...Michigan will be digging itself out of a recruiting hole left by Rodriguez' tenure for the next four years. Despite the rankings and despite the individual successes of Rodriguez and his staff, Michigan's recruiting classes were far, far worse than anyone has realized.
In all, Rodriguez had 3 recruiting classes at Michigan that he was the head coach for. After being
hired on December 16, 2007, Rodriguez had two months to finalize Michigan's 2008 recruiting class. He then had all of 2009 and 2010 to recruit. If we give Rodriguez credit for these three classes, he was responsible for 75 young men sending in their letters of intent to Michigan. As I mentioned above there have been some wonderful players brought in under Rodriguez' watch. But if were giving credit for his successes, we have to lay blame for his failures.
There's plenty of blame to lay out, too. Out of the 75 students who signed on the dotted line to play for Michigan under Rodriguez,
24% of them are no longer at Michigan or never made it to campus.
