability) lose every year to Ohio State unless we recruit better (defined as being within 2 – 3 spots of OSU through the 247 Sports composite rankings) because we will never outcoach OSU by a margin that is wide enough to overcome the talent deficit (they have lots of money invested in football and can hire top-of-the-line coaches too).  The key to recruiting better will be to do things that Michigan has traditionally condemned as unsavory in college football – yes, I am talking about viewing the sport not through the lens of amateurism and the student-athlete experience, but through the lens of a semi-professional enterprise complete with money and a “football-first” mentality.  This is something that Harbaugh and the current administration is unwilling to do (at least at this time).  As a fanbase, ultimately we need to decide what’s more important: A) amateurism and the student-athlete experience and 9-4 / 10-3 type seasons without B10 championships or the playoffs, or B) shifting to a semi-professional enterprise and competing for B10 championships or the playoffs.

Note that I am not trying to support A or B (my personal opinion is to lean towards B only the sense of unleashing player payments but nothing else, FWIW).  I simply feel based on what I’ve been reading here on the blog that most people are not aware how binary A and B are as paths.  The goal of this diary is to hopefully get people to understand – through data – that Harbaugh has basically done as well as anyone can possibly do (and has more than met Michigan’s historical standard) without going down path B.  You all can obviously come to your own conclusion on what is “acceptable” to you, but I take issue with calling for Harbaugh’s head thinking that another coach can come in and do better while strictly adhering to path A.  Not going to happen based on the data.

Context:  Why am I writing this?  Well, unlike many I am not all too upset at the outcome of yesterday’s game.  Obviously, it sucks incredibly hard as a true, die-hard Michigan fan, but I am a firm believer in unhappiness generally coming from outcomes being worse than expectations.  My expectations were exceptionally low – like Magnus’ prediction of 42 – 17 at TTB, I also thought that we would get blown out.  I analyze data and predict outcomes for a living (I’m an equity investor) and would flatter myself in that I am more dispassionate and less emotional in coming to conclusions from data, even in things that I care deeply about.  On Wednesday before the Thanksgiving break, one of my PMs – who is a Wisconsin grad and a huge fan so extremely familiar with the B10 – asked me how many points I’d have to spot OSU for a bet on who buys lunch.  I told him three touchdowns, and two touchdowns if I was truly being a homer.  The data from each teams’ respective seasons simply told that story fairly clearly.

I’m not writing this because I’m upset at what happened yesterday; I am writing this because I find it incredibly annoying that so many people shit on Harbaugh so hard with endless hot takes (fire him!) after losses like this that can easily be seen from a mile away due to structural gaps in programs – yes, I am talking about recruiting.  Unless Michigan is willing to address these structural gaps, then we should be content with this outcome.  (Side note – I do think some of the Don Brown criticism is justified, more from a fundamental perspective in DT recruitment philosophy).   I think that Harbaugh is a good man who truly cares about his student-athletes and even yesterday absolutely refused to throw them under the bus to the media after being asked an obviously leading and asinine question on the talent gap.  I think that Harbaugh is an exceptional competitor and that it’s absolutely foolish to question his desire to win The Game.  I also think that Harbaugh is extremely focused on being clean and doing things the right way.  Of course, my whole premise is that we are on an uneven playing field with top programs like OSU, Alabama, Clemson, LSU, Georgia, etc. (I was the guy who wrote this diary).  Unless we as fans / as a school are willing to even that playing field, it’s very much unfair to criticize Harbaugh for what has been – objectively – an incredible turnaround and great job so far.

What the Data Says

Michigan and OSU Annual Record Since 1953 (Michigan Joining the Big Ten)

Conclusions:

Michigan has always been a good but not elite program – the average season across this 67-year dataset has a 69% win percentage (defined as wins over total games played, so ties back when ties were allowed do not count as wins).  When broken down by coach:

Bennie Oosterbaan: 57%

Bump Elliot: 53%

Bo Schembechler: 79%

Gary Moeller: 73%

Lloyd Carr: 75%

Rich Rodriguez: 57%

Brady Hoke: 60%

Jim Harbaugh: 73%

So for example, the average Lloyd Carr season was a 75% win rate, or basically 9 – 3.  Note that the average win percentage for all coaches other than Harbaugh is actually only 65% (note that this is different than the average across every season, since every coach’s average record is counted as just a single entry in this calculation).  The key takeaway is that Harbaugh actually is performing better than our historical average, and basically on par with Moeller and Carr.  This doesn’t even factor in the fact that he had no foundation and had to clean up after RR and Hokes’ messes.  Only Bo is has a higher average winning percentage, and I would argue that Bo had advantages that Harbaugh doesn’t.  These include: 1) higher scholarship limits, 2) a weaker rest of the B10, and 3) a significantly weaker OSU.  Bo also had a much easier path to championships since you could tie… under the old rules, we would have tied for the B10 Championship with OSU last year so Harbaugh would have won a championship, something that is often overlooked.

