Satellites are any object in orbit around a large body. Or in this case, a dad body. The Summer Swarm turned what would have been a week overwhelmed with "omigosh which clothing manufacturer is going to give us money to wear their clothing?" into a week of "omigod Harbaugh is in Alabama and not wearing any clothing!"
Reader CoachW reported back from the Dallas camp with an example of the goings on:
They broke the kids out into position groups and did some warm ups and then had races until they declared a winner in each group. After that, they did rotating agility drills all over the field. From there it was Indy for a good hour. After that, they broke the kids out into freshman and sophomores on one end and the upperclassmen on the other. Here they did basically a one-on-one, make the other guy miss drill with offense vs defense. It was 30 yards long and from the sideline to the hash and all the defender had to do was touch the offensive guy. The young kids really struggled with this as the defense won pretty much every time.
Amir_6 also put together a bunch of resulting recruiting bits that came up on Twitter. As I type this Harbaugh's speaking at the Sound Mind Sound Body Camp. Let me say that again: Jim Harbaugh is speaking at the Sound Mind…
Sound Body
If you need cheering up today, here's shirtless Jim Harbaugh stealing sad Urban Meyer's pizza @mgoblog@AceAnbenderpic.twitter.com/H4y0trdl76
— Patrick Barron (@MGoDrone) June 5, 2015
Camp. Ironic coachspeak name aside, SMSB is turning out to be quite the showcase of the suddenly richer Midwest coaching talent: James Franklin, Jerry Kill, and Brian Kelly were also around, and defensive linemen present get to tell tales the rest of their lives of being coached by both Larry Johnson Sr. and Greg Mattison at the same time! The conference still has Hazell and Beckman, but what a difference the names at the top of Ohio State, Penn State and Michigan makes.
/remembers we just added Flood and Edsall
/punches thing.
Players come from places. While I fix what used to be a computer speaker, head over to Lanknows's diary on in-state recruiting success, as measured by the percent of top-five Michigan players who went to Michigan. That's not a very good way of doing it since there are years when Michigan looked at that pool and said "we'll take Brandon Graham" and moved on. Also there are recruitments like Chris Norman (whose total Michigan recruitment was a conversation about Barwis he didn't understand), in the same box as Edwin Baker, whom RR overlooked while chasing rabbit chasers out of Pahokee, and RoJo, who seemed like a Michigan lock until a deity told him to go to USC. I'd love to see this expanded to really dive into each recruiting season in the state.
The other "here's how recruiting turned out" diary was Erik_in_Dayton went through all of the 2007 and 2008 Stanford recruits, arming us with information to combat the three-star mafioso. Conclusion: hits and misses, but way more hits than you should expect from that lot; he really did build the basis of that program from 2- and 3-star material. And Andrew Luck.
Other diaries: M baseball draftees and potential draftees. The records softball broke this year. LSA found no patterns in what round players are drafted in, though I bet he would find some shifts for OL and against RBs if he did it by actual draft number instead of round. Alum96 poked around offensive stats and found Michigan and Indiana falling off offensive cliffs later in the season maybe overrated opponent defenses.
[Jump for comments on Kelly's call for help]
There's football in this establishment? Hoo-nilly Brian Kelly got the "athletes are students first" folk fanning themselves vigorously, while rising 8 points in my respect-o-meter for this:
Honestly, I don't know that any of our players would get into the school by themselves right now, with the academic standards the way they are. Maybe one or two of our players that are on scholarship.
Very few football players at any Power 5 school would get into that school if you took out football. Likewise, very few art students would get into the art school if they weren't exceptional artists. Certain things you go to college for are about having the chops to do that thing better than the nth percentile of your classmates; predictably their scholastic achievements outside their field of hyper-excellence are below the generalists in their class. The only difference is the NCAA doesn't have a tome of rules to make sure artists don't get one dollop of cream cheese more than X as payment for their works.
Getting the students more academic support is standard procedure at most football factories. I'm in favor of football being a major; since it's not the schools have a responsibility to these players to actually provide the instruction that degree is representing. But I also acknowledge that's damn near impossible—just getting a normal student to graduation takes at least an academic advisor, now try getting that same student through when he's spending 80 hours a week being one of the best in the country at something that's hard. Now add that he started way behind his classmates and doesn't necessarily have much interest or aptitude in the things they do because he's already spending 80 hours a week doing thing he does love. The NCAA is rightly going after UNC for unethically shoving players into sham classes to keep them eligible. But there's a systematic problem that contributed to that situation, and it starts with expecting every player with NFL dreams to be just as interested in critically thinking about Tocqueville.
Remember the goal of university admissions isn't to reward people for being good at high school; it's to build alumni who will make money and donate it back to the university. What they get out of an elite football player isn't just happier and more donor-willing current alumni; they get a certain type of student with a deep well of self-motivation, and a kind of intelligence that's not useful for learning Byzantine emperors but excels at quick adaptation within a matrix of complex principles. That sort of intelligence tends to lead to success in things you get money for doing, and this is why an outsized portion of football players go on to be more successful than their classmates.
And that's really the bottom line. People shake their heads at a General Studies or whatever major who's really playing student while studying football, but the programs have known for a long time if you can get that student through a college curriculum while playing football, 10-20 years down the line chances are very good you've got a highly successful alum who's convinced he has his school to thank for that.
Maybe if you had yourself surgically turned into a Wolverine I'd consider it. Some guy asked if getting "Michigan" on one arm and "Wolverines" tattooed on the other arm, and 10 more M tats besides into "Michigan's No. 1 fan." I have my own candidate for Michigan's No. 1 fan. He has:
- Attended almost every Michigan sporting event since the 1950s and remembers Ozzie Cowles's players better than you remember Amaker's.
- Once stood outside Lloyd Carr's office window and yelled until Lloyd invited him in to explain his side of the Rich Rod kerfluffles
- So touched Lloyd by his obvious devotion to Michigan that he was invited to do things like sit in on a quarterbacks meeting.
- Authored one book titled "The Obscene Diaires of a Michigan Fan" and another called "The Search for the Unified Field Theory (Football Version)."
- Is a regular on WTKA and part of Brian's MGoBlog panel on Thursday mornings despite never having served or covered Michigan in any official capacity.
Ball's in your court (which Craig Ross knows the origin of).
Etc. Ty Wheatley II is purportedly up to OT size already. Here's guessing "PAAAAWWWWLLLL" will never be Harbaugh's quote of the day. Every recruit and transfer is now enrolled. I'm sending HTTV digital copies out.
Your Moment of Zen: