Unverified Voracity Haet Official Journalist

Official Journalist Haet Recruiting. "Signing Day," the fictional recruitnik holiday, is tomorrow. And as per usual so we're treated to our annual dose of condescending coverage from Official Journalists irritated at the relative vectors of the official journalism and online hypery businesses. Official journalism article checklist:

• take shot at largely fictional basement-dwelling recruiting freaks
• create framework of unreasonable expectations and then berate Scout/Rivals for not meeting said unreasonable expectations
• blame everything on mad fans, blogs, and non-Official Journalists
• pretend I understand how to construct an argument, even though I obviously do not.

Exhibit A: Brent Schrotenbroeter's article today on "SignOnSanDiego," the web arm of that city's Union-Tribune, approvingly cited by a second Official Journalist at the Wizard of Odds. Main thesis:

While all the hype surrounding him is making at least two Web sites rich, top recruits don't live up to their billings on those sites about 40 percent of the time, according to analyses by The San Diego Union-Tribune and a national recruiting expert.

Which is an interesting way of phrasing "60% of the time a guy projected to be awesome is." An analysis from last summer done in this space (small sample size, admittedly) shows similar numbers... if you are intent on framing things in the most negative light possible and blaming Rivals/Scout for injury, academics, and general knuckleheadedness. In general, if you pick up a top-50 player who doesn't explode for non-talent-related reasons, you have a 60% chance he's an all-conference type* or better. This, as SMQ said, is a raging clue.

WOO cites the part in which coaches crab about recruiting rankings unnecessarily raising expectations, but coaches crab about everything. With their corresