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UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN MEDIA CONFERENCEFebruary 6, 2008Rich RodriguezCOACH RODRIGUEZ: Good to see everybody. Like to announce our 21 signees for this year's class, there are still a few that may be joining this class at a later time. So I've kept my cell phone with me if you don't mind. I've got it on vibrate just in case it rings. But very pleased with what we have so far, and I do want to applaud Coach Carr and his staff. I think they did an outstanding job of identifying some quality student-athletes. We had several commitments when I came on board and most of them have signed with us today. So I think their staff did an outstanding job, and I think the coaches over the last three weeks or so on our staff did a nice job of securing some of those guys and bringing a few more to the fold. Obviously, it's a tough situation. Any time there's a transition, it's a tough situation when you're limited. We basically had three weeks on the road. The last three weeks have been kind of hectic for us going all over the country talking to these guys and their families. But I've been really pleased. We have a great university to sell. The administration here has been outstanding from our president Mary Sue Coleman to our Athletic Director Bill Martin, they've been great. Every step of the way it's been extremely positive. There are some things we've had to battle in recruiting. Some negative publicity at times. But I think our guys have fought through that and are pretty excited about today. Again, we have a few spots open. We had enough room to sign 25, and we have 21. We may or may not get to that 25 mark. If we don't, we'll certainly be able to sign them for next year's class. So we have a few needs as we talk about it. Ask a few questions. Obviously, the biggest pressing needs for us in making a transition from one offensive system to the other is at the offensive skill position. We've tried to address this in this class, and we'll continue to address it in the very near future. Just for the sake, I'll go through each guy, and if at the end you have any questions or anything, we'll kind of go through there. I think Bruce or Dave, everybody's probably got these bios anyway, right? No? Oh, it's a secret. Well, good. Well, for this year's recruiting class, and I'm going to go in alphabetical order. Ricky Barnum. I'll go ahead and talk about Ricky first. Ricky Barnum is a 6'2", 265-pound offensive lineman from Lakeland, Florida. Coach Rod Smith had been recruiting him for some time over the last year or two. Obviously to bring a young man up here, he is an outstanding young man, a good football player and good student, and we're tickled to death to have him join our program. As you'll see, with Ricky we'll probably put him in the interior O-line. All of our linemen will learn all positions eventually. But Ricky will start off on the inside learning guard and also probably learn the center position as well. Boubacar Cissoko a local guy from down at Cass Tech, Detroit, Michigan. An outstanding corner. Has been committed here for some time. A fast guy, very athletic. Excited about him. He played in the U.S. Army game, you can read all that kind of stuff. Really a neat story for him and what he's come from. Really being a late, I guess, comer to football. The last several years and works out about Boubacar. All right, Mike Cox is a running back, well, he's actually at a prep school, Avon Farms in Connecticut. He was at camp. The previous staff identified him. He's a bigger guy, very explosive, outstanding young man. Can run. We think he's got a great future. Again, he's a bigger back, so we were able to do a few things with Mike. And he's been committed for some time, and he stayed with the Wolverines. Justin Feagin is a quarterback, 6-feet, 190-pound athlete. We started recruiting more recently. Coach Smith had been recruiting him for some time. Knew about him, and you can look at his stats. He ran for over 1,000 yards, passed for over 1,000 yards. Very athletic guy. A guy that probably fits our system pretty well. He's another, again, one of our biggest needs still is offensive skilled athletes and Justin fits that mold. J.B. Fitzgerald is a linebacker that had been committed. We had to hold on to him. He was an outstanding student. Been committed to here for some time. But as you can imagine when there's transition, a lot of other schools jumped on board and tried to get him. Fortunately, we were able to hang on to him. J.B. was the Gatorade Player of the Year in the state of New Jersey. He's a big linebacker, 6'3", 230, runs well, and we think he's going to be outstanding in our system here. J.T. Floyd, defensive back, out of Greenville, South Carolina. J.L. Mann High School. Coach Gibson had been recruiting him. We really think a lot of J.T. he's a very explosive player. Very intelligent football player. Probably one of the smartest high school defensive backs that we've come across as far as knowing how to play the game. I really liked his focus, and I think he's going to be able to make an immediate impact. Before I go on, you all ask the question, who