Now, let’s turn to OSU.  They have an average season win percentage of 77% across the 67-year dataset, which is notably higher than Michigan’s 69%.  When broken down by coach (I’m skipping Fickell’s interim year):

Woody Hayes: 76%

Earle Bruce: 75%

John Cooper: 70%

Jim Tressel: 82%

Urban Meyer / Ryan Day: 92%

Meyer / Day’s success is simply astronomical and clearly above OSU’s previous trend line, though Tressel had already established it.  Clearly, something changed with Tressel and then changed again with Meyer / Day.  Note that the average win percentage for all coaches other than Meyer / Day is only 76%.  Meyer / Day have an absurd 92% win percentage.

All of this is easily supported by Bill Connelly’s S&P+, by the way:

So, what changed in terms of OSU dominating Michigan?  It’s extremely simple – recruiting.

Michigan and OSU Annual Recruiting Rank Since 2000 (247 Sports Composite)

A few notes here: 1) Obviously I would go back further, but the database only goes to 1999 and the data integrity looks weird that year.  2) I highlighted 2003 – 2007 for OSU’s class absolute rank because these are obviously incorrect – I looked into it and it seems that for whatever reason, the 247 database lists only a few OSU commits as hard commits and the rest are there but not included in the tally, so the number of recruits per class looks abnormally low which accounts for the low scores.  Realistically, OSU’s classes were much better – I’m hoping that the average player scores are still correct but have my doubts since they probably only include the players counted as hard commits.  Ultimately I decided to simply present the data as is without trying to manipulate it at all and just caveat what is obviously wrong.  I don’t think it really affects my point too much – just keep in mind that OSU’s 2003 – 2007 classes were realistically still likely ranked in the top ten and probably on par or better with Michigan.

Conclusions:

OSU has always out-recruited us.  Not a surprise, but look at how much the gap has increased since Meyer took over in 2012.  Now look at the gap since Harbaugh took over in 2015 – it has actually widened, which is extremely troubling.  Things have gotten worse.  Since Meyer started, the average player score for Michigan has been 90.0 and for OSU has been 92.2.  This is a gap of 2.2 on a 100 point scale, which seems small at first but then you realize that 247’s scale basically realistically goes from 80 – 100.  Since Harbaugh took over, this gap has widened to 2.7 – Michigan is 89.7 and OSU is 92.4.  This is a massive gap and basically the difference between a high 3-star average recruit and a mid-4-star average recruit on 247’s system… across every single recruit.  We are getting dominated in terms of talent.

I think that’s fairly obvious to everyone.  What’s more interesting to me is the uptick in OSU’s recruiting since Meyer started.  From 2000 – 2011, OSU’s average player score was 87.2, or a mid-high 3-star.  Since 2012, OSCU’s average player score has been 92.2, or a fairly solid 4-star.  This is a massive, massive increase – at a difference of +5.0, it’s actually more than the gap between OSU and Michigan today that I just mentioned of 2.7.  Again, there are some data integrity issues with 247 for some of the 2000’s years, but no matter what this is a tremendous increase in recruiting performance.

Here’s where I need to take a little detour and just state right now that if you insist on burying your head in the sand and don’t believe that paying recruits (etc. “cheating”) is 1) happening in college football despite the mountains of evidence, and 2) preventing Michigan from recruiting better, then the rest of this diary is not for you.  Just don’t read it and please don’t bother commenting.  Debates where both sides can’t agree on the facts don’t lead to anything, and I’m frankly not interested in wasting time.  I’m not going to try to lay out evidence to convince you other than quickly summarizing the following:

• We know that much of the SEC is shady, from Saban on down, and is paying players
• We know that Hugh Freeze was doing shady things and paying players (Laquan Treadwell cash photo)
• We know that Clemson is paying players and funneling payments through religious venues (there is literally an article about this online)
• We know that Georgia is paying players (Isaiah Wilson)
• We know that Rashan Gary was offered ~$300K
• Interim AD Jim Hackett himself literally said publically that people were trying to pay Rashan
• John Bacon’s book elaborates on the Gary situation, discusses the issues more in detail (a Michigan coach is dejected because a recruit just got a brand new car in his driveway from another school, and he gives up on the recruitment knowing that kid wants money comes to mind), and literally has a quote from Harbaugh saying “it’s hard to beat the cheaters”
• Seth of MGoBlog– on the board on this very site – has stated what the going rate for a Georgia 4-star under the table is and has also mentioned that Isaiah Wilson was coming to Michigan until Georgia made an offer he couldn’t refuse last minute
• Andy Staples of The Athletic literally just wrote yesterday that  “Harbaugh either doesn’t know what a team that can compete with Ohio State looks like or — more likely — knows and has elected not to try to wade into the same recruiting waters.  Ohio State doesn’t compete with Michigan for players.  It competes with Clemson, Alabama and Georgia for players.  Only by signing multiple players that those schools want can a program join that club.  But that’s difficult to do, and it requires a choice Harbaugh has thus far seemed unwilling to make.”  Even the mainstream media is on to it.

