Yet Again Startting To Get Disappointed

Why can Michigan not get any top skilled position players to have interest. With Morris, all these OL from the last two classes, we cannot land a near the top HB or WR. We are settling for lower tier players according to ratings from ALL scouting boards. We are losing out on players who HAD Michigan at their top at some point recently. Isaac is gone, looks like Treadwell is following. Sorry I cant get excited about Dukes, York, and Smith. Just like last class, it is looking like Michigan is going to go 0 for their last 7 hopefulls!

Please step away from the ledge.

Better listen to Fish, DeepBlue83...could get badly hurt if you
fall over the precipice...

Christ, will you ever be happy or satisfied? It's not that bad, man!

Coaches visited this kid recently:

http://rivals.yahoo.com/michigan/football/recruiting/player-Jordan-Wilkins-130432;_ylt=Avk2BApasMNdH7Yj2ki2aBlrspB4

It's really not the end of the world.

hey I love Michigan, but other than the education aspect, choice between USC and Michigan, lets get real. Sun the beach the chicks the money. USC is the movie star school, hot girls every where, Parties on every corner, man not a question where I'd go @ 18 years old.

WHOA, there, [fellow] lab lover--- you definitely are oversimplistically exaggerating.

Much like the naivete my generation so often exhibits when "California Dreamin'"...thinking the Golden State is still the Beach Boys' heaven of the late 50s and 60s.

USC's two campuses are both central to downtown LA. And if you think LA is the same beckoning mecca it was half a century ago, I have to ask the last time you visited?

Much of the city (including downtown after hours) has long since become a veritable battleground: gang/turf wars, road rage over the ultra-congested roadways, panhandling, litter, graffiti, etc.

One of my very best friends told me, not that many years ago, about a business trip to the area...it being his first visit. And during a free-time "grand tour", he asked his host to take him to see Hollywood. "A piece of hell", was his description afterward: from the 14-year-old prostitutes to the panhandlers to the slop everywhere (that one was allowed to go).

But I have to grant your underlying point: those facts (or those of them which are accurate) are too often lost, at once, on 18-year-old prima donna athletes.

Do you have any logic to why you think Treadwell appears to be gone as well, Charlotteguy? I know Tom VH is feeling pretty good about Michigan getting him. He is visiting Michigan this weekend...

Hey Mike, I was in Holywood 3 years ago.

Not the way it's pictured on TV that's for certain.

Didn't see any 14 year old hookers but then again I'm not good on ages! lol

Yeah, lotta "beautiful" people roaming around.

I'd be willing to bet that when they are recruiting kids they keep them in the sun and on the beach.

Joe---my only visit was not long after my U-M days...in March (or April) of '75.
Back then, it definitely had not yet degenerated to its current (21st cent.)
state and was still a more or less idyllic place, the era's racial tensions notwithstanding.

Seedy areas true, then as now, but fewer: was still more or less the L.A. one saw on Emergency!
(Cripes, the missus and I loved that show! Johnny, Roy, the whole Sta-51)

So I should qualify my above diatribe to reflect the fact that I haven't personally seen it of late, but only have several friends' and associates' claims to go on...

As Carly said/sang: "I know nothing stays the same..."

I agree with stjoe, I'm sure they show these young men only what they want them to see.

Remember when USC sucked in the 90's except for one random Rose Bowl season? They lost 60 games over an 8 season stretch. The media called them SC Community College. Then Pete Carrol arrived, got the best players money could buy and before you could blink, they were dominant again. I'm surprised they didn't just cheat in the 90's because the hookers and California life couldn't get them wins that decade.

And although I didn't live during the time period, I was told USC wasn't exactly squeaky clean during their dominant 70's period either. Other than the Miami Hurricanes, is USC considered the longest running dirty program in college football?

WolverineHistorian wrote:

And although I didn't live during the time period, I was told USC wasn't exactly squeaky clean during their dominant 70's period either. Other than the Miami Hurricanes, is USC considered the longest running dirty program in college football?

Most likely, WH. I distinctly recall reading a headline in or around 1982 or so, when the chicanery of the
John McKay (and even John Robinson) regimes finally came to light:

Southern Cal Admits Past Sins, Asks Fans' Forgiveness.

Of course, winning cures all ills and ill will (on fans' and boosters' parts). But apparently, the NCAA did
crack at least a token whip at the time, because beginning in 1983 through about 1988, they stunk like hell.
(In '83, I recall, one of Gerry Faust's only wins of that season at ND was a whipping of them).

Addendum, WH--- I'm not sure there ever was a dirtier college football program than Oklahoma in the 80s. Barry Switzer takes the cake in the world of slime buckets...a dubious mantle he inherited (but dutifully perpetuated on his own) from Chuck Fairbanks.

(The latter, both syllables of whose name can make for some pretty good pundits' lines, years later turned Colorado's program into a shambles).

After your wont (as a historian): http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1126571/index.htm

This is really simple. Hoke and Company only want players who want to attend UM. I am sure they were not happy by losing Ty, (I for on was shocked..had him pegged at UM) but I'll bet he was a 2 minute conversation before they went on to their next prospect.

A great RB doesn't need a line to make a huge impact..ie, Sanders. A good RB will look like a superstar running behind a great OL. ie Emmit Smith.

I think people really need to take a step back and realize that UM has not been very relevant (I hate to say this) for awhile. It will take a couple of good seasons before they start getting the elite skill players. Hoke and Borges are still an unproven commodity. They've had 1 year at an elite school, and highly rated skill players, who are not die-hard UM fans, will want more proof than just one season that went very well. Start putting them together and they will come. We live in a world (unfortunately) of "what can you do for me?" attitudes.

We, as fans, know UM is rising again to where it belongs in the elite status, but these kids who are only 17 or 18 only remember UM getting dominated by Ohio and the Rich Rod years. Think about UM's records the last 8 years when these kids really started focusing on football.

If we follow up last years performance with another good year, we will have elite skill players knocking on our doors.

And then USC goes and gets one if the few RB rated better than Isaac as well. Keep going Hoke, no name skill position players work wonders if we haven't noticed lately.

Mike Hart anyone? I'm not concerned. With the OL we have coming in Steve Urkel could run cor 200 yards a game. Sure it would be nice to get stud RB recruits but if they aren't worthy of wearing the Winged Helmet f%#@ 'em. We're Michigan....

CharlotteGuy wrote:

And then USC goes and gets one if the few RB rated better than Isaac as well. Keep going Hoke, no name skill position players work wonders if we haven't noticed lately.

Whoopty-doo for them. USC can keep all the intra-team dissension it wants. So with Isaac and Jacob (or Abraham or Moses or whateverhisnameis), are they going to play a 5-man backfield? (Yeah, they'd
find a way to skirt the rules if anyone would.)

No way in hell a top-rated member of today's MeFirsters club is going to be satisfied with even 50% of the carries, let alone less. And no knowledgeable football mind would dispute the fact that "XXXX-by-committee"
just doesn't cut it. Substitute 'RB' or 'QB' as the variable...


I'll sit back and sate myself with Hoke and his "mediocrity", thank you very much.

So 85 was right about Davis going there...just not the part about how that would sway Ty our way.

Rats.