is going to play as a freshman. We're going to try to get every one of these guys ready. Our policy is if you're good enough to play and win with early, we'll play with you. If you're not good enough because of a mental thing or physical thing, it's our job to get you ready. But we recruit guys with the intention of getting them ready to play right away. They usually determine that on how quickly they learn or how physically ready they are. Obviously, some positions are probably easier to jump in and play early as others. Part of that is considering who we have back experience-wise at certain positions. But we never go to a guy and say you're definitely going to be red shirted, or go to a guy and say you're going to be a starter from day one. Those guys know they have to earn it and learn it. Probably more freshmen play this year and maybe next year than possibly in the future, simply because of the transition in schemes. That's kind of typical. But a lot of these guys will probably have an opportunity to play early in their careers. We'll see. J.T. Floyd's one of them. A very good athlete, defensive back. Okay. Moving on. Taylor Hill. A linebacker out of Youngstown, Cardinal Mooney, a very successful of high school program. You see their state championship, runner up. Had several guys go Division 1. He can play multiple positions and probably learn all the linebacker positions. He's got great speed. We've known about Taylor for several years. Tony Gibson was the lead recruiter on him. Rocko Khoury was a lineman here in state. Committed to us for some time. Big guy can play tackle. Outstanding student, 3.5 GPA, was also here with the summer camp. If you notice a lot of our early commitments were guys that were here during camp. We've had and Brad and the staff here have done an outstanding job leading one of the probably premier summer football camps in the country, and it's a key factor for us in recruiting as well. So the camps hopefully will continue that. And it's been a big factor in our recruiting class. Rocko is a guy that came to camp as a big offensive tackle, and we think he's going to have an outstanding future. Kevin Koger is another guy that was committed. A guy that we've known about, I've known about for a few years. An outstanding athlete at tight end. Also plays basketball. We think he's going to be a nice player in our system. He does all the things you want to do in a tight end. And another guy that's not that far away from here down in Toledo, and we think he's an outstanding player. All right, Mike Martin is another local guy. Defensive lineman from down the road, Catholic Central. 6'2", 285, very tough, intense football player. Also you've seen, he won the state championship as a wrestler. Last year in his first year as a wrestler I was able to visit him a couple of weeks ago to watch him wrestle with his brother, and went to go get popcorn. By the time I came back he had already pinned the guy in 20 seconds. So a little later on I went to get me a Diet Coke, and 20 seconds later he pinned another guy. So I didn't get to see a whole lot of it, but he was pretty impressive. He's a very explosive football player. And real excited about Mike Martin and his future. Also, none of these guys -- you all will meet them over the next three or four years, outstanding young men. Great guys to talk to. Guys that understand what it is to be a student athlete at the University of Michigan. And guys that I think will represent us very well. Mike is one of those guys that you can see he has a personality about him that's really infectious. All right, Elliot Mealer, another guy that's been committed from just down the road across the border in Ohio. Offensive tackle. 6' 6", 280, outstanding athlete, was also a good basketball player. Many of you have probably known about Elliot's situation. He was involved in a tragic action Christmas Eve. They claimed his father's life and his girlfriend's life, and his brother, Brock is at U of M Hospital now doing his rehab there. And just a great, great family. Certainly part of the thing that really stood out to me when this happened was how all the commitments and the University of Michigan people reached out to Elliot and his family. I was really touched by the commitments when I talked to them after this happened, they had already tried to contact or talk to Elliot. And I think he and his family felt that from the start and will continue to feel that. As the future goes, I'll probably ask you all when we try to do some things after I check with the compliance for the family. Because this is a family that's been through an awful lot. We're really proud of what Elliot has gone through and the way he's hanging in there. It's a great story. Anyway, the Mealer family is part of the Michigan family, and we'll do all we can to support them. And Elliot's an outstanding football player. Moving on next to Brandon Moore, the big tight end out of Trotwood-Madison. He's another guy that's 6'6", 225, a really good athlete. He has a 4.25 GPA. I don't know who the heck's going to coach him. He'll probably be coaching us. But great young man. Very good athlete. Big frame, and he's going to be able to put on some weight and some strength and be an outstanding player for us. The next guy Patrick Omameh is another guy we got on late in the last few weeks recruiting him. I'm really excited about him. Here's a guy that in the last couple of years grew a couple inches, gained 40 pounds and went from a 6'2", 230-pound guy to now a 6'4, 260-pound athlete that can really run. He's another guy that's a 4.0 GPA, and that makes Coach Frey a little nervous. But he is an outstanding student. Very, very good athlete. There are a lot of schools that came on Patrick late, including us, and we are fortunate that he signed with the Wolverines. Dann O'Neill, another offensive lineman. You can see we had several guys graduate this year, and we had to sign a big class of linemen, and we got six. Dann's the biggest of the bunch. 6'7", 295, an outstanding athlete. Tough guy. He's going to have a great career. Big Dann played in a couple of All-Star Games that were pretty neat. But Dann did an outstanding job with that and so we got some of the best players in the country. Again, he's the biggest guy we've signed and it should be really good in our system. The part about these offensive linemen, and everybody asks what kind of linemen you want? Everybody wants big guys that can move. Doesn't matter if it you run a west coast offense or spread offense or an I-formation, you want big offensive linemen that can move, be tough, physical and smart. And we'd rather get the guy that's, you know, 280 and build him up to 295, 300 than get a guy that's 350 and make him drop weight. But in this class we've got guys with big frames. We can add some muscle and speed hopefully and strength and move on from there. But Dann's got a great future, we believe. Terrence Robinson is another guy that we basically identified a couple of weeks ago in our need to add some slot receivers in our system. Terrence played running back, slot receiver, quarterback, he did a lot of things. He's a very explosive athlete. He would be one of the fastest guys in this class. And we're looking at him to play multiple positions on the offensive skill positions for us. As I mentioned, he's a fast guy, very, very productive, and really excited about Terrence. He can move, and that's the one thing we've identified is we need to get some fast guys at the offensive skill positions, and Terrence is one of them. Roy Roundtree is another guy we got on a little bit later recently for our need for offensive skill. He's a wide receiver. He can play all four wide receiver positions for us. Very protective at Trotwood-Madison, caught 50 passes this past year. Got great handles. Great ball skills and can do a lot of things for us. Michael Shaw. Mike's a guy we've known about for a little bit. Another very fast guy, offensive athlete that can play a bunch of positions for us. He's a guy that should probably for sure you want to get the ball in his hands because he's very explosive. He'll be probably one of the fastest guys, fastest prep players in the country. You can see he gained over 1200 yards rushing, 300 yards receiving. We're very, very excited about Michael. Enjoyed him on his visit. Very conscientious young man, and I think he has a tremendous career. Brandon Smith from New Jersey. It was a defensive back, looking at him playing safety. He played multiple positions in high school; played quarterback, wide receiver, linebacker, DB, just an outstanding athlete. We think he's going to be. We have a need for defense at our safety position. We had a couple of guys graduate, and Brandon's going to have an opportunity to come in and compete right away. All right, Darryl Stonum, Darryl's already enrolled here this past January as a wide receiver. Very fast guy. I wanted to mention him because he is in this recruiting class. He's going to have a great opportunity this spring to learn the system and be an impact player for us. He's a great young man. He's been working hard and he's been in our program with coach Barwis, and he'll learn the system this spring. Kurt Wermers is another offensive lineman. 6'5", 260, can play guard or tackle for us. He'll learn multiple positions. Very intelligent football player, 3.4 GPA, tough guy. Gets after them, very intense. And he was already committed and fortunately he stayed committed to be a Wolverine. We think Kurt, this offensive line class is going to be something special. You have six guys there. All very good athletes and guys that fit the system. As I mentioned we watched the film on the prior commitments and the guy that's we want to add to the class, and they were all guys we thought were great fits for what we're trying to do. Don't have a write up on Spoon, Marcus Witherspoon. I don't know if you have it in your deal. Big Spoon was one of the best linebackers on the east coast. Big 6'2", 225, and probably will be able to learn all three linebacker positions for us. Very athletic, runs well. Strong guy. Loves to play the game of football. Very excited about Spoon. I think he's one of the best prep linebackers, he and J.B., on the entire east coast. And we're fortunate to be able to bring them over here. And Coach Frey did an outstanding