Since it is a fact that Ole Miss was paying players during Hugh Freeze’s tenure and Georgia is currently paying players under Kirby Smart, I hypothesized that we would see a significant uptick in recruiting success during these coaches’ respective tenures.  I was absolutely right, as the data shows:

Ole Miss and Georgia Annual Recruiting Rank Since 2000 (247 Sports Composite)

Using the same 247 dataset, I found an absurd increase of ~8 spots (due to rounding) in class rankings between Freeze’s Ole Miss tenure and non-Freeze coaches over the same time frame.  The increase in average player score was 4.5 – this is the equivalent of going from a 3.5-star to a 4-star, or a 4-star to a 4.5-star on average.  Georgia’s data is even more absurd – historically, the school already recruited really well.  However, since Smart took over in 2016, Georgia’s average class rankings increased ~5 spots and the increase in average player score was an absolutely bonkers 5.2.  The data would suggest that it is ludicrous to say that paying players doesn’t materially improve recruiting – both Ole Miss and Georgia have seen their star average essentially go up by half a star or more when they have been paying players.

Now, to bring it all back to Michigan and OSU and Meyer’s +5.0 improvement in average player score – based on this, is it really so crazy that OSU is paying players, at least on the margin?  Yes, I understand that Meyer was a championship-winning coach at Florida, but can that fact alone draw countless 5-star, all-world recruits from Texas, California, and the Deep South?  Columbus isn’t really that much warmer than Ann Arbor, and it’s not like it’s a more attractive destination than staying in the South or the West Coast.  It’s likely not just Meyer and the excellent football that is attracting at least some of these recruits – there’s probably a little financial juice to get them over the line.

And it doesn’t have to be all financial – it can be other benefits.  Less stringent academic standards, for example (Fields taking only online classes ring a bell?).  Free cars, tattoos, meals, entertainment, etc., for example.  My point here is that given what we know about Urban Meyer and his willingness to bend the rules to get an edge (I’m not going to list Meyer’s transgressions, as I’m sure everyone is aware), is it really so crazy to think that OSU might be utilizing unfair edges in recruiting that gets them that incremental 5-star and those several incremental 4-stars relative to Michigan? 

I am certainly not arguing that every kid that goes to OSU, Georgia, Clemson, Alabama is going there for money – obviously they have excellent football programs.  I’m just saying that maybe instead of three 5-stars, they can sign five 5-stars, or twelve 4-stars instead of eight.  Over 4 or 5 years, these numbers add up a lot – there’s way more bullets in the chamber to hit on elite players, obviously.

It actually wasn’t even Meyer that started OSU down this path – they did that before with Tressel, who already had plenty of smoke for payments and impermissible benefits while at Youngstown State.  You can go to Michigan’s 247 board where several members who have connections / played football in that area confirmed that Tressel was recruiting with cash even back in those days.  I would contend that it is likely that OSU has shifted toward an SEC-style recruiting strategy while the rest of the Big 10 is still stuck with the traditional Big 10 “Midwestern” values strategy (and I’m from Iowa, I know what that means).

It’s been a long diary already, so let me wrap up by simply saying that the point of all this isn’t to point the finger at OSU or any other school.  Frankly, I don’t give a fuck if these schools want to pay kids (many of whom are likely not super financially well-off) lots of money to play football for them.  In fact, I can find no moral argument against it – isn’t this what American capitalism is all about, the ability to monetize your God-given skills without prejudice or penalty?  All I have to say is good for OSU and these southern schools – not all of these kids are going to make it to the NFL, and at the very least they are getting some sort of compensation for their skills and unbelievably hard work in the meantime.  There is no moral indictment of OSU going on here from me (at least in terms of money; Meyer sheltering a wife-abuser is a completely different story).

The point of all this is to try to show – with data – that Michigan is operating at a significant structural disadvantage unless we shed Path A (amateurism and the student-athlete experience) and pursue Path B (a semi-professional enterprise in which players are recruited with money).  Again, we each need to decide individually whether we are fine with Michigan winning 9 – 10 games a year and losing to OSU and never playing for championships while keeping our “integrity,” or whether we want to really compete nationally in college football.  It is absolutely, 100% a binary decision – you simply can’t have both.  I’m sick of people shitting on Harbaugh’s inability to compete with the big boys when he has one hand tied behind his back – he quite literally, based on his record and on the S&P+ data, is doing as well as he possibly can.  We as a school need to decide what we want – if that’s just to be a better version of (hopefully) Wisconsin, Iowa, Stanford, etc. and never compete for championships, that’s totally fine.  Just please don’t be a hypocrite and shit on Harbaugh – or even worse, much, much worse – the players for only having a knife at a gun fight.

P.S. – yes, Wisconsin beat us this year, yes Iowa beat us in 2016 – teams with more talent occasionally drop games.  We all know it happens to OSU too.  The point is the trend line, not small blips in data.  Also, I know that we made a lot of mistakes yesterday and we could have played a better game.  But we got beat by 29 points.  Michigan fixing its errors isn’t going to erase a >4 touchdown deficit.  OSU was just better, because they had better talent.