Bag of Bell (Vol. 6): Michigan's biggest recruiting hits and misses, my thoughts on "Wal-Mart Wolverines," how the media deals with Jim Harbaugh and more
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Another week with a ton of great questions. I really appreciate you guys taking the time to send me some fun topics to consider. Keep ‘em coming. E-mail them in at bagofbell@gmail.com, or send my a reply or DM over at my Twitter account.
On to this week’s stuff:
Twitter question from Chris Kay/e-mail question from Bryan Mortenson:
In light of Christopher choosing ASU, if you could pick a recruit that UM missed on in bball and/or football, who would it be?
I can’t start with anything other than a recruiting question, given the news of the week. I got asked questions on both sides of the spectrum, so I’ll just hammer them out as a tandem question.
Biggest recruit Michigan has landed
The biggest recruit Michigan has signed across since 2010 is Jabrill Peppers. And I think he’s the right answer on a couple different levels.
He was a five-star recruit — a 0.9992 on the 247Sports Composite, good enough for the best signing in school history at the time. Peppers (No. 3 nationally) would be usurped by Rashan Gary on the recruiting ranking list a few years later, but he gets points for being the first one to jump. Most anyone in the loop would agree that without Michigan pulling in Peppers, there’s no way Michigan would have landed Gary.
Landing at Michigan was only half the battle, though. The main part of Peppers’ importance is the fact that he was successful, too. While there’s some lingering feeling of misuse in terms of best preparing him for the NFL (the Viper position doesn’t translate great to a single NFL position and left him somewhat positionless heading into the draft), recruits everyone got to see that Michigan was willing to use a talent like Peppers in all three facets of the game — defense, offense and special teams — and could get a talent like that to New York as a Heisman Trophy finalist.
Peppers was the only Heisman finalist from Michigan in the past decade. He was one of six first-rounders taken last decade in the NFL Draft.
FWIW — If I were to choose someone on the basketball side of things, my pick would be Mitch McGary. Glenn Robinson III ended up being a higher-ranked member of the 2012 class, but he was more a sleeper who rose late than someone Michigan really needed to wrestle away from a blue blood. McGary pledged six months later and was Michigan’s first really splashy commit of the Beilein era. Michigan ended up signing a pair of top-50 players the following year largely as a result of the momentum the McGary signing brought. Perception is a huge part of recruiting.
Biggest miss I’d like to revise history for
I’ll split these up by football and basketball, too:
Football
There are a lot of candidates from the 2015 class. Strictly from a decommitment standpoint, Michigan had three top-100 guys (two of which that ended up as five stars) in the fold that ended up signing elsewhere.
George Campbell ended up being the highest-ranked player in that class (No. 19 overall), Damien Harris ended up having the best career, but I'd probably choose Mike Weber as the biggest miss from that class just based on who Michigan lost out on him to and how it happened. Having a Detroit guy from Cass Tech end up in Columbus right at the start of the Jim Harbaugh era was just bad from a perception standpoint. It was the pursuit of Karan Higdon that ended up costing Michigan Weber, and that’s a trade that actually ended up basically a wash production-wise, but winning Weber from Ohio State would have been a great early statement for Harbaugh.
Following that same framework, I believe my overall choice for this question is going to be Terrelle Pryor. I think a lot of people forget just how heated the back-and-forth battle for his services were between Michigan and Ohio State in the first weeks (which turned into months) of the Rich Rodriguez era. Michigan not only lost out on getting the prototypical QB for a Rich Rodriguez system, it lost him to its key rival. Had the roles been reversed, the RichRod era would have almost undoubtedly gone differently and the last 12-13 years of Michigan football would have looked much, much, much, much different, too.
Other recent names to consider if you feel like twisting the knife further: Alaric Johnson, Mekhi Becton, Isaiah Wilson, Deverey Hamilton, AJ Dillon, Eno Benjamin, Najee Harris, Zach Harrison.
Basketball
Not to go all recency bias on us here, but this helpful little chart should help answer this question:
The combination of how highly ranked Christopher was and how sure all the experts were that he was Ann Arbor-bound make it an easy choice.
And sadly, I think Isaiah Todd would be close behind, either at No. 2 or No. 3. The big competition for him would probably be Jaylen Brown, who also appears on the above list. Devin Booker ended up being a pipe dream, but there sure was a lot of excitement around him early on in his recruitment. Same goes for Mo Bamba, who I (somewhat foolishly) allowed myself to get excited for, too, at least in the early stages of that recruitment.
