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<p>It’s just not true that Michigan gets most of its football recruits in-state. This hasn’t been true for many years. Here’s where this year’s Michigan recruiting class comes from:</p>
<p>Michigan 4
Ohio 11
Florida 3
Pennsylvania 3
Louisiana 2
Maryland 1
South Carolina 1
Texas 1
Wisconsin 1</p>
<p>And one of the “Michigan” kids transferred from a Florida school to Ann Arbor Pioneer HS for his senior season, to play in the shadow of the Big House and “acclimate himself,” as he put it, in preparation for playing at Michigan. Michigan has recruited Ohio and Pennsylvania heavily for years, often in heated competition with OSU and PSU. Joe Paterno reportedly still has a grudge against Michigan for recruiting QB Chad Henne (now with the Miami Dolphins) out from under him—especially since Henne beat Penn State 4 straight years. And in the last decade or more Michigan has recruited heavily in Florida and other southeastern states, as well as Texas and California.</p>
<p>As for football graduation rates, it’s grossly misleading to imply that all those who don’t graduate are academic failures. Some kids in the top programs do turn pro before they’ve exhausted their college eligibility; they count against the graduation rate. This year there were 53 early entrants in the NFL draft, almost all of them from football powerhouses. They didn’t all get drafted, but most did; that’s almost 1 in every 4 players drafted. If a kid really wants to play pro football and he has the talent to get himself on an NFL roster and make a good living playing on Sundays, it’s tough to advise him not to do it, especially since he risks a career-ending injury playing for a scholarship on Saturdays. </p>
<p>Also counting against the graduation rate are kids who transfer to other schools in good academic standing because it becomes clear they’re not going to get the playing time they expected—either because they’re beat out for the starting job by a kid with more talent, or, for example, when there’s a coaching change and they find their skills just don’t match up with the new coach’s scheme. Sometimes they transfer because they don’t like the weather. In a typical football recruiting class of 21 scholarship athletes, all it takes is 1 or 2 to go pro early (Michigan had 1 in 2010, none in 2009, and 2 in 2008) and another 3 or 4 to transfer to other schools (which generally requires that you leave in good academic standing), and you’re down around a 70-75% graduation rate. Michigan lost a lot of high-profile transfers in the transition to Rich Rod’s spread offense, including QB Ryan Mallett (Arkansas), OG Justin Boren (Ohio State), RB Sam McGuffie (Rice), WR Toney Clemons (Colorado), QB Steven Threet (Arizona State), as well as several less heralded players like OT Dann O’Neill (Western Michigan), OG Kurt Wermers (Ball State), and I believe several others. That’s an unusually large number of transfers; but 3 or 4 over a 4-year period in a 21-person recruiting class is not at all unusual. Many of these transfers will graduate at other schools. All will count against their original school’s graduation rate. </p>
<p>That’s not to say all the non-graduates are academic whizzes; some do become academically ineligible. But the percentage who become academically ineligible, leave school for academic reasons, or simply quit—i.e., the total number of non-graduating recruits, less early NFL draft entrants and transfers in good academic standing, all divided by the size of the recruiting class—would be a much better indicator of how well the school is doing by its student-athletes academically than the graduation rate, which can be very misleading.</p>