This Week's Obsession: HOLYA ASDILJ AIO:U)UIOASDIOUAS!!!

This week George CaFLAPPAJMAAA WOOOO PEROBEEE FLABBBADABBA ROOSKIE ROUNDTABLE CROOTIN LINEUP:

• BRIALNAWLFJKLASDFJ KL;ASDJFKL;JA
• ACOERFJALKFUASD0[F IADSKFJKLASDFJ
• SETHLKFADJF KLASDJFKLASDJFKLJA
• BLUE IN SUASDFKL; UASDKLFUio'fuasdklfua
• HEIOFUD FJKLASDFJKLASDFJKLASDFJKLASDF
• M&+#![-+[-

And the questioEEEEEEEBAAAAAAHAHAHAVAHAHAHAHAHA:

With the commitment of George Campbell HOLY GOLDENKSDJFKLAJSDKLF AJKLDFJ?/FJAKLSDJF QUAMARAN A HIJUCKAJLUA SHEE SHEE FUM DAMIEN HARRIS KICKLUK RAINBOWS PEPPERS FARGARARPRID EVER OR FUPOAUERLKJASDF;KL AOF;JADFU EXAMPLES NOT MORRIS?

Seth: [drools]

Brian: Well... yeah. While it's crazy that I can put together most of a projected class for 2015 already--

WHAT'S THAT DON'T MIND IF I DO!

QB: ?!?
RB: Damien Harris, Mikey Weber.
WR: George Campbell, Brian Cole.
TE: Ty Wheatley Jr.
OL: John Runyan Jr., Sterling Jenkins
DL: Brady Pallante, ?!?
LB: Justin Hilliard, Tyriq Thompson
DB: Tyree Kinnel, Shawn Crawford
K: Andrew David

That's 15, and while I bet Michigan gets up to 18 or so, half of the class is either committed or lockalicious (Kinnel, Wheatley, Weber, Crawford, probably Jenkins) 18 months from Signing Day

--but Michigan isn't even that far ahead of the game in the 2015 class. Texas (surprise!) already has 8 commits; Michigan is only fifth in the 247 rankings despite having the top WR in the class and a RB somewhere between top 100 and Mike Hart But Fast. Recruiting is accelerating to the point where it looks like hockey.

As far as having it stick, how many decommits does Michigan suffer? Like one per class. So George Campbell just went from like 20% Wolverine to 95%. I'll take it.

Since I've demolished the question above, maybe a new one: how is Brady Hoke doing this?

Mathlete: Based on such a level-headed, well punctuated questions such as that, I am sure you are looking for a technically correct answer. The correct answer is of course not. No team in the history of football has ever had commitments from players of this caliber this early. Hoke is clearly so far ahead in the recruiting game he will probably be resting his starters for the 2015 class with half the time left.

Actually pinning downing commitment dates can be a bit of a challenge and tracking where a commitment is ranked at the time is essentially impossible as the 2015 class has been ranked far faster in the cycle than any other before them. With that in mind, the best I could find in terms of high final rankings committing to a school before the start of September of the players' high school junior year where 2005 Ohio State and 2013 Georgia. In 2005 Tressel got commitments from the eventual top two players in Ohio that early. Five star tackle Alex Boone committed on the 1st of August and high four star cornerback Jamario O'Neal had been committed for six months by the time his junior year kicked off. For this year's Georgia class they had two four stars, safety Tray Matthews and quarterback Brice Ramsey commit in the summer of 2011.

[More drooling, some pretty good justification for drooling, and we make Brian play "Wizard or Rapper", after the jump]

A couple of things stand out to me about the comparisons. First, it is amazing that of the other two times a situation like this has happened, both of the early commitments have been from the home state of the team they committed to. In Michigan's case, neither player even comes from a state that borders their home state. One thing I think that magnifies how this feels is that both Harris and Campbell are skill position players. It's one thing to get a big commitment from a lineman and watch them push tiny high schoolers around, but to get to watch them run by player after player on their way to another 50 yard touchdown run or catch, that's a whole different experience.

The final thing to note about this is that I don't have 2014 or 2015 loaded and the 2015 top 100 are committing quickly. 13 of the 247 composite have already committed to a school. Alabama already, two from out of state. South Carolina also has two commitments in the 2015 top 100. While this is certainly a spectacular start, with the ability to distribute high quality highlight tapes instantly, elite players are being identified, recruited and committing at a faster pace than ever. I will now return to watching George Campbell jump over people and Damien Harris not even have to run through people because he is running past them.