If I had to choose some non-five stars that I’d consider picking if the above big names weren’t options: Patrick Beverly was a big miss late in the Amaker era. Tyus Battle also deserves consideration, especially considering the domino effect his courtship caused. But let’s just go ahead and cut this section off now before I get the urge to throw a chair through a window.
E-mail question from Zane Meibeyer:
Wal-Mart Wolverines: How do you respond to people that discount fandom of college teams without a “legitimate” connection to the school? I would ask why MSU fans care so much about this, but I already know the answer.
I’m glad someone asked this, because it’s worth addressing. It’s probably because I spend too much time on Twitter and I have a disproportionate amount of Spartan vitriol in my mentions, but it sure does seem like this is the go-to “insult” when it comes to opposing fanbases attacking Michigan fans (namely our friends in East Lansing).
Hell, you have members of the MSU Board of Trustees using Wal-Mart Wolverines as a burn on there.
I was a Michigan fan before I attended the University of Michigan and I am obviously still one after having graduated. Do I think attending the school affected my fandom and added some layers that otherwise would not have been there had I not gone to school there? Sure. But do I think I should be disqualified from Michigan fandom had I not attended there? No. And that entire premise is asinine.
There are plenty of reasons someone would/could/should be a fan of Michigan without attending the school. So many people grow up rooting for Michigan because of a connection to their family. They can remember watching games with a father or mother or grandparent or close friend and cheering on the Maize and Blue in their cognitive years. That’s a bond forged early on that has nothing to do with attending it. Should the person in this hypothetical have to give up their fandom because they didn’t end up going to Michigan? And while we’re on that topic, there are plenty of reasons why someone couldn’t attend Michigan, too. First of all, it’s one of the most selective public universities in the country. Are there people that really want to play gatekeeper for sports fandom because someone might not be good at taking standardized tests? There’s also the financial element. It’s expensive to go to any four-year university, let alone Michigan, which is certainly on the more expensive side of the spectrum when it comes to major public universities. And it’s perfectly acceptable to love Michigan sports but not want to go to Michigan for school for a number of different reasons (specific major, campus size, geography, etc).
Long story short: If the best burn a rival fanbase has for the school you root for is “a lot of your fans didn’t even attend yourself school,” then that’s quite the self-own for them. You don’t owe anyone an explanation for the why when it comes to your fandom.
Twitter question from Brandon Fisher:
I’m admittedly not a diehard music guy. I’ve probably been to fewer than 25 concerts in my life. So I’m probably drawing from a more shallow pool than a lot of you would be. But my answer is the Red Hot Chili Peppers at Grand Rapids’ Van Andel Arena in 2003 for the By The Way tour. It’s a nostalgia choice for me more than anything else.
Backstory: I had missed RHCP’s swing through the area for the Californication tour three years earlier, which was supposed to be my first introduction to the Chili Peppers live, because of a family thing. So the anticipation for the next tour had been building for a couple years. I bought tickets for this tour the day they went on sale and a handful of my buddies and I were all set with floor tickets. After buying them, I realized it would potentially be in conflict with the conference tournament for my high school tennis team, so it looked like I might have to have another near-miss when it came to finally seeing my favorite band live.
Come concert day, I ended up making the finals — meaning I’d be at the tournament for the longest time possible, while eliminated players could leave after losing. But I ended up winning the finals 6-0, 6-2 and that dominant performance gave me enough time to get from Spring Lake to Grand Rapids in time to see The Mars Volta and Queens of the Stone Age open. (FYI, I’m only providing the dominant conference title detail as background information, not as a way to relive my glory days and brag about high school sporting accomplishments. If I was using this to brag, I would have mentioned that it was my second consecutive conference title. But this isn’t the place for that).
The concert itself was great. As mentioned, there were great openers. I got to take it in with friends. And Anthony Kiedis always puts on a good show given his ties to Grand Rapids. I’ve since seen the Chili Peppers a handful of other times, but concert No. 1 holds a special place in my heart.
Other live shows I’ve seen that deserve consideration: The Killers (probably the best-sounding band I’ve heard live), the Foo Fighters and Bruce Springsteen (if I didn’t list this, I’d have to turn in my journalist card).
