Recap of National Signing Day

The first Wednesday of February is always the biggest day each year on the recruiting landscape, National Signing Day.  This is the day that High School Seniors are first allowed to sign their National Letter of Intent to play college football.  When Jim Harbaugh was hired Michigan was expected to recruit at an extremely high level and that was exactly what they did.



Recruiting Controversies


Harbaugh's first full recruiting cycle was not without controversy.  Michigan has always been a school that tries its best to follow the rules and not toe the line or work in gray areas with recruiting.  Harbaugh and the staff decided that it was best that they work in those areas.  This has made many Michigan fans uncomfortable because its not how it has always been.  The biggest news that was made was about Erik Swenson.



Swenson was Michigan's first commitment for the 2016 class back in November of 2013 under old coach Brady Hoke.  2 weeks before signing day Swenson announced that he was decommitting because the Michigan coaches had just told him that he was no longer welcome in their recruiting class.  The reasoning was as simple as he had not developed the way that he had wanted to so they did not want him to be apart of the class.  This received a lot of national attention because, while this is a common practice in the SEC, it was not something that Michigan has done before.  Depending on who you believed whether it was Swenson's family or people around Michigan it is two completely different stories.  The story from the Swenson side was that Michigan had not given Erik any notice before telling him that he was not a part of the class while the Michigan side said that they had told him to visit other schools in November because there was a chance that he would not be part of the class.



The Class



Depending on which of the 4 major recruiting websites you are looking at Michigan finished anywhere from 4th-6th.  The site that I follow most closely is Rivals.com and they had Michigan as the 4th best class in the country.  That is the best finish that Michigan has had in the 14 years of the website.  The crown jewel of the class is the consensus number 1 player in the nation, Rashan Gary.  This recruitment had a lot of twists and turns, like most recruitments of top players in the nation.  They were able sustain a late run from the national runner-up Clemson.







Also on National Signing Day they were able to get the Signature from Devin Asiasi.  This was a big get for Michigan in their staff not only because of what type of player he is but because of what part of the country he is from and the high school that he came from.  He went to Concorde De La Salle in California.  That is one of the biggest football factories in the countries.  In the late 90's and early 2000's the had a streak of 151 games, the longest winning streak in the history of high school football.



Michigan decided that they were going to make an effort in other parts of the country instead of just the Midwest likes staffs in the past ha done.  They were going to try to get players from Calfornia, Texas, Florida, Georgia, and New Jersey.  They were able to receive commitments from players from California, Georgia, Florida and New Jersey and were able to get multiple from New Jersey.  They were able to secure 6 commitments from Florida, 3 from California and 6 from New Jersey.



Signing of the Stars



Michigan decided to do one of the more unique things that I have ever seen when it came to signing day.  They decided that have what they called "The Signing of the Stars".  It basically looked like an award show and they got every celebrity that they could to come to announce who was coming in for this recruiting class.



They were able to get videos from celebrities like Vince Vaughn, Lil Wayne, Owen Wilson among other to make videos to show at the event.  They were able to get many athletes that have connections to the University of Michigan like Tom Brady, Charles Woodson and Derek Jeter to come to the event.  The event was not only for the signing day but they were also able to raise over $100,000 for the chad tough foundation for pediatric cancer research.