Ace: As [Mathlete] said, there are serious obstacles to figuring out exact commitment dates from bygone classes, so I'll trust his work and echo that we're moving into unprecedented territory — this isn't just a Michigan thing, though, as the pace of recruiting has sped up significantly even just in the last couple years. Just look at the top prospects in the 2014 class: 53 out of the top 100 players on the 247 Composite have already committed to a school and we're still a month away from their senior seasons. That number expands to 150 when we look at the top 250 players. Those figures are all the more eye-popping when accounting for the fact that higher-ranked prospects tend to commit later in the cycle — only three of the top 12 overall prospects have made commitments (including Jabrill Peppers, of course).

Campbell admitted he did it just for the hugs. via Speight's Twitter.

The difference between Michigan and the rest of the country, at the moment, is that they're defying that latter trend and snagging the very top prospects at this very early juncture. There are just two other schools that boast a pair of top-50 2015 commits on the 247 Composite, Alabama and South Carolina, but the highest-ranked recruit between the two comes in at #30 (Tide DE commit Mekhi Brown) — George Campbell, at #8 overall, is the highest-ranked commit to any school. No 2014 five-star committed to a school that early in the cycle — the earliest was Tuscaloosa native Bo Scarborough, who committed to Alabama last September. In the 2013 class, the only five-star to commit as early as Campbell (or even within the subsequent four months) was another Alabama prospect who committed to the Tide, tight end O.J. Howard, who pledged in July of 2011.

So Michigan is currently doing something that only Alabama has accomplished in recent years, only the Wolverines are reaching well outside their recruiting base to do so. Is this sustainable? I'm more inclined to guess it's an anomaly, especially with the special circumstances surrounding Campbell — it certainly helps to have his friend and teammate, Mason Cole, committed to the previous class and flying up with him on recruiting visits. On the other hand, Brady Hoke and his cohorts have blown past every reasonable expectation about recruiting, even as we raise those expectations with each subsequent class. Top prospects take notice when other top prospects flock to a certain school — the timing of Damien Harris's commitment was no coincidence, and just look at any Alabama class from the last several years — and Campbell's commitment (and to a lesser extent, Harris's) has attracted serious attention from blue-chips like Jashon Cornell and Brian Cole; 2015 five-star CB Minkah Fitzpatrick's high interest in Michigan is at least in part due to his relationship with Jabrill Peppers.

Can it stick? Sure it can, though something as crazy as plucking the top prospect out of Florida a year-and-a-half before Signing Day isn't going to happen on a yearly basis, by any means. With the increased pace of recruiting, other schools are inevitably going to piece together early commitments of comparable value to Michigan's before too long, too — and a quick start, as we've learned, doesn't always guarantee late success. Still, there's every reason to be very excited about the start to Project 136 and its potential to build into a truly special class.

BiSB: I think it's fair to say that rankings-wise, the start is impressive but not unprecedented. I guess I'm not as shocked by the timing of the commitments as I am by the quality of the players themselves. Sure, Michigan had some advantages in these two particular races, but GOTDAMN LOOK AT THAT KID RUN. If these two committed back-to-back six months from now, it would still be awfully impressive. And given the accelerating pace of recruiting (there are already 9 committed kids in the 2016 class and 2 committed kids in the 2017(???!?!!?!#^%) class), having a few commitments kids at this point is rare but not paradigm-shifting.

What I'm most impressed with is that once again Michigan has snagged a recruiter early in the class. George Campbell seems poised to take the baton from Shane Morris, Michael Ferns, Wilton Speight, and Jabrill Peppers.

The internet has changed recruiting in lots of ways, but one of the under-appreciated ways is that social media allows players to recruit each other much more than in the past. Recruits aren't under the same kind of contact restrictions as coaches (there are no dead periods, for example), and as we all know peer pressure is can be very powerful. That's one of the big reasons I think this latest surge has some staying power; elite-level recruiting is becoming self-reinforcing, and Michigan is in excellent shape in that category through at least the next two classes.

Also, George Campbell can jump out of the building. Which is nice. 

*NOTE TO KENTUCKY FANS: Notice I said that players recruiting each other is really important. Fans recruiting players is STOP DOING THAT.

