The Wolverine: Covering University of Michigan Football and Sports
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2015 RECRUITING ISSUE BY JOHN BORTON T hose on the outside might have thought Jim Harbaugh and his coaches were striking out in completing the class of 2015. With days to go before National Signing Day, the Wolverines featured nine confirmed commitments. Circumstances called for patience and a bigger-picture outlook, of course. Michigan announced Har- baugh as head coach on Dec. 30, amid a recruiting dead period, and most high school standouts had long since decided on their college destinations anyway. But working with what he de- scribed on his Twitter account as "enthusiasm unknown to mankind," Harbaugh and his coaches hit the road hard. They spread out across the nation, venturing to the West Coach, the deep South, the Eastern seaboard and everywhere in between. They stated their case as to why top high school talents should flip their decision from Texas, or Iowa, or Northwestern, or Cal, and come to Michigan. They shook a lot of hands, took a lot of pictures, and reassured a lot of parents, some for the class of 2015 and some beyond. In the end, they wound up with 14 new Wolverines, five of them coming to light in the final days before the Feb. 4 signings took place, four of them on National Signing Day itself. "We're very pleased with our class, very proud, really," Harbaugh noted. "I think everybody who loves Michi- gan is going to be very proud to call these youngsters their own." He also stiff-armed the notion that his crew faced an uphill climb to put the class in place. "It wasn't difficult," Harbaugh in- sisted. "It was a real joy." He'll no doubt feature future classes more joyously saluted among those who rank how well teams fared, in part because the Wolverines will have more scholarships to offer in the future. This was going to be a relatively small class anyway, based on those limitations, and the race to wrap it up added to the intensity. Rivals.com ranked Michigan's class of 2015 the No. 48 recruiting class in the nation. It checked in at No. 15 nationally based on an average star FAST FINISH Jim Harbaugh And His Staff Scoured The Nation To Complete Their First Class