job of securing those commitments. But I really want to applaud my assistant coaches. Those guys do the bulk of the work setting things up. I just kind of come in and try to those the deal and add our philosophy to it. But I've got a great staff. Nice part about it, we have an outstanding class already here. We'll hopefully add, you know, one or two or three more in the very near future and got to get off to an early start for next year's class. I think I have a bunch of guys that are great recruiters. Again, we have a great university to sell, and I hope that you all will help us with all the positive press that you'll put out there each and every day. So, questions? Q. The few guys from Trotwood, do they help bring each other upward? How did that happen? COACH RODRIGUEZ: Normally that's case when you have three guys from the same school. But this process happened so later, it may have been a little bit of a factor but not as much of as normal. I think they're all really independent in their decisions. Probably because we were so late in the process on a couple of them. Q. What can you say, if anything, about Pryor not deciding today? COACH RODRIGUEZ: Can't say anything. The only thing I can talk about are the guys that signed on this list. And I'm excited to talk about them as they're Wolverines. Q. What about the quarterback position? You know you need a quarterback, so you signed one quarterback? COACH RODRIGUEZ: We're still recruiting as I mentioned, offensive skill players. Q. Can you talk about offensive skill players? COACH RODRIGUEZ: Not only with Justin and learning the system, but how quickly all these guys will. That's our job as coaches. It's kind of simplistic, but as a college coach you have two main jobs, recruit quality student-athletes for your program then develop them once they get here. And that developing is a big umbrella. There are a lot of things that take place in that development. And all these guys, as quickly as we can, for them as far as strength and conditioning and getting that. Then when they get here this summer, them working out with their teammates. That is the thing that's nice now is you can bring your signees earlier for summer school or summer workouts, and that gives them at least a head start on getting the type of condition they need to be to play at this level. Q. With the players that were on board when you signed on here, what was the emphasis to put them at ease with your staff? COACH RODRIGUEZ: I think with the commitments that were already here, and somebody told me, and I don't know if this is a fact, but usually when there is a transition in the staff you sometimes lose as many as half of the commitments. Obviously, we were able to secure a lot of them, and sometimes it's a parting of both ways. Sometimes they don't feel they fit the system. Sometimes the coach doesn't feel they fit. What we tried to do is say, listen, the main reason you committed was because of the University of Michigan. But let's not kid ourselves, there is always some involvement with the staff. When you're recruiting a young man or woman to come to play to a college, those personal relationships that a coach deals with the student athlete plays a part in their decision. And that's a fact. That's why it's going to be a heck of a lot easier for us to recruit in the future than it was in three weeks. But Coach Carr and his staff did a nice job. And we tried to as much as we could in the past three weeks, get those guys to get to know us and develop that relationship. And I think we were able to do that. Q. How antsy do you get with space remaining on your roster? 21 out of 25? COACH RODRIGUEZ: Yeah, we're not going to be at the full 85. I think we actually have 26 or 27 openings. You can only sign 25 in a year. So we will not be at the full 85 next year. It's probably similar to a lot of transitional places. When I went to West Virginia seven years ago, I think we were 5 or 6 short of the 85. And it took us two to three years to get those numbers right. I'm hoping we won't lose any more of our upper classmen, but I can't guarantee you. I'm not going to lock the doors from the inside out. We're going to be demanding and work hard, but the players so far on the program have bought in. I've been really pleased with their attitude. It's been sensational. They're working hard. They've had some tough workouts, but it's fixing to get tougher. I hope they all hang in there. But we're not going to be able to fill up the 85 this year. Hopefully, it won't take us two to three years. Hopefully, this time next year, we'll have the full roster of 85. Q. Can you identify the players on this list as not committed to previous staff? COACH RODRIGUEZ: Well, y'all can look that up. I don't know. There were 13, 14, something like that. Once we took the job, I didn't want to -- I wanted to recruit them all as if it was the first time they'd ever talked to the University of Michigan. Because, obviously, there are a lot of new coaches, new philosophies coming in. So I didn't want to assume anything. So we took the approach of all of them that this is the first time that the University of Michigan talked to them. But, as I said, the