Monday - February 11, 2008

The Oddnessness of QB Recruiting 

The Long and Winding Road

Follow me for a moment here ...

A couple of years ago, Notre Dame landed two fairly highly regarded QB recruits in 4* prospects Zach Fraser and Demetrius Jones. When 5* QB Mitch Mustain decommitted from Arkansas and was looking around, the presence of Jones and Frazer in ND played a big part in his reconfirming with Arkansas.

Shortly after that, we started hearing in Michigan that Mustain's commitment to Arkansas put us in good stead with Ryan Mallett. Mallett eventually whittled his choices down to Michigan and Texas, where Mack Brown put on the hard sell. Brown was on the verge of filling his 2 person QB class with John Chiles and John Brantley.

The hard sell didn't work on Mallett, who all but eliminated Texas at that point and committed to Michigan soon afterward. With Mallett in the fold, Michigan had little need to pursue the top in-state QB that year, Steven Threet, who wound up at Georgia Tech.

And now we're hearing that QB depth charts could be a major factor in the decision of the top dual-threat QB for 2009, Russell Shepard, who is deciding between Texas, Michigan and Florida.

So why did I engage in this little trip down memory lane?

Count 'em off, in order of appearance as they say in the movies:
Zach Fraser: transfered from Notre Dame to Connecticut
Demetrius Jones: transfered from Notre Dame to Cincinnati
Mitch Mustain: transfered from Arkansas to USC
Ryan Mallett: transfered from Michigan to Arkansas
John Chiles: still at Texas
John Brantley: decomitted from Texas and signed with Florida
Steven Threet: transfered from Georgia Tech to Michigan.

The moral of the story? If you're a hotshot QB, just go where you want to go and don't worry about the depth charts. Those guys may not even be there two years from now. Three of the five transfers on that list (Mustain, Mallett and Threet) didn't get beaten out by other highly rated QBs; they left for various other reasons.