Are NCAA limits on satellite camps hurting Michigan's recruiting?
Though it doesn't explain this year's in-state trends, I was wondering what the board thought of this as a contributing factor to recruiting in general. Honestly, I'm having trouble thinking of a good way to think about this. How would you isolate the impact of the camps?
I think I can settle this debate once and for all.
Yes with an if and No with a but.
How about before and after?
How many of our 2016 and 2017 commits were the direct result of satellite camps?
My guess: exceedingly few as to be neglible.
But in my firm opinion, people are overthinking this.
It always comes down to win and losses. Our 2016 season ended badly and our 2017 season was torpedoed by a number of issues including injuries.
Since that loss to Iowa in Kinnick, Michigan is 9-8 under Harbaugh. Yes. It's true. There's your explanation.
*twice in 17 years (ducks)
Winning is probably the best way of doing that. But when you don't have that history, how do you get your story and brand out to recruits in talent-rich areas that are distant from you? I think the camps helped to build that story and some important relationships in a really efficient way.
Win games and put players in the draft. Recruiting gets a lot easier with that.
Look at James Franklin and PSU. He beats OSU once and wins the B1G, and everything changed for him.
osu and msu, so maybe it will trend back down with a few more losses
A few points:
We got a bump from satellite camps from being out in front. If there were no restrictions on them now, the playing field would have levelled and the impact would be very small.
A lot of the impact was from getting on underclassmen early in the camps. It should have helped our 2018 recruiting and is probably helping a bit in 2019.
I think doing so many camps took a toll on some assistant coaches. It's already a demanding job.
The bump we got from recruiting was from bump most coaches get from glow of their initial hire. Harbaugh probabaly had more of one because of his unusual NFL success as it is rare to get a successful NFL coach to come back to college. Most coaches who make that transition are ones who flame out like Petrino or Saban.
I personally think the satellite camps did little to advance our recruiting.
or a reasonable reason to believe that they helped somehow, then the absence of them would have to hurt.
amount of pay is certainly a factor in recruiting.
Michigan is not in a traditionally talent-rich area. Needing to project their brand and being prevented from doing so, I thought, may have been a factor worth discussing/taking a look at.
It's hard to get kids on an unofficial or official visit. So instead of getting them to the school, we brought the school to them. This also gave Michigan some leeway to focus on some top targets and develop deeper ties to feeder schools. It was an interesting way to get Michigan front and center at schools where kids typically wouldn't see or hear from them.
It's still very difficult for me to know how this gets measured.
is the dilemma in determining impact.
But then again - can anything really be measured in the crazy world of recruiting, and how young, 16-18 year old high school athletes utlimately make their choices?
If not - why would the jackals jump this OP for a discussion point on recruiting, versus any other such macro recruiting topic? Easy - because they are pissed that the new Mgoblog website is still not up.
Would love to still have these camps - created a buzz and differentiation that was great for Michigan.
Thanks for engaging the topic. So here are some ideas for quantifying this:
- Number of camp-made offers
- Number of committed recruits who attended a camp, both weighted and not by rating (and you can maybe pull a ratio for that by also tracking who didn't commit)
- Number of recruits, no matter if they came to a camp, who attend a school within some radius of the camp
- Number of offers made to a camp host school before and after the camp
- Harbaugh's regional Q-rating before and after the camp
- Success rate of pulling recruits from regions where there were camps before, in the same recruiting year, and after the camps, weighted by stars.
This whole sky is falling thing is getting old. On the "Who Will Coach Longer?" thread one of the recruits said something about the Michigan Fans not being happy with Harbaugh. There are a lot of whiney idiots who expected nothing but perfection, and there have been some diappointing games, but despite a lack of a solid line, or a servicable QB last year Harbaugh has the team competitive. Hoke and RR were not competitive.
We have a tough schedule this year, but other than the uncertainty at offensive tackles our team is absolutely stacked with talented guys. Most teams have question marks at various positions year to year.
OSU and Bama definitely have a recruiting edge, but lots of teams win without it.
