Matt Hinton on Harbaugh's Recruiting "Woes"

Sorry, but this piece is too melodramatic for my taste.  The situation is not, as Hinton calls it, "grim."  This class is going to be a decent one for its size.  Most of all, Harbaugh has some great classes from the last three years to work with and has done a great job of shoring up the QB situation.  

This is really the perfect year to not have a great class.  It was going to be small anyway.  Anyone Harbaugh flips is a bonus.  The situation is not "grim;" it is great.  As I have been saying all along, the recent MLive conversion to my logic notwithstanding, the biggest recruit for this year was Jim Harbaugh.  

Everything else is secondary.

and signing day in February 2012.  A full 50% of them --- 5 of 10 --- were either PSU commits or strong PSU leans prior to Urban being named OSU Head Coach.  

Of course, there was that 9.5 earthquake that hit Penn State football in November 2011.

Anyway --- comparing Urban February 2012 to Harbaugh February 2015 is kind of ridiculous, given the rather unique circumstances in November 2011-February 2012.  No doubt that If Ohio State or Michigan State were rocked with some big earthquake, Harbaugh could pluck many kids from their current classes. 

Lets not forget that the NCAA allowed OSU to have one staff coach the bowl game and the new staff recruit from november basically. Which is a joke but whatever.

I still take Harbaugh the way it went down. We may miss some kids now but in the future we are much better off.

and Drevno came from USC.  He's not coming in entirely blind.  Furthermore, it was Harbaugh's choice to hire a bunch of NFL guys who are going to be new and/or out of touch with the recruiting game.

I think we should wait to see what happens tomorrow, but if it doesn't go well, we should acknowledge that Harbaugh's staff hires are focused on player development more than recruiting. (Or at leas tthat's what it means for the preliminary transition year class)

It's really more than just a month. Meyer was effectively unemployed prior to the OSU job other than random color commentary gigs for espn. He could scout recruits and stay on top of things before being hired, so he likely had targets in mind the day he stepped in the door. Harbaugh was employed, and presumably focused on that job, until the day he was hired. I think that's likely a big difference too. Plus, Meyer was only one year removed from college coaching. Lots of elements that would swing the recruiting pendulum in his direction.

He had not only a head start but a "recruiting only" head start as the NCAA imposed its "opposite of sanctions" penalty on them.

In addition to an extra month, Meyer was 11 months removed from coaching in college. Harbaugh was almost four years removed. This meant Meyer might have already been knowledgeable about some recruits (recruiting as Juniors), did not have a big gap in relationships with coaches, was coming off recent college success. Meyer also had the benefit that while making a change in system, it wasn't a monumental shift. They could (and did) make a smooth offensive transition.

Harbaugh alone makes a splash in name, but they had to take what was there and cobble it together. Harbaugh is recruiting from a base he wasn't before at Stanford so has to build relationships. He has to look at a class of talent he has not analyzed before and make quick determinations on who he wants, all the while fighting a battle that those individuals might not have been recruited before.

This is a good point. Harbaugh's college recruiting experience occurred at 2 schools, San Diego and Stanford, that were not in a position to land top classes, for very different reasons. But he succeeded at both, in the words of a former player, at "turning losers into winners." 

Jim Harbaugh will produce a much better team next season, because he's a great football coach, not because of who signs on tomorrow. Going forward, top recruits will be attracted based on the results on the field.