Brian: Seriously. I wonder if part of Michigan's decision-making process when it came to the quarterback they offered for the 2014 class was his ability to pull in the rest of the class a la Morris. Wilton Speight's family flies the kid out to California on the regular so he can go to his quarterback coach--this is a guy with the means to flit about the country acting as ambassador, which he has done with aplomb. Cornwell doesn't seem like the type, not that Alabama needs a lot of help in that department. Meanwhile, Ferns was a guy Michigan was going to go after no matter what but his super-early offer and commitment may have something to do with the fact that he's the type of guy to send people Team 135 t-shirts. 

Current commits are your best recruiters: they know who Wiz Khalifa is*, they are unrestricted by the NCAA, they are up-to-date on the latest social whatsits that Brady Hoke knows not wot of, and it doesn't seem like a coincidence that Michigan is getting

Seems like a wizard.

bedrock early commits from guys who simulate NCAA seasons just so they can get to recruiting.

*(I do not know who Wiz Khalifa is. Is he a wizard?)

Ace: Wiz Khalifa is a successful rapper, and given his ability that probably required extensive sorcery.

Brian: He can't be that successful. I've heard of a lot of rappers. SNOOP DOGG, anyone? THE ICE CUBE? DOCTOR ANDRE 4000? LARGE BOY? I am all up in the raps.

Seth: Well I was expecting a little more incoherent babbling but since you guys have hit all the points already I'm up for another round of "Wizard or Rap Artist? with Brian. READY?—

NENE!

While you ponder this, I don't have data for all the players on a Campbellian level but I do have data since 2004 on Michigan's recruits. Record for committing days before NSD is Shane Morris followed by all four 2015 commits:

Having a flag-bearer build a class isn't new. Drew Henson, though an in-state kid, was in every conversation for best recruit in the nation when he committed to Michigan in the fall of 1996 (right after Chris Weinke decided to retire from baseball and seek a second career as FSU's quarterback). Henson began trumpeting the class and this garnered interest from national recruits like David Terrell, Marquise Walker and Justin Fargas.

That arm. That poise. That chin. That ACT score! Drew is even a quarterback name!

A young Michael Rosenberg even wrote an article in the Chicago Tribune detailing the exploits of the recruiter with no limits:

Considering that he was committed [to sports] so early, it should be no surprise that Drew Henson committed so early. Henson was a junior at Brighton High School when he walked into Lloyd Carr's office on Nov. 29, 1996 and told Carr he would be a Wolverine. Carr, like Florida State's Bobby Bowden, had promised not to recruit any other quarterbacks in 1997 or 1998 if Henson committed.

But Henson's recruiting process was not finished. He called several top prospects and made the 20-minute drive to Ann Arbor for every major recruiting weekend. Not coincidentally, Michigan's recruiting class was ranked No. 1 in the country after letters of intent were signed Wednesday.

Four hundred thirty-two days later Michigan signed the No. 1 overall class to people who considered such things in the before-time. Since 2004 only two players ranked among the top three players in their class (by Rivals) committed so early: D.J. Fluker (not a rap artist) in 2009 to Bama, and DaQuan Bowers to Clemson in 2008. Linemen probably don't have the same effect.

It's not a slam dunk: Kevin Grady was a 5-star in-state recruit who committed just about two years before his first snap (over a year before Mike Hart had his). He worked Manningham to join his class but even he couldn't lure a defensive back (or convince his coaches they weren't done with Johnny Sears and Chris Richards).

The example that worries me here is Ricardo Miller, like Campbell a tall, leaping receiver with a FAKE 40 time and the best player in Florida. Miller committed, if not this early, still about two years out from when we all expected him to be in a Wolverines uniform, if not THAT uniform. He waved the blue flag and moved to Ann Arbor to get a head start on his Michigan career, then ended up a tight end and never contributed on the field.

So, yeah, that's the darkest spin I can put on this so you don't spend the next two years just drooling about a 2015 freshman. I agree with Brian that this seems to be a strategy of Hoke's to get a standard-bearer who's going to act as a de facto recruiting coordinator with limitless access, and with the other guys that modern connectivity makes such a thing. But even if we start posting FAKE bone fusion metrics along with 40 times, I'm still a bit skeptical that scouting reports based on sophomore video are going to be as accurate as we're used to.

[wipes drool]

Oh and Brian, he's was a rapper:

Internet: where you can find things like "Nene raps"

But now he's a wizard.