People expecting a little more than we have received as "whiney", but that's just me. We are 1 - 6 against top 10 opponents. We are 4 - 10 against MSU, OSU, Wisconsin and Penn St. and O fer against OSU. I would rather fans be upset with this than apathetic. Hoke left Harbaugh with a team that provided him with his best season. The sky might not be falling, but it sure hasn't been rising. This season will go a long way in determining how recruiting will go in the future. It's my opinion that OSU and MSU are must win games. Being on the road means nothing to me, good to great coaches have to figure out ways to win games like this. I'm just talking baby steps. I'm not saying win the National Championship, but a B1G title is expected in year 4. If that's asking to much, you shouldn't refer to yourselves as leaders and best.
"hoke left harbaugh with a team that provided him with his best season" while for the most part this is true, I think you are over looking one position, which is also the most important. Hoke left Harbaugh with Speight, Morris, and Malzone. God only knows what the 2015 season would have looked like with Speight or Morris under center. And lets not pretend that hoke left harbaugh with all polished players at the other positions.
As to the original question, I am sure that there is some impact that the lack of camps is and will have on recruiting but I would be hisitant to say that it is a major one. If you can't get in front of players, it can be difficult to recruit them, and it was clearly an advantage that Harbaugh had because the other coaches obviously did not want to put in the time to do something similar.
you read that whole post and picked out one piece of information. The post was more about expectations and whether fans are "whiny", but I adress what you brought up. For the whole part that is true, and in the 3 yrs that Harbaugh has been here, he hasn't done any better recruiting for the QB position than Hoke. Speight is better than any QB Harbaugh has recruited to this point. We hope and pray Shay can provide a lift and stability, but we still don't know. The issue isn't camps, its coaches, that's why he has brought in the guys he's brought in this year. Guys he hopes are better at building relationships and closing the deal.
How do you know that Speight is better than any of the QB's that Harbaugh has recruited? or are you just good at regurgitating what rival fan bases spew out? Harbaugh's first QB recruit from a full cycle was Peters who has played in 5 games, which to me is a little premature to say Speight is clearly better.
I actually don't think that any of the coaching decisions had anything to do with recruiting and everything to do with coaching what they were brought here to coach. While recruiting is part of what every college coach does, I think Harbaugh has been pretty happy with the recruiting that he has done thus far and his main recruiter is Partridge anyway, not Warriner and not McElwain.
last year before he got hurt, and we saw what Peters was, once he got the opportunity to play, not very good. He may get better, but to this point he was no better than the QB left over by Brady Hoke. Don't get the argument twisted. I wasn't making any statements about coaching decisions. My statement was about turnover and how the lack of recruiting by some coaches, and the inabilty to replace a coach who left (Wheatley who was a good recruiter) with a good recruiter,has hurt more than off campus camps. You can't say Harbaugh has been happy about recruiting, because you don't really know. I do know that some of the biggest targets have gone elsewhere, and I can't see how that would make any coach happy.
We can just agree to disagree on the quarterback front as well as the recruiting success so far. Every year, every program misses on some of their biggest targets. Peters played how you would expect a quarterback to play in their first time. He managed the games well and had one poor game against South Carolina.
One point that we can find common ground on is that coaches in a program have a bigger impact on recruiting than the satellite camps would have. In my original response to the OP about it having some effect, I was in no way saying that it is more important than the recruiting that the coaches do on a day to day basis.
I'm not trying to tie in-state performance to the camps. Maybe we're misunderstanding one another.
Michigan's recruiting trajectory isn't looking good is an assumption, not something I spend too much time on. I wanted to take a stab at figuring out some underlying reasons.
To clarify, the original post was intended to be neutral, but I do think that recruiting has taken a dip.
2019 was supposed to be 'the year.' Instead, what you have are no promising ballz leads for top guys, missing on pretty awesome in-state talent, and losing the presumed lead (or at least, being in contention) for other top targets.
I think that the way this class currently projects, Michigan is looking at something in the teens.
Our bag man sucks.
There, I said it.
just win and it will work itself out. beat osu and msu also