instate recruiting and does it matter that much???
this is a topic that has bothered me for a while now, and now that i have a little bit of time on my hands i thought i should ask the guys "in the know"...
does it really matter how many instate players michigan gets each year??? i know that MSU fans live and die by this stat and that its kind of perceived as a joke around here... since 2004 MSU has gotten more instate players then michigan has... in the last 2 years MSU has picked up 25 instate players to michigans 9... michigan hasn't picked up more instate players then MSU since 2002, 03...
is dantonio that hell bent on getting so many kids from michigan, no matter how good they are??? and is michigan content with picking up the 3 or 4 best players most years and moving on to bigger and better things??? dantonio learned this recruiting tatic from his former boss tressel who has made it known that he is going to try and get every player from ohio to go to OSU... but there is one problem with that, there is a huge talent drop off between michigan and ohio...
from the looks of it MSU has always gotten more instate players then michigan, so why has it become such a big deal in the last couple of years???
January 26th, 2010 at 10:32 AM ^
The key is to get the GOOD players from within the state. That's been the problem the past couple years. It doesn't matter that MSU has more in-state recruits - they can't recruit nationally as well as UM can.
We can't be a national power if we concentrate solely on recruiting in-state. There's just not enough talent in MI. But that's always going to be your most loyal/fruitful recruiting ground, and losing out on guys like Gholston, Norman, Fred Smith, Hankins, etc. hurts a little bit.
That being said, I think Michigan will do a pretty good job in-state for 2011.
January 26th, 2010 at 10:40 AM ^
how i feel about the whole thing... yeah there are some players that have gotten away, but what can you do... i also think that if MSU keeps just picking up as many instate players as possible that they are never going to be a 8 to 9 win team on a consistent basis...
January 26th, 2010 at 10:58 AM ^
No. Shear numbers do not matter. Otherwise, it could be said that CMU, Western, Eastern, etc. own the state because they have a higher number of in state signees. Michigan had 11 Ohio recruits according to Rivals, and a good chunk of Florida recruits as well. Add these power state recruits to the top recruits we have gotten in the last couple of years from Texas, Arizona, California, the Carolina's, Pennnsylvania, etc. and I think our recruiting map looks just fine. In fact, I would look back at the last 20-30 years of Michigan football and I think you will find that most of our best players did not come from Michigan. Woodson, Grbac, Howard, A-Train, Mike Hart, Chad Henne, the list goes on and on. Also, we have always lost teh occasional big name in state guy to MSU or elsewhere. Guys like Ducket, Rogers, etc. went to MSU instead of Michigan and nobody claimed that Michigan was losing control of the state. MSU laughs at us because we think we are closing the gap in basketball and then claims that suddenly they are the premier football team in the state. Suck it Mike Valenti.
January 26th, 2010 at 11:22 AM ^
Rather appropriate to speak of "shear" numbers when discussing MSU...
January 26th, 2010 at 12:09 PM ^
...and would like to add a little to this. State's strategy in both football and basketball seems to be to recruit mainly instate and fill a few positions out of state. It works great in basketball because there are enough players in the Detroit, Flint, and Saginaw areas to win championships with. A look at how many players with Michigan roots go on to the NBA is a great indicator of instate basketball talent.
However, it doesn't work in football for the reason Magnus stated: there aren't enough players to win with. For some reason, though, Sparty can't understand that what works in one sport doesn't work in all of them. So, the recruit with desperation instate, badmouth UM to recruits and their parents, and brag about their "domination."
What did it get them this season? One game better than a Michigan team that played their last eight games with a severely injured freshman QB and walk-ons trying to play at crucial spots on defense.
But they sure do talk a great game.
January 26th, 2010 at 12:16 PM ^
I'm pretty sure that they understand that recruiting strictly in state won't work as well for football. I just don't think they have the ability to pull upper level prospects from out of state. Dantonio knows this, and so they beat the "we own the state of Michigan" drum. The effects are two-fold; they win over the local sports media, and in a quasi self-fulfilling prophecy (they hope) the top in-state recruits will be pulled to the enormous gravity of Moo-u.
God I hate Sparty.
January 26th, 2010 at 12:53 PM ^
...Dantonio brags about instate recruiting because he knows being from MSU doesn't open the same doors that being from UM does.
I find this to be quite ironic, because the last "glory days" of MSU football were largely on the shoulders of recruits from the south before the SEC was fully integrated. Anyway, whether Dantonio brags out of stupidity or frustration, the result is still the same: Same Old Sparty.
January 26th, 2010 at 12:56 PM ^
I agree. They try to recruit nationally, but outside of Ohio and somewhat in Illinois/Penn, MSU simply doesn't carry enough cache to walk into a recruit's home in Texas or Alabama and convince him to go north. I count 11 non-Midwest kids on MSU's roster, and a couple of them were from JCs. Winning helps and MSU going to 2 straight bowl games certainly gets their name out, but the fact remains that their recruiting base remains Michigan and Ohio. That means they go head-to-head with UM and OSU on most top-notch kids, and they lose more times than not. Sure, they are making inroads in MI, but that also feels like a temporary state, for once UM starts to win again, the best kids are going to want to go there.
