was that necessary?

That is all.

I'm not trying to excuse his denials which now appear to be pretty hollow, but I wonder if this is as much about the very nature of the institutions and campus experience as it is about football. What sticks out for me is his specifically mentioning religious faith; that's not something you hear very often when a kid commits to USC or Oklamhoma or Penn State or Florida. Tulsa is a private university with a specific religious affiliation; there is a Christian cross in the official school logo, so I have to think that religion plays a bigger and more overt role in campus life than it does at Michigan. Its enrollment of under 5,000 makes it a vastly smaller place than Michigan, which automatically makes it a more intimate place. To some kids and their families this is going to trump issues of college rankings. The fact that Beaver did not jump to another major public university like OK or TX or ARK says to me that this isn't simply a football question. I'm going to throw out a notion that will appear counterintuitive or just plain dumb to most of you, so take your shot: Rodriguez is actually a damn persuasive salesman because he was able to get a verbal from a kid who, in retrospect, was very ill-suited to the University of Michigan. The problem is that RR may be doing a lousy job of identifying the right kind of kids for Michigan, so the sales efforts are misguided in some cases. And for those who are now ready to throw RR or themselves over a bridge: what's worse: having a kid decommit now, before you've expended a scholarship on him and large amounts of coaching time, or successfully signing guys like Mixon, Germany, Slocum, or Simpson, only to have those guys flame out or leave a year or two later?

To get a few things out of the way first; outright flaming is bad, angry disagreement is okay at times, and not all supporters of a view think the same way. If someone said something stupid or racist, then I disagree with that, but that shouldn't distract from the discussion of the actual point. Moving on... Okay, so you partially disproved the lottery ticket analogy, but you didn't disprove the actual point, which was that recruits are not guaranteed to pan out. The somewhat snide title of the original post states that we lost our 3rd strong quarterback, and the body says that since the quarterback was probably 3rd string anyway, it doesn't matter. Saying "very realistically" doesn't justify the massive leap of faith that Threet, immobile and a fairly poor quarterback at this point, would be even second string after a year or two, or that Tate Forcier would be as effective in college as he is in high school. Then the final point was relax, we don't need to worry about losing our third string quarterback. That's mostly true in a vacuum, but in the context of the original post, it's either an endorsement of your logical thinking, or an irrelevant line that doesn't belong in the post. The reason why I disliked Magnus's post is that the title trivializes the views of people who are upset that Beaver decommitted and downplays the value of a quarterback recruit at a postion where we sorely lack depth. The body doesn't logically explain why people are upset over Beaver's decommitment; understanding the other point of view is quite important if you're making a strong point. Magnus could argue that the body takes a cooler tone, and I would argue that adding in the occasional qualifier doesn't make the post agreeable to most viewers. The general feel of the post is that Magnus is the enlightened person who's explaining his logic to irrational fans, and that's why some people responded irrationally (which partially proves his point, sadly). If Magnus had said, hey, this is a loss, but Beaver probably would have redshirted and may not have panned out anyway, so it's not a big problem, there probably would have been a nice healthy debate here. But the post, as written, was quite offensive.