staff before did a nice job of selling the university not just the football program, but the academics, social aspects, living in Ann Arbor, everything that is being at the University of Michigan, a lot of these guys knew about. I think that helped us secure this class. I don't get into, in case somebody asks, where are we ranked at nationally? Recruiting itself has almost become its own season. And the interest in it -- look at how many cameras and how many of you are writing notes on recruiting? How many of these guys are going to be All American, all Big Ten players. You like to think all of them, but inevitably it doesn't work out that way. So I don't get caught up in the rankings as much. I like to watch the film, meet with the young men, watch them play if we get a chance, and try to develop them once we get them. You don't have to have a top-five recruiting class, so-called top-five recruiting class to have a top-five program. But it does help. Lot of times those rankings are close. Sometimes the five-star guy, is a five-star guy. Sometimes a five-star guy may be really a two or three-star guy. And a lot of those two-star guys turn out to be five-star guys. A lot of those recruiting rankings, some guys are overinflated and some are underrated. Q. Talk about Justin and how he can pass? COACH RODRIGUEZ: Justin can throw the football. I got to see him in person, I was not able to watch him in person because we got on recruiting late, but he can make all the throws. I know everybody is concerned about the quarterback position because that is the focal point of everybody's offense. But we'll be okay. I mean, like I said, I'm excited on Justin joining the fold. No matter who the quarterback is, they've got to learn our system. We've been running this system for 16, 17 years, and we have enough capabilities in our offense to adapt it to the ability of our quarterbacks. Q. Did you say anything specifically about the guys and the overtime process? Can you give us an idea what the timetable would be there? Do you feel good about any of those guys? (Indiscernible). COACH RODRIGUEZ: Only thing I'll say is we're still recruiting people. And we'll still recruiting until as long as we need to recruit them. Last year at the other school I was at, we recruited a young man until March 30th, the day before the last day you could sign. Noel Devine signed the day before the deadline, so we had a busy spring. When young men -- this is a tough decision for a lot of young men. It's something that's not easy to make. You can imagine that. If they're not sure, they want to make sure they see everything and they have other questions answered. This is just the beginning date. Now normally 90% of the guys sign today, but that's not always the case. Q. Can you speak to speed? COACH RODRIGUEZ: Every coach wants speed. I think if you can't catch them, you can't tackle them. And if they can't catch you, they can't tackle you. We've got to get faster. That is a pretty obvious thing. We graduated probably our fastest guys or some of our fastest guys from our team they've either graduated or moved on to the NFL. So we've got to have an influx of speed. I like guys that can run in all positions, even the kicker. The punter. He's committed to doing it. Coach, I'm going to be able to run as fast as anybody you've got. He says that. But I want everybody to be able to run. All the players, everybody's got to be able to run and run fast. And we'll get faster. We're working on speed training now. Hopefully, this class will address it, and the next class will address it as well. Q. You mentioned 13 or 14 of the previous commitments stayed? Is that what you said? COACH RODRIGUEZ: Yeah, there were like 13 or 14 guys that were committed prior to me getting the job that are on this list. Q. Which ones would you say sort of specifically recruited to your offensive style? COACH RODRIGUEZ: All of them. Every one of them. What did we sign? 21 guys. 21 guys were recruited to our system. That's pretty good. 100%. Q. Is Shaw going to be a running back primarily for you? COACH RODRIGUEZ: He's going to be an athlete. He's going to play several positions. In our offense we don't like to pigeon hole some of the great skill players into this is all you're going to do. Steve Slayton played running back, he played slot. Noel Devine played both. We tried to give him the ball. If you've got a guy that's explosive, and you try different ways to create ways to get him the football. In the spread offense, it's easier to do that. You can get a lot of touches to your most explosive players by the design of the offense. Q. You mentioned recruiting and negative publicity; I'm assuming the stuff out of West Virginia. Were kids asking you about it? COACH RODRIGUEZ: There were, you know, let's be honest, there was something in the paper about every day. That made it more difficult for obvious reasons. So I am sure in the future that every one will have nothing but positive things to say, and you'll never have anything personal dealing with the head football coach to write again. Thanks. Boy, that was easy. I'm glad we got that cleared up. Now we'll never have to worry about that. But