E-mail question from Michael Forster:
You have a time machine and are entering your freshman year at Michigan again in the mid-00s. Top 5 dorm choices.
As mentioned in a previous newsletter installment, I was a Bursley guy my freshman year. Not ideal.
If I got the opportunity to go back and choose where I’d live, I think my top five choices would be:
South Quad: South and West Quads were my pretty clear choices at Nos. 1 and 2. South Quad gets the nod as top dog, though, because it has a better dining hall and is a little more modern. Though there is some PTSD on my end because I was a part of a poker game that got broken up in the basement freshman year. But at least I ended up making Crime Notes in The Daily for the first (but, uhh, not last) time.
West Quad: Like South Quad, a great location. This is probably where I spent most of my time on weekends in Central Campus as a freshman (shoutout to Chad Gerencer and the rest of the 3rd Adams crew), but the cafeteria being garbage does not work in its favor.
Markley: I know Markley is pretty polarizing, but if you grew up in Bursley, you were almost undoubtedly jealous of Markley. It has some of the things that made Bursley tolerable to me (slightly isolated, stronger sense of community) without the pitfalls that made Bursley terrible (I never want to ride a bus again in my life).
MoJo: MoJo cookies. ‘Nuff said.
East Quad: The dorm itself seems pretty awful, but it’s the best location for nightlife. Since I’d have a time machine, too, I could remove that sign that Jeff Jackson would end up hitting 12 or so years later and save us all a future headache (though it would also kill some great future memes).
Twitter question from Derek Edson:
There’s no arguing that the Glen Rice record is super imrpessive. But when it comes to longevity and the likelihood it’s never broken, I give the nod to Mike Hart’s record for most career rushing attempts without losing a fumble (1,005). While his pair of fumbles in his final game as a Wolverine — a dramatic bowl win over Tim Tebow, Urban Meyer and the Florida Gators — took a little shine off the streak, which would have been more impressive if it ended as an active one, I still have a really hard time envisioning anyone ever going 1,000+ carries without losing a fumble any time in the modern era of college football.
Part of that is because it’s really hard to go an extended period of time without a lost fumble. Every FBS team in America lost multiple fumbles last season. And a number of Big Ten schools lost double-digit fumbles — Michigan included: the Wolverines lost 11. Nebraska lost 12. Ohio State lost 13. Wisconsin lost 17. And that’s just in one season. Extrapolate that across a half-decade sample and you’re going to see a lot more fumbles.
But the other part of the equation that’s going to make this such a hard record to break: so few players will even get the chance to sniff Hart’s carry total. Hart had 1,015 career carries. That’s the 14th most in college football history. Since Hart graduated from Michigan, Northwestern's Justin Jackson (1,,142) and SDSU's Donnel Pumphrey (1059) are the only players to have more career carries than Hart. And as time goes by, passing will continue to get a larger and larger share of play percentages while fewer and fewer elite backs play four years of college football.
For someone to break Hart’s record, you’re going to have to find someone that’s:
Disciplined enough not to fumble the ball for their entire career
Resilient enough not to miss games/carries due to an injury over a four-year period
Lucky enough to play in an increasingly rare offense that would allow him to get 250+ carries per season
Good enough to start from Day 1, but not good enough to leave early for the NFL
Good luck finding that unicorn somewhere.
DM question from Steve Jackson:
Comparative analysis of the worst children’s TV programming you have watched during your quarantine vs your childhood best? PJ Masks/Mickey’s Clubhouse vs Duck Tales/Animaniacs etc.
Quarantine sucks. But children’s entertainment is surprisingly a very small sliver of the reason for that. In fact, it’s kind of been a saving grace. I’d take the worst of what my kids have to watch over the best of what I watched as a kid without hesitation. That’s a product of the absurd amount of choices available now with Netflix, Disney+, etc. compared to the non-sports crap I had growing up, which basically consisted of whatever was on Nickelodeon and whatever Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles tapes I had to put in the VCR (yes — I’m an old).
But yeah, most of the stuff they watch is totally fine in my book. Onward? Slaps. Coco? Sign me up. Any of the Toy Stories? I’m in. I can even deal with some of the stuff Steve mentions up top, like the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse (as evidenced by these tweets on my “other” Twitter account) and PJ Masks.
