It would be like living by the Rocky Mountains and vacationing to Kansas to ski. Or living next to Las Vegas and going to Utah to gamble.
The University of Michigan is just across the border from the most prolific high school football state north of the Mason-Dixon line.
The state that it has historically mined to build its powerhouse program.
And still ...
Michigan went nearly everywhere but Ohio to fill its 2020 recruiting class. The Wolverines signed no players from Ohio, just as they didn’t in 2016 and 2018, either.
For perspective, Jim Harbaugh has signed more players from — of all places — Connecticut and Massachusetts (13) in his first six classes at Michigan than he has from Ohio (12). More perspective: In that span, the two Eastern states have produced 30 players ranked by 247Sports among the top 500 prospects in the nation. Ohio has rolled out 117.
There’s something wrong with that picture, no?
While Harbaugh has brought Michigan a needed measure of stability, his recruiting in his native Ohio has been curious at best and malpractice at worst.
I thought of this again the past few weeks as the Wolverines continued to settle the New England Colonies. Since April, Michigan — which appears to have given defensive coordinator Don Brown carte blanche to recruit his home state and region — has landed three 2021 commits from Massachusetts, one a four-star tight end ranked 255th nationally (Louis Hansen), the others a defensive end and linebacker rated 785th and 1,037th, respectively. (Michigan has two commits from Ohio: safety Rod Moore and receiver Markus Allen, both three-star prospects from Clayton Northmont.)
What’s the strategy here?
Even while appreciating that Harbaugh has enjoyed his share of national recruiting success and that an Ohio State program running on all cylinders has monopolized the top handful of in-state prospects, why is Michigan not swinging harder in Ohio?
Your guess is as good as mine. A Michigan spokesman said Harbaugh does not do interviews on recruiting topics.
For the view from across the border, I reached out to several Ohio high school coaches and former Ohio State coach Urban Meyer, the latter of whom was prepared for a bitter turf war when he arrived in Columbus in November in 2011.
I asked Meyer if he was surprised by Harbaugh’s limited success in Ohio.
“I have been,” he told The Blade. “If you look a their history, and I know their history very well, two Heisman Trophy winners from Ohio, great players from Ohio. ... Coach [Ryan] Day and myself and our recruiting guy, we monitor them. Even to this day, I'll ask, what's going on [at Michigan]?’ That usually was a street fight when we first got there, with Brady Hoke and even coach Harbaugh. It was a street fight, because they were into Ohio everywhere.”
Does Meyer sense less of a “street fight” for Ohio prospects today?
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “I don’t feel the street fight at all.”
Why do you think that is?
“I don't know ... but you always say take care of your footprint before you go elsewhere, and Ohio is their footprint.”
Now, before we go on, it is worth revisiting Michigan’s lineage here.
Since Bryan’s Horace Prettyman became the first Ohioan to play for Michigan in 1882, the history of the Victors can’t be written without its many fine players from the Buckeye State.
That includes, of course, two of its three Heisman winners — Desmond Howard (Cleveland) and Charles Woodson (Fremont) — but the list is endless. To name but a few: Benny Friedman (Cleveland), Bob Chappuis (Toledo/DeVilbiss), Bob Timberlake (Franklin), Tom Curtis (Aurora), Jim Mandich (Solon), Thom Darden (Sandusky), Dan Dierdorf (Canton), Rob Lytle (Fremont), Dennis Franklin (Massillon), Gordon Bell (Troy), Mike Hammerstein (Wapakoneta), John Kolesar (Westlake), Elvis Grbac (Cleveland), and, most recently, Jake Butt (Pickerington) and Chris Wormley (Toledo/Whitmer).
For many years, Michigan conceded the Buckeyes no ground in their home state, a raid most prominently led by Bo Schembechler, the Ohio native whose appointment in 1969 set off the Ten Year War. Schembechler spent two decades battling Ohio State head-on here, especially in northern Ohio, an area second only to southeast Michigan in its importance to the Wolverines.
“Michigan pounded northern Ohio more than Ohio State did, it seemed to me as a coach,” said Chuck Kyle, the legendary Cleveland St. Ignatius coach who has led his alma mater to 11 state titles since taking over in 1983. “Bo assigned Gary Moeller to the Cleveland area and Toledo [in the 1980s]. Gary was a very personable guy, a really great guy. He knew everybody, and it was Gary every year recruiting this area. Ohio State kind of changed guys here and there, bounced it around, and that connection, that relationship that Gary and Bo had here, that was so strong.