I understand we live in a sensationalist society, and it's almost a National Enquirer type of mentality among some folks that like to read certain articles. It didn't make it easier. But some of these guys and their parents never asked a thing. But some of them did. I addressed it honestly and as quickly and painlessly as I could. I wanted them to get to know myself. I will tell you, even though this is not a knock on any of y'all print media or news media I've been to busy to read the papers, so I don't know a lot of what was written. Sometimes I get told things by my lawyers or my family or whatever. But I've tried to just do my job and not stay too concerned with what was being written or said so everybody could just move on. I think it was, for a lot of the players, because I didn't know what they read or heard, we stayed focused on the University of Michigan and moving forward and taking that approach, and I think it worked pretty well for us. Q. Do you think other schools used it against you? COACH RODRIGUEZ: Oh, I'm sure. But every year there are amazing recruiting stories that come out. But you wonder to what depth will people go to in signing a young man? I will tell you, our coaches will present the facts and do comparisons, because that's recruiting. But we're not going to go and negative recruit and knock a particular coach or player down. Now we will compare systems and all that. But you all have heard the story there is a guy that, I guess, thought he was going to California, and California wasn't recruiting him. Then we had a recruiting story this year where a prospect was getting called by a former, so-called, by a former player of mine and said things that wasn't in the best light. Turned out that former player had no idea who he was talking to because we asked him. And he said he didn't know who the guy was and never called him. But somebody impersonated him on the phone. Now isn't that awful? Somebody would call and impersonate a player? There's got to be a law against it or something. But we've dealt with that. We've dealt with that in the last week. Somebody impersonating a former player and calling somebody. That is sinking to new depths. I can tell you recruiting stories every year. My staff could every year about some of the things that we don't think are very ethical. But you deal with it in coaching, and you try to do the best you can. Q. How do you and your staff deal with players that did what a couple of these players did? COACH RODRIGUEZ: There were some that probably verbally committed to us and went somewhere else, too. Q. In terms of your perspective, what is fair, what is ethical? COACH RODRIGUEZ: Sometimes coaches will tell you when somebody verbals that just tells you who you've got to beat to get him. Sometimes young men verbally commit without visiting another campus or seeing other options, and coaches know that. The only time it really creates tough situations is when the night before they tell you you're coming, the next morning they tell you they're not. That makes it tough and difficult. But that's understood in our profession. You know, somebody verbally commits and we know they're solid, they can make it known they're solid. They won't talk to you. They won't visit you. If somebody verbally commits to your institution, but they continue to visit, that verbal commitment's not a solid, verbal commitment. It's like you say you're engaged to someone but you continue to date, your fiancee isn't going to be very happy. So those things happen, and those are pretty much understood. That was understood with our commitments that we're committed to you, you're committed to us. But if you shop around, then that commitment is not really solid on either end, and you deal with it. I would like to see an early signing date. And it's been talked about doing something in around the third week of December when the junior college signing date is, so you can sign. Like basketball has an early signing date. Football, I think, would be well-served to have an early signing date in December. So that those kids that know that they're solid can go ahead and sign and get it out of the way. And for the rest of them, the coaches know who is left. To me it makes too much sense. Hopefully I can help. I'm on the board at ASCA, we've talked about it for years. Hopefully, we can get that undid. There are always going to be signing day surprises, but that would clear up a lot of the mess. Q. Just a follow-up to the negative stories that are out there. In retrospect is there anything you look back at doing differently? COACH RODRIGUEZ: I don't want to talk about that. Today's press conference is about these 21 young men. It's not about COACH RODRIGUEZ and the transition or whatever happened. So that's that. Q. Will it be easier for these guys to compete for starting jobs next year since everybody has to learn this new system? COACH RODRIGUEZ: Yeah, that's a good point. That's been brought up to a lot of the players. Really everybody's in kind of a rookie mode in this year's class, because everybody's learned a system for the first year. Now the upper classmen that we have, one, they've got some of them got game