The part that annoys me is when it spills into other areas. I’m cool letting the little ones take the TV and watch Frozen if it means I’m going to get some uninterupted time to focus on getting some work done. But that doesn’t mean they have to listen to the Frozen soundtrack on the Alexa in our garage, or on the Alexa in our playroom, or in the Alexa in our game room, or on the Alexa in the bathrooms during bath time, or (OK, we need to be buying more Amazon stock). And once this quarantine lifts and we’re actually in cars again, they’re going to want first dibs on the aux cord, too. We need to form some sort of parents union and fight back on this. Or I just need to stop being such a pushover dad and handle things like an adult. Either works, really.
Twitter question from Sam Ansara:
I don’t like the term media bias. I think it’s too convenient to paint things with a broad brush and collectively label a large group of people as for something or against something. Like everything in life, it’s more a shade of gray.
Some facts to consider:
The vast majority of real journalists do things the right way.
As our consumption habits change and more people get platforms, “the media” keeps becoming larger, less restrictive and considerably less credible.
Piggy-backing off the previous point: Media literacy is a major problem, too. People don’t understand (or they’re disingenous/opportunistic in who they cite/believe) what a reputable source is and what isn’t.
What Jim Harbaugh has brought to Michigan is increased attention. That can be both a blessing and a curse.
Are more people going to say dumb things about a team that’s in the limelight? Of course. Are some narratives going to be lazy? Absolutely. But that’s just a product of an oversaturated market, not a sign that members of the media specifically and collectively have it out for Harbaugh. (Caveat: There are definitely some journalists — and not just talking head types — that spend a disproportionate amount of time railing on Harbaugh. I’m not going to go too deep into that, but that’s a very annoying part of the industry where some national types that to curry favor of certain sources/coaches by amplifying negatives of one person and lauding positives of a rival. It’s a small percentage of actual journalism that’s done, but it is a thing. If you’re interested in some “Inside Baseball” stuff when it comes to journalism and how the sausage is made by a lot of the national types, this New Republic story from a few years ago is pretty informative).
This is not a Michigan-specific phenomenon. I run the college coverage for nine different FBS schools for my day job, and we get complaints from everyone fanbase where they’re convinced we have it out for them. It’s easier to play the victim than to take a step back and really take a deep inventory of how everything/everyone is covered. Michigan fans seem to dwell on the bad things more, because it’s easier to do that by nature. But I can assure you if Ohio State or Michigan State went on international trips and ESPN decided to embed a reporter with them in a foreign country for a week with cut-ins during SportsCenter, etc, that Michigan fans would be up in arms over that other school getting preferential treatment. Michigan is going to get more attention than basically any other school. That means Michigan is going to get more positive attention than basically any other school and Michigan is going to get more negative attention than basically any other school. There are exceptions. Some people aren’t very good at their jobs. But let’s ignore the outliers and focus on reality.
And if you’re getting mad about what Paul Finebaum or Skip Bayless or Clay Travis says, that’s entirely on you. When you react, you’re doing exactly what they want you to do.
(Now let’s hope Michigan State fans never learn that dirty little secret when it comes to my tweets.)
E-mail question from Jason Burcham:
If you were going to cast survivor with current college football coaches; who would you pick and who do you think would win?
A Survivor question! And one you guys can’t even complain about because I just took a two-week hiatus from these. AND it has to do with college football. I tried to be mindful and at least put this one at the bottom, though, so if you don’t care, you can just call it a week for this newsletter.
Anyway, here goes nothing:
Every season in modern Survivor has a theme. It’s no longer about the location, it’s about a central theme. So if I had an all coaches season, I’d cast it along the same vein as Survivor: Heroes vs. Healers vs. Hustlers and call this one Survivor: Speed vs. Strength vs. South.
With an 18-person cast, that would leave six coaches for each original tribe. The roster of coaches I’d cast would be as follows:
Who would end up winning? I’ll do you one better. I’ll tell you how the whole show would play out from start to finish.
Week 1: Hugh Freeze is medically evacuated. No tribal council.
Week 2: Strength/Spread tribes win immunity. South goes to tribal. Saban/Jimbo/Kirby alliance stands firm against Orgeron/Dabo/Mullen. Dabo gets three votes, Saban gets three. They go to a revote. Saban’s alliance all votes for Dabo again. Mullen flips and sends Dabo home.
