No, Jim Harbaugh did not exceed the overages in his cell phone plan. That’s not why we’re comparing Jim Harbaugh to “Mr. Telephone Man” Kelvin Sampson. It turns out Harbaugh poached a recruit away from a Big Ten team in the state of Illinois at the very last second, i.e. “pulling a Kelvin Sampson.”
That really wouldn’t be fair to say though because this type of thing happens all the time. When it comes to college recruiting in Chicago sports, the Gordon/Sampson incident in 2006 is the most infamous. In reality, this is very commonplace.
It happened to the Illini again on 2013 basketball signing day- point guard Quentin Snider pulled out at the last second and went to his hometown Louisville Cardinals; because the guy who was to start at the one for UL defected to another school.
Illinois has been on the other side of it too. Ron Zook poached recruits to Illinois who had already committed to Florida. Again this is commonplace, everyone has experienced it. You’re dealing with high schoolers, not adults. They’re going to be whimsical.
When Michigan brought in Jim Harbaugh, it was the very definition of a “splash hire.” Of course, there’s going to be a Harbaugh halo effect that will result in local players de-committing and then joining up in Ann Arbor.
Jim Harbaugh didn’t offer three-star wide receiver Chris Perry, who hails from Brother Rice, Michigan until Sunday. Perry then de-committed from Northwestern on Monday and committed to Michigan yesterday.
Even with this decision, and others that may follow later today, Jim Harbaugh still has his work cut out for him. His incoming recruiting class is still ranked dead last in the Big Ten across the board by all recruiting services.
Then again, all of this is overblown, over-hyped made for TV reality series rubbish anyway. The number of stars by the name really doesn’t matter that much. The class ranking number doesn’t mean all that much.
You’ve all seen this factoid which has been RTd incessantly the week:
44 starters in the Super Bowl:
5 Star Recruits – 0
4 Star Recruits- 4
3 and below- 40
For decades we somehow survived without hat picking ceremonies. That’s a fairly new phenomenon.
ESPN didn’t start hyping national signing day into a “a thing” until very recently. I guess we were all stronger and tougher people back then because life must have been very difficult without these wonderful things that we have today. When Gordon back out of his Illini commitment at the last second it was when coverage of recruiting was just starting to take off.
That’s why it blew up into such a big deal- around 2006 is when the whole recruiting specialist media outlets began to grow in influence.
Paul M. Banks owns, operates and writes The Sports Bank.net, which is partnered with Fox Sports Digital, eBay, Google News and CBS Interactive Inc.
You can read Banks’ feature stories in the Chicago Tribune RedEye newspaper and listen to him on KOZN 1620 The Zone. Follow him on Twitter (@paulmbanks)