January 26th, 2010 at 12:41 PM ^
I wish I'd caught my typo earlier, as in "they recruit with desperation...."
January 26th, 2010 at 12:15 PM ^
player in Michigan is Devin Gardner, and hes not wearing spartan colors so as long as we get players like Gardner to come here and not go to MSU honestly who cares about the other in state players going to MSU. How many players can MSU get from Florida or California, last time I checked we had 5 or six combined from the two states.
January 26th, 2010 at 10:35 AM ^
for the Will Gholston and Devin Gardner types. But you mention the talent gap in comparison to states like Ohio, Florida, Texas, etc. And that makes the issue white noise for the most part.
I give Mark Dantonio credit for the PR blitz they've done on this, but ultimately I don't think it will make much of a difference. Michigan will continue to go after the elite handful of players in the state hard, but beyond that concentrate on the regions where players who fill the rosters of programs like Florida, Texas, OSU, Oklahoma, LSU, Alabama, USC, etc. hail from. That is, not typically not Michigan.
January 26th, 2010 at 10:47 AM ^
UM adds players from Michigan that fit the system. We took Gardner they took a pro-style QB that sat on bench his senior year. Case closed.
January 26th, 2010 at 10:40 AM ^
I think it is simply a case of fans clinging to any positive they can find. We do it as well in other circumstances. I remember a lot of talk after the loss to ND a couple years ago how we all talked about the stats in that game, and how we actually dominated (though lost on the score board).
In this case MSU fans find an area where they can say "we beat UM" (though they can refer to the score board as well this year).
In the case of MSU, they are more or less forced to recruit Michigan hard because outside the state they really aren't a player.
In contrast, UM has a huge recruiting base and the luxery of going into states like Florida, Texas, Cal etc. RR knows it is more important to get the best players in the country than it is to dominate a state that isn't loaded in talent. For this reason he focuses only on the top talent in Michigan.
This gives MSU fans an opportunity to brag about instate recruiting, but they fail to recognize that in most instances the battles were not head-to-head with UM.
January 26th, 2010 at 10:43 AM ^
no it doesn't matter that much. we've been fine recruiting nationally for years but in-state recruiting only started to 'matter' when state started getting better at it
January 26th, 2010 at 10:45 AM ^
from the looks of it MSU has always gotten more instate players then michigan, so why has it become such a big deal in the last couple of years???
The Media love affair with Dantonio is the simplest answer.
January 26th, 2010 at 10:46 AM ^
I think we miss some talent in-state and I'd like to see us get more of it, but we don't do a terrible job.
I watch documentaries like "The U" and the report on American Samoa and it talks about all these kids who embrace football as their way out of poverty and are passionate about it. I feel like Detroit has to have a lot of this talent floating around for us to find. In state recruits are perfect for EE and that gives us an extra term to work with them.
In a perfect world I'd like to see us take in say 1/4 to 1/3 of the class from Michigan and EE it to get a leg up. However you recruit where the talent is, and if we don't have that kind of talent in state, so be it.
January 26th, 2010 at 11:12 AM ^
only one player that drives me crazy that michigan didn't and state did and thats keshawn martin... i feel that he would be perfect for the spread...
January 26th, 2010 at 10:51 AM ^
We don't have to get all of the top guys but I would like to know that at least we have a chance to get anyone. Knowing that we're actually not welcome from the word go somewhere in Michigan is disturbing. Take Renaissace for example. We have to repair that somehow.
January 26th, 2010 at 11:06 AM ^
It's important for State to maximize their in-state numbers...folks on parole typically aren't allowed to leave their home state and Dantonio has to put something on the field.
January 26th, 2010 at 11:20 AM ^
Michigan's real weakness is that it doesn't produce enough top recruits to fill one top program, much less two. Even MSU has a very large percentage of its kids come from out of state, and MSU's strongest period historically was when it had a pipeline coming from the segregated South.
The current coaches strategy appears to be to build relationships with coaches at top programs around the country (Pahokee is a great example) and when they do take lower rated kids, they try to pull them from those programs with the goal of establishing a positive relationship with top coaches and the higher rated kids coming through those programs.
January 26th, 2010 at 11:42 AM ^
2009 Top 10 recruits in Michigan
1. DT William Campbell, Detroit Cass Tech, 6-5, 315 (UofM)
2. RB Edwin Baker, Oak Park, 5-9, 205 (Michigan State)
3. LB Chris Norman, Detroit Renaissance, 6-2, 220 (Michigan State)
4. QB Andrew Maxwell, Midland, 6-3, 190 (Michigan State)
5. WR James Jackson, Grand Ledge, 5-11, 180 (Ohio State)
6. RB Teric Jones, Detroit Cass Tech, 5-9, 190 (UofM)
7. RB Larry Caper, Battle Creek Central, 5-11, 205 (Michigan State)
8. WR/LB Cameron Gordon, Inkster, 6-3, 215 (UofM)
9. TE Reid Fragel, Grosse Pointe South, 6-7, 255 (Ohio State)
10. DE Dylan Farrington, Adrian, 6-5, 225
...anyone on the list above not committed to UofM for 2009 or Denard Robinson (Florida recruit)? We do need to win the battle and get the really great players from the state of Michigan who fit our new systems. Winning the "Overall" in state recruiting war is not as important (IMO). If we find a guy who is a better fit for us and is from outside Michigan..... so be it...
