Michigan Football Tidbits: Part one
How much more ammunition does Michigan have to give its competitors in regards to Coach Shafer resigning? Recruits that visited last weekend (Dec. 12-13) were told that this was going to happen. It was not leaked out by the recruits. So why weren't all the other commits personally relayed the news, since this was known for several days?
How many public relations blunders does this program have to endure? How can Coach Rod, being a veteran coach, and a coach that recruits most of these kids personally, not call every recruit to tell them what was about to happen with the coaching situation? Why does a commit or recruit have to find this out by watching ESPN?
Michigan fans cannot keep on talking about negative press or a media vendetta against Michigan, when the football program gives the media people such an easy one. Commits should not learn Michigan business from television reports.
Coach Rod needs to improve his communication and public relations skills. This is amateur stuff. The coaching staff has to show more professionalism. Coach Rod wants to only be the head football coach. Coach Carr was the head coach along with being a skilled politician as well. Do not get us wrong here: a lot of the blame of this ineptitude falls on the football program's administrative staff, not just the coaching staff. Coach Rod needs to see to it that every in the program backs him up and helps him, so that little misjudgements don't turn into big black-eyes for Michigan's program. SOMEBODY should have known to spread the word to the commits.
When you only win three games in a season, these "little bumps" turn into bigger and bigger hills. If Michigan would have won 7-10 games this year these little bumps would not have been as big of factor. But with only win three game, this just adds to the impression that the program is in disarray.
Some posters believe that 17-18 year old recruits would have blabbed all over the internet.
Well, that is a cop-out for several reasons: Michigan should be proactive in these types of situations especially knowing that other colleges will use this kind of stuff to help them "negative recruit" against Michigan. With everybody wired in these days, these kids could have been informed in a timely manner and should not have had to hear about a coaching change from ESPN, a rival college coach, or even a recruiting site such as GoBlueWolverine who told several recruits before anybody from the Michigan staff bothered to do so.
It is always better to be proactive rather than reactive. Better to release news with your own "spin" than to be forced to react to somebody else's version later. Opponents are negative recruiting Michigan to death. It goes with territory, but why give them added ammunition? These self-inflicted wounds are madness.
Written by MaizeMan, CoachBt and ErocWolverine
Curious - have we lost on recruit because of Shafer leaving? So far it seems nobody really cares. Why make such a big deal out of it? he is gone and that's it. You are beating a dead horse.
ReplyDeletehow do we know the recruits were not told? at least the defensive ones.
ReplyDeleteNo, I'm sorry Anonymous. I have to agree that the Team should have prepared the players for this resignation, many of the players have built relationships, with thier respective Recruiter, so when one coach leaves it can have a serious effect on a player continuing to feel comfortable or not. These are young men, and I'm sure many are leaving home for the very 1st time on a permanent basis. For anywhere from 3 to 5 Years. So feeling safe, comfortable, ETC. IMHO is very important. For both the player and his/her family. So to say no big deal Coach Shafer is gone is totally Un-fair to the recruits who felt he was an intrigul part of their decision to become a Wolverine. So as Head Coach, I feel RR is ketting these young men down, and he better get with HIS Progam sooner than later, or these players are gonna start presuming his words are empty promises. TC Winsor,Ont.,Canada. GO BLUE 4 EVER !!!!
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