Week 3: South/Strength tribes win immunity. The Mikes buddy up over conspiracies and form an alliance. Riley and Day bond over to form competing alliance. Harbaugh deftly finds himself in the middle and casting the deciding vote, which sends Day home packing early. Harbaugh gives him backslap on way out.
Week 4: We get a tribe swap. They draw for new buffs and tribes are as follows:
South and Spread earn immunity, sending Strength to tribal for the first time. The age-old “target the old guy” strategy comes into play and the four 40/50-something coaches target 66-year-old Les Miles. But Miles plays an immunity idol he found during his morning grass-chewing session near the camp well and his vote is the lone vote that counts. His piece of parchment says Don M. After everyone figures out he meant Florida’s current head coach, Dan Mullen is sent home.
Week 5: It’s a double tribal this week, with only one tribe securing immunity and avoiding tribal council. That distinction goes to the South Tribe. Fearing Miles found another idol, Leach and Jimbo decide to bring Miles in to work with him rather than deal with him as an unpredictable wild card. They vote out Narduzzi. When the Spread tribe heads to tribal, the three former Strength tribe members (Shaw, Fitzgerald, Ferentz) bring in Harbaugh, a Manballer at heart, and unanimously vote out Saban.
Week 6: It’s merge time. The 12 to make the cut are Leach, Miles, Fisher, Shaw, Fitzgerald, Harbaugh, Ferentz, Chryst, Riley, Gundy, Smart and Orgeron. Gundy tries to former an alliance that includes everyone but the four Big Ten coaches, putting him on the right side of an 8 to 4 numbers edge. But once work slips out that he’s been secretly interviewing for a spot in the Big Ten alliance, too, mirroring his annual flirtation with a new coaching job each offseason, the other 11 band together and vote him out unanimously.
Weeks 7-10: The four Big Ten coaches rope in Miles, a former Michigan assistant, and Shaw — the closest thing to a Big Ten coach you’ll even find on the West coast — to turn the tide and give them a 6-to-5 numbers advantage. The plan works and the B1G alliance holds strong for four consecutive weeks, picking off Smart, Fisher, Leach and Riley, in that order.
Weeks 11-13: With just seven players left — Harbaugh, Fitzgerald, Ferentz, Chryst, Miles, Shaw and Orgeron — there’s a heated debate back at camp over what the proper game theory is when facing the following scenario: Facing a 4th-and-inches from the opponent’s 39, down 5, 1:12 to go, no timeouts remaining, starting punter broke his leg earlier in the game, backup punter didn’t make the trip. Fitzgerald, Ferentz and Shaw all simultaneously flip out when the other four insist on going for it, holding steadfast to the belief that it’s a clear punting situation. That philisophical difference ends up drawing alliance lines for the next three weeks, sending the three home the next three weeks and setting up a Final Four of Jim Harbaugh, Paul Chryst, Les Miles and Ed Orgeron for the season finale episode.
Finale: Jim Harbaugh wins the final immunity challenge. He gets to choose one of the three remaining players to go with him to the final tribal council while the other two go to a fire-making competition to earn the last spot at the final tribal. Being a man of loyalty, Harbaugh takes Miles with him, leaving Chryst and Orgeron to battle it out for the final spot. Orgeron prevails, setting up a Final Three of Harbaugh, Miles and Ed O.
When it comes to that final tribal, Harbaugh is in the driver’s seat. Miles doesn’t know what the hell is going on and keeps pleading the fifth when given the chance to state his case to the jury. Orgeron keeps talking, but nobody knows what the hell he’s saying. Harbaugh states his case with poise, evidence and grace, and it looks like Michigan is finally about to pick up a big victory. Then Jeff Probst announces there’s one final twist, re-inserts Ryan Day into the game with no explanation whatsoever and Day ends up winning because Michigan fans can never have nice things and life is terrible.
The end.
That’s all for this week.
I know I'm responding to a 10 month old post, but this was great. On the dorm issue, I lived in Markley and wouldn't have it any other way. In fact, my two best friends from college, and still, moved from West Quad to Markley (one had a bad roommate situation). My sense of the Quads is that, because they are so close to everything and in the case of West and South to each other, that there's less of a sense community. Markley was a hike on some January/February days but for most of the year the walk wasn't bad, the parties and sense of community were great (I'm guessing parties in the dorms are more tightly regulated), the CCRB/Arb etc. were nearby, etc.