The Wolverine: Covering University of Michigan Football and Sports
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/641955
2016 FOOTBALL RECRUITING ISSUE Jon Solomon, CBSSports.com: "There reaches a point with college football recruiting when all that's left for the participants to do is laugh at the whole spec- tacle. Getting a college scholarship is a crowning achievement for high school players and their families. It's also the culmination of an amusing but stressful process … "Swooning over recruits has always reminded me of Jerry Seinfeld's observation of pro sports. Given how frequently players leave teams, cheering for pro teams amounts to rooting for laundry — except, in college football, you aren't just root- ing for laundry. You're rooting for hormones — hormones that may or may not honor commitments, stay eligible and out of trouble for three to five years, and live up to the overwhelming hype. Harbaugh literally staged a two-hour awards show Wednesday with celebrities cheering for hormones. 'Signing of the Stars,' held before 3,500 invited guests to an auditorium set up like The Oscars or NFL Draft, was as ridiculously fantastic as you could imagine. It was spectacularly vain and spectacularly brilliant …" University of Central Florida head coach Scott Frost: "As long as I'm running this program, we're not going to make a zoo out of National Signing Day. … Re- cruiting has become a circus. Long term, I don't want to recruit a lot of guys here who are going to wait until the last day to put four or five hats on a table and hold teams hostage to wait and see what they're going to do. I want kids who want to be at UCF; not kids who want to be recruited. "It's great to get the attention. It's great that people are interested. Obviously, college football is a product everybody wants to be a part of and is excited about. But, to be honest with you, it's tough on kids. … For a year or two as they're being recruited, these young men have everybody from Rivals to Scout to ESPN to local media to coaches telling them how great they are. The kids who fall in love with that process and start believing the hype, so it's a tougher transition for them." Ohio State head coach Urban Meyer: "We certainly monitor everything. Not just [Michigan], but the Eastern side is one of the most competitive conference divisions in college football. So we know everything that everybody's doing. "We do have to remain true to ourselves and who are we and who am I and who do I like to hire. Our focus is on Real Life Wednesdays and graduation life after football, and if you're blessed enough go on to the NFL and win some champion- ships along the way. That's been Ohio State's style for as long as I've been alive and it's not going to change. "But I'll tell you this about our conference — they're recruiting their tails off. The Big Ten is on fire right now." — Chris Balas