January 26th, 2010 at 12:42 PM ^
The only guy on that list I wish UM had snagged was Norman, since it is a position of need for this team and the Renaissance pipeline is a consistent producer of Big 10-quality recruits. RBs and WRs never seem to be in short supply on RR-led teams, and the system can turn middling kids into top producers.
January 26th, 2010 at 12:08 PM ^
I don't disagree that Ohio has better highschool talent than Michigan. My question is "why?"
Population certainly plays a part. But New York's population is huge, but isn't considered a football state. Is Michigan a football state? Lousiana is not a hugely populous state, yet it produces a ton of talent.
Many states allow high schools to have spring practice. Is spring practice allowed by the MHSAA? Is the MHSAA to rigid in its policies and is stifling talent? What can be done to increase the level of talent in the state of Michigan? It has to be more than just the water.
January 26th, 2010 at 12:39 PM ^
More passion for the high school game, I suppose, which translates into a higher percentage of kids getting into the game at a younger age.
January 26th, 2010 at 12:43 PM ^
Malcolm Gladwell likes this: Capitalization rates
New York has a huge population, but most of it is concentrated in a city where football fields are non-existent, most of the kids growing up there play basketball, because it's easy. The city most likely would have some great football players, but no one knows because the kids never get the chance to play.
Ohio, meanwhile, has--what? 1/4 of population?--but they live and breath football. Outside of the two major cities (Cleveland and Cinci) High School football is life. Those kids have great coaching and schools fund their programs very well. If you have the potential to be a good football player, they will find you. Note that this is the exact opposite of New York. This is the same in Louisiana (on a smaller scale).
Pahokee is an interesting case: those kids are, demographically, the exact same inner city kids that litter D-1 programs like Miami, and they share one vital characteristic: they live and breath football, because the general consensus is that it's the only way to ever leave Pahokee (and poverty) behind.
Michigan is sort of in the middle: judging just by the number of top recruits that come out of Detroit each year, there is obviously a lot of talent. But like New York, Football fields are hard to come by. Programs (like everything else in the city) are underfunded and the kids don't get the same coaching that they would if they lived in Ohio. Not to mention the absurdly high drop out rates in the Detroit Public School System: Can you imagine how much potential has been lost due to their inability to keep kids in school?
Outside of Detroit, the football demographic just isn't there: wealthy, predominately white suburbs aren't going to produce very many 5-star athletes, let alone in the numbers necessary to sustain several major athletic programs. Not to mention that, unlike Ohio, we have a variety of sports and entertainment options other than high school football on Friday nights which, while certainly a good thing, doesn't create the football culture necessary to consistently create the elite talent that a place like Ohio does.
January 26th, 2010 at 12:09 PM ^
It all depends what happens on the field, right? MSU is gloating about recruiting because they have had a better record than us the past two seasons. As soon as that corrects itself, and it will, then all this recruiting talk will be moot.
MSU and recruiting is kind of like the Detroit Lions and the draft. It's both teams Super Bowl.
January 26th, 2010 at 12:23 PM ^
They haven't had a better record at all. They have pulled more in-state guys, but they usually do.
January 26th, 2010 at 12:18 PM ^
Many people disagree that Gardner is the best player - lots of people think Gholston is. So it's not nearly as cut-and-dried as you think.
Also, we have way more than 5-6 players from Florida and California if you're including the class of 2010.
January 26th, 2010 at 12:21 PM ^
I don't think there's a great answer. Ohio just has better football genes, I guess. Also, a lot of talent comes from bigger cities, and Michigan really doesn't have many big cities. Even Detroit is becoming depopulated.
January 26th, 2010 at 12:38 PM ^
I guess that makes sense, but it just seems weird that two contiguous states would have such a disparity in football production on a yearly basis. As for the big city argument, Detroit itself may be losing population somewhat, but the metro area is still larger than anything in Ohio, and overall the states have similar population breakdowns.
January 26th, 2010 at 12:46 PM ^
I was wondering, If we get both Parker and Knight and PSU doesnt get anymore recruits can we jump them to the #1 spot in the B10
January 26th, 2010 at 4:17 PM ^
Not a chance. They are way up there this year. If it makes you feel any better, their classes from '07 through '09 were pretty unimpressive.
January 26th, 2010 at 2:24 PM ^
In-state recruiting will be interesting to watch, especially considering Dan Enos left MSU to become the Head Coach at CMU. Enos has been locking down some good players in-state the last few years, so you'll definitely see a better chance for Michigan to get those players in coming years.