Mailbag question: Regarding Hankins

Posted at 12:00pm -- 12/17/2010

Mailbag question: Regarding Hankins

GBMW,

Hey, with Hankins naming Ohio State as his leader and Michigan a distance 3rd, maybe 4th to Alabama now in the picture, I am really starting to feel that Coach Rod is not a good fit for Michigan. I just don't understand why UM never offered Hankins this summer?

We need to cut our loses and go hire Jim Harbaugh. He knows the Big Ten and will bring respect back to Michigan. This new polymetric, small, explosive, and over-worked Michigan squad is not cutting it, your thoughts.

I'm just extremely frustrated with the entire program right now and by the way stop telling us how good everyone looks in practice.

Dwain P.

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Thanks for the questions.

Coach Rod will be the coach this coming season and until he is not the coach we will not be pushing for any coaching changes. We support Coach Rod, but we do not always agree with everything he does as we have stated with many blogs here and on several message boards.

We believe Jim Harbaugh is a very good, young, energetic coach and has really turned around the Stanford program that has not been to a bowl game since 2000. He took over a program that has struggled for years. When he stepped on campus he took over a program that went 5-7 and 1-11 with more people on the field than in the stands of a brand new stadium.

Some will say he has not proved anything yet, but his coaching pedigree is great with brother Jon Harbaugh proved doing a very good head coach in the NFL and Jim’s father, Jack, was an outstanding coach. Gruden and Urban Meyer once were considered unproven.

Well, as things turned out Hankins showed up at Michigan’s summer camp out of shape and did not perform well. That is why Michigan did not offer him.

Maybe this inspired Hankins, but for whatever reason he lost weight and had a very good senior season. This caught the attention of the Michigan staff and renewed their interest in Hankins.

We give major props to Ohio State for seeing the potential of a player this size despite being out of shape. You have to give Michigan credit for closing the gap and giving themselves a legitimate shot at landing Hankins.

The real problem is that Michigan needs Hankins, whereas Ohio State would just love to "stick it" to Michigan and show they can pull another kid from the Detroit area and not even really need him, especially if they get Floyd along with their current depth chart on the defensive line.

Our advice is please read carefully. There have been times players like Vlad, Carlos Brown, and Tate have looked very good and played very good, when healthy. Maybe you need to go back to our spring practice reports and read some of them. All was not rosy or kool aid in those articles. We said UM would clearly struggle big-time on the defensive side of the ball and we were labeled "haters" on several message boards. CoachBt did a breakdown right before the season and gave the offensive line a grade of "B" and people had a cow. Doc talked about a shocking lack of depth and no evidence of any positive linebacker play or depth, in April.

This really makes us chuckle. All we ever do is give our informed opinions or impressions on what we see, nothing less, or nothing more. The bottom line is the information here has been very accurate, and accuracy is more valued on this site than playing to the populist mass line of thought like corporate lapdogs that have a financial investment to protect.

Again, we thank everyone for being a part of GBMW.

Written by GBMW Staff

Go Blue -- Wear Maize!