Michigan recruiting question

[huskerssalts]

ok what am i missing here? 30 commits and last year just shy of 30 commits, almost taking them to 60 commits in two years. How does one team do this, take enough commits in two years what most teams equal in 3 years?? Sorry im just truly lost here and how Michigan can pull 59 total commitments in two years.

 

[HuskerLLM]

Took only 12 or 14 or something like that Harbs first year, the second year they back counted A LOT of commits from early enrollees and then back counted a bunch this year to last year. The numbers eventually catch up. It is how Cally had class of 30 here as well.

 

[mwulf]

lots of kids want to go to rome, china, israel and south africa

 

[ellobo]

Took only 12 or 14 or something like that Harbs first year, the second year they back counted A LOT of commits from early enrollees and then back counted a bunch this year to last year. The numbers eventually catch up. It is how Cally had class of 30 here as well.

To expand (since it was asked), it was 14 in 2015 amd in addition we only took 16 the year before. Its a problem that started with the Rich Rod regime. When he came in there was a max exodus of Carr players (actually more of the younger guys than older guys who stuck it out and graduated). Then Rich Rod continued to have retention issues even with his own recruits.

This led to Hoke taking some pretty big classes when he came in too (his 1st two full cycles...the transition class they undersigned). However, he had the opposite problem in that he had relatively little attrition so the classes never evened out. The 2015 class could have had a few more kids but we didn't land one kid between the start of the season and when Harbaugh was hired (hoke on the hot seat stopped recruiting dead in its tracks). Harbaugh left a few schollies open because, with only a month to recruit, he chose to bank them instead of taking inferior players.

Thus you saw the result this year where Michigan had an abnormal number of seniors (4th and 5th year guys who were Hokes first two full classes) when normal attrition usually means about a 1/3 less. It has also led to back to back massive classes because the classes behind them (not including this years frosh class) were virtually non-existent (not only were they small but had a few guys leave when Harbaugh came in). People talked about how many seniors we had but we also played something like 24 true freshman this year because behind the seniors that's really what we had. Don't be surprised to see a decemt amount of attrition from these two new classes as the depth chart starts to be established and some players don't find a path to the field...as cold as it sounds it will be a good thing for Michigan so it again can find roster balance among upper and lower classmen.