“Then Gary takes over after Bo, and Lloyd Carr took over after Gary. They really believed in Ohio. Lloyd Carr recruited the Cleveland area when Gary was the head coach. So there was a continuation of a very important guy recruiting northeastern Ohio.
“Now, when did it kind of change? You have to go back to Jim Tressel.”
And perhaps a shade earlier.
I’d point to three factors: Michigan, like all power programs, began to recruit more nationally; the 85-scholarship max introduced in 1992 no longer made it practical for the Wolverines — who counted as many as 50 Ohioans on their 1974 roster — to go to town in the state; and Tressel indeed began to build a fence around the top Ohio prospects that has since grown under Meyer and Day to feature electrified barbed wire.
This is not to suggest there were no more battles.
As a reminder of the standing Michigan still had in Ohio in the 2000s, I think back to the recruitment of my high school classmate, five-star linebacker Mike D’Andrea (Avon Lake), one of the most coveted prizes of the 2002 class. D’Andrea ultimately decided on Ohio State, but Nebraska and Michigan were right there.
The suspense and the battle was real, and it remained so, in pockets, in the final years of Carr — who pulled blue-chippers Prescott Burgess, Shawn Crable, and Mario Manningham from Ohio — and fast-forwarding to the first years of Hoke, an Ohio native who, most prominently, flipped five-star offensive tackle Kyle Kalis in the 2012 class.
Michigan signed 54 players from Ohio between 2005 and 2014.
Then came Toledo-born Harbaugh and things changed, though not in the way most expected.
OK, that’s not entirely fair.
The Ohio prep coaches I spoke with said they still feel Michigan’s presence in the state. “They’re real cognizant of being in Ohio,” Lakewood St. Edward coach Tom Lombardo said. “They know how important that is.”
In some ways, what changed was nothing Michigan did but what Ohio State became. The Buckeyes had one of the great CEOs and recruiters in college football history, and their operation has not slowed under Day, who, with commits from the top five Ohio prospects in 2021, is on course to sign the No. 1 class in the nation.
That is not just a Harbaugh problem in Ohio, but an everybody problem. The Buckeyes, as they’re rolling today, may occasionally get beat on a marquee prospect from southern Ohio, but for the first time in modern history, the rest of the state is on lockdown.
I asked Lombardo if it would be possible for Ohio State to target a prospect in northern Ohio and miss?
“Oh, boy,” he said, “that’s a loaded question.”
“If Ohio State offers,” Kyle said, “the other schools kind of know the odds are against them. How’s that?”
Still, as much as the Harbaugh narrative would be different if the rival against which his every move is measured was not amassing talent at an all-time level, I wonder what he’s doing in Ohio.
Consider: In the last six classes, the Buckeyes have signed 22 players rated among the top eight players in Ohio. That leaves 26 they did not. Michigan signed two of them: Dayton safety Tyree Kinnel (No. 8 in 2015) and Akron offensive lineman Nolan Rumler (No. 5 in 2019).
Michigan ought to be beating a path to these very good-top-300-caliber second tier of Ohio players who, by the way, would aspire to nothing more than sticking it to Ohio State.
Of course, one could reasonably fire back: Where did all those Ohio guys get Hoke?
Fair enough. It’s inarguable Harbaugh has elevated Michigan’s program. It should be noted, too, that recruiting is often a cyclical game — UM, for instance, signed six players from Ohio in an outlier 2019 class, after which Ohio State hired away two of its top Ohio recruiters (Al Washington and Greg Mattison) — and a reflection of the backgrounds of the staff, not a sweeping strategy. While Michigan has three assistants from Ohio, it has also leaned on its inroads elsewhere, including New England and Florida.
“I hear from Michigan fans frequently that they want them to recruit Ohio more,” said Allen Trieu, a Midwest recruiting analyst for 247Sports. “I think it’s just a difference in philosophy now. They are going to states and areas where they have high school connections. That’s really the base explanation.”
I’d just remind Harbaugh that his best team — the one in 2016 that should have beaten Ohio State in Columbus — had eight starters from Ohio.
That doesn’t entirely feel like a coincidence as Ohio State continues to pull away from Michigan and Michigan, often as not, heads everywhere but Ohio for its harvest, including, yes, the relative talent coldbed of the northeast.
Meyer majored in psychology, not geography, but as he couldn’t help but point out, “You’re flying right over Ohio to go there.”
First Published May 16, 2020, 1:00 p.m.
