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There’s a lot to unpack here, so let’s just get right into it.
The Athletic‘s Ari Wasserman, who’s long covered Ohio State, appeared on The Andy Staples Show on Monday, and proclaimed that Michigan’s biggest failure as of late, particularly in the Jim Harbaugh era, has been its lack of recruiting the state of Ohio.
“They’re not in Ohio,” Wasserman said. “Traditionally speaking, Michigan’s best players in program history have come from Ohio — and they’re not in it. Like, if you go back and you look, there was a huge difference from the 2009 to the 2013 classes. Total, I think there were 88 four or five-star prospects in Ohio, and Michigan signed 17. From 2013 to currently, I think they’ve signed five. But they’re not in the state anymore. They’re not even trying. And they have this national recruiting brand — I think they’re in Texas, California, Florida and New Jersey. And they’re trying to be this national — early on, but they’ve completely forgotten what their bread and butter is.”
While it’s true that some of Michigan’s greats have come from Ohio — both of its modern era Heisman Trophy winners, Desmond Howard and Charles Woodson, are Ohio natives — college football has changed since those times. Recruiting, as he even somewhat noted, has become more national for the bigger programs, whereas, rosters previously would have a healthy dose of the in-state littered with other prospects from neighboring states. For Michigan, that meant Ohio. But now that certain programs are beyond regional — and yes, we still think it’s important to lock up your home state — a four-star from Ohio is the same as a four-star from Georgia or Florida or New Jersey.
What can be debated is motivation against a team like Ohio State if you’re a Wolverine from the Buckeye State. You could argue that a player who left Ohio for Michigan would be more eager than, say, a player from SEC country to beat OSU, because they don’t want to have to deal with the repercussions when they returned home. But when Michigan was beating Ohio State regularly, it wasn’t just the Ohio native recruits that put the maize and blue over the top. OSU regularly had a top-tier program under Jon Cooper, but couldn’t beat the Wolverines most years. Ultimately, that was more of a coaching issue than anything.
Despite Wasserman’s complaints, Michigan has brought in the No. 2 class in the Big Ten in 2020 (14 nationally), No. 1 in 2019 (8 nationally), No. 3 in 2018 (22 nationally). No. 2 in 2017 (5 nationally), No. 2 in 2016 (8 nationally), No. 5 in 2015 (37 nationally, but this was an incomplete class, due to the Hoke/Harbaugh transition), No. 2 in 2014 (20 nationally) and No. 2 in 2013 (4 nationally).
There have been three problems for Michigan under either Hoke or Harbaugh: 1. When top recruits have come to Ann Arbor, they haven’t reached their envisioned potential; 2. While somewhat commensurate with the national transfer numbers, Michigan has had too many of its four-star and above players leave the program early; 3. Ohio State is just recruiting better. The latter point is that on which the Wolverines are judged. They intermittently have beaten MSU, Notre Dame, Penn State and Wisconsin. It’s the losses to OSU that have drawn the ire of the fanbase and the attention of outside detractors. Yes, Michigan has also lost all but one bowl game since the 2013 period in which Wasserman mentioned, but even with his note about how many four-stars the Wolverines had brought in from Ohio just before that, note that Michigan was no more successful in either winning bowl games, and only marginally more successful against Ohio State, having won in 2011.
Wasserman continued with a few more shots at Michigan and Jim Harbaugh, taking a swipe at the staff while raising up a yet unproven coach hired at one of the Wolverines’ rivals.
“Their recruiting coordinator is not a good recruiting coordinator,” Wasserman said. “I’ve had multiple discussions with people — high school coaches and a lot of people in the ranks and people who would be dealing with him that say, ‘He’s not responsive. He’s not on the ball.’ I think their entire situation with how their staff is made up is not up to snuff when it comes to recruiting.
“I think Jim Harbaugh is a fine football coach, but I don’t think he has the right people in place or the right discipline to replace them. I know that he’s had a lot of turnover on staff during his Michigan tenure. It’s kind of hard to keep replacing people and replacing people if you want to keep them, but like, think of what Mel Tucker would do if he took over at Michigan right now: he would completely gut the staff, he’d bring in fierce recruiters and he’d be in Ohio every single day. And Michigan’s not there. And I honestly think that Mel Tucker would be the coach to make Michigan better.”
Take the latter point first: Mel Tucker has yet to prove as a head coach that he can be successful at any program, let alone one like Michigan. He was 5-7 at Colorado — his sole year overseeing a program. He had solid success as a recruiter at Georgia and Alabama, but both of those programs already had a solid reputation on that front before he came along. We’re not saying that he won’t be successful at MSU, but Wasserman’s assumption here is just that, beyond conjecture.
Secondly, Harbaugh has filled his room with more and more recruiters since he arrived. In 2015, his staff was mostly an NFL one. Now? It’s got multiple personalities adept at recruiting. There’s a reason Alabama tried to lure away Chris Partridge and why Ole Miss eventually did. Sherrone Moore was the No. 2 recruiter in the Big Ten in 2020 while Don Brown was No. 5 and now-departed Anthony Campanile was No. 17. Josh Gattis is an avid recruiter, as is new hire Brian Jean-Mary. Bob Shoop, the new safeties coach, hasn’t been known as that, but he told Jon Jansen last week that he intends to step it up on that front.
As far as Wasserman’s swipe at Matt Dudek, it’s hard to qualify it without specifics. What we do have to go on is this, from top Michigan 2021 target Rocco Spindler, who shared this with WolverinesWire last summer:
Michigan director of recruiting Matt Dudek has been long after Spindler’s services, and in the pursuit of trying to get him to don a winged helmet, the two have really hit it off and formed quite a bond. For Spindler, Dudek may be the Wolverines’ ace in the hole, as getting to spend time with him was among one of the many highlights of Saturday’s trip to The Big House.
“It was really spectacular,” Spindler said. “How the coaches really treat me when I go up on the campus. Even if they have a bunch of recruits there, they’re really rolling out the red carpet recruiting me.
“Matt Dudek does a fantastic job – one of the best in college football, I would say. He’s a really great guy. Got a great personality – which is hard to come by. What I really look at is, ‘Who’s got the best personality?’ He’s an unbelievable guy. He makes me want to skip football and hang out with him. He’s a really good guy.”
Also, it’s not true that Michigan isn’t recruiting Ohio. It went hard after Zach Harrison, and finished second behind Ohio State. It got Erick All, Nolan Rumler, Zach Carpenter, Joey Velazquez and Quintel Kent (who medically retired before suiting up) in 2019. It’s pursuing Corey Kiner and Jack Pugh in 2021 as Kaden Saunders and Blake Miller in 2022.
It all depends on the year. In 2021 and 2022, arguably, the state of Michigan is deeper and more important. Say the maize and blue do miss on in-state product Donovan Edwards or the Ohio-based Kiner– which, would be a loss regardless — they could still bring in TreVeyon Henderson out of Virginia, the top-ranked running back in the entire country.
Ohio is a state with a lot of great talent, that’s not debatable. But Michigan is well within its rights to pursue great talent in other states. That it’s not getting top-flight recruits from the neighboring state to the south isn’t a real reason for the Wolverines inability to beat the Buckeyes or get to Indianapolis or make the College Football Playoff. If anything, Michigan’s proven it can come close to things in the Jim Harbaugh era — but it hasn’t been able to capitalize at key moments.
That’s the thing holding the Wolverines back, not geography.