experience, which is very valuable. And, two, they're going to have 15 practices in the spring ahead of this class. But other than that, it's wide open. I've watched a little bit of film from our team in the last year, but not a lot. And I watch a little bit more just so I know what we have at certain positions and what some of their abilities are. But I'm wide open. Everybody's got to earn a spot. There's nothing guaranteed for anybody. The approach with our players have already probably figured that out and will figure it out this spring. It's wide open. It will stay that way. It will be two years from now a guy who started on Saturday, may not start on Sunday. He may start on Monday, but not on Tuesday. You have to earn your spot every day. The best players and most competitive guys want that anyway. So it won't be an issue, I think, with all our guys. But you're right, it is probably a lot more wide open this year than it will be in the future, but on who knows. Q. (Indiscernible)? COACH RODRIGUEZ: Part of it, yeah. I think part of it. Part of it is is the transition in formations offensively going to a spread offense. We needed a few slot receivers and some guys that fit that system, so to speak. So that was a selling point for some of these guys, for sure. Q. Do you process any different? COACH RODRIGUEZ: A little bit, yes. What I've known and documented that Michigan has a national name, and we can nationally recruit. Obviously, you want to recruit in state and try to get the best players in state that you can. But we can also recruit nationally and go into anybody's living room or any school in the country with that block M and get an immediate attention. I think our coaches have found that out. I've found that out. But I kind of thought that coming in. That makes you excited for the future. Michigan is a national school, we can recruit nationally. Q. You said a couple of guys from last year's team probably wouldn't be back due to injuries. Did you get that situation straightened out? COACH RODRIGUEZ: Yes, I don't know if it's finalized yet, but Antonio Bass who was a tremendous athlete. Had a tragic knee injury, and really feel bad for him. He's going to be medicaled. And Chris McLaurin, the tight end will be medicaled. These are great young men. You feel bad for them, but they just had injuries that are not allowing them to play. But as long as they stay here and get their degree, and the university will assist them in every effort they can. Q. They remain on a scholarship? COACH RODRIGUEZ: Yes, it's on a medical, that's correct. Q. Can you talk about recruiting for the first time as a Michigan coach? Anything you can say about talking with Jim Tressel? COACH RODRIGUEZ: Just small talk. We were both there on a recruiting trip. I've known Jim for quite some time. Said hello, and he asked about the family and that was it. Q. (Indiscernible)? COACH RODRIGUEZ: The Ohio has always been a bordering state. Your recruiting areas, you always have to focus on in state, and any state that borders you, you want to see if you can get a few guys. There are a lot of great football players in the state of Ohio. Just like there are a lot of great football players in Michigan and we were able to get a handful. I have some contacts and my staff has a lot of contacts in the state because we've recruited for many years. Q. You have two out of Florida, is that going to be a primary focus going down there? COACH RODRIGUEZ: We will be down in Florida a little more often. We've had great success recruiting California and still want to do that. Texas, and Fred Jackson's done a great job in Texas, we'll continue to do that. But a lot of the guys on our staff have Florida recruiting connections and Florida recruiting ties. That will be another main focal point for us. There are a lot of great football players in Florida. A lot of those guys will leave and in particularly to a place like Michigan. So we'll be in Florida quite extensively in the future. Q. You signed a lot of offensive linemen. Can you clarify? There has been some speculation on guys not coming back from last year's team, offensive linemen. Can you clarify that? COACH RODRIGUEZ: Greg's been the happiest guy with six more bodies to work with. The two other offensive linemen that were seniors that were graduating and not returning, Alex Mitchell, and Jeremy Ciulla, those two guys are both seniors, going to graduate this year. The rest of the guys are all working out pretty good. But I'm excited about that group. I think we've got a nice group of offensive linemen. They're going to be young, but we have a nice group coming in. Normally you'll have about -- we'll carry about 16 on the team. I think maybe we're at 15 right now with scholarship. And we have every coach at this level has a certain number at each position that you have 16 offensive linemen, and ten receivers, and so many running backs, so many defensive linemen. You know, to get those numbers right and the right personnel group, usually takes two to three years. It may take us a couple of years to get that right, but we'll get it right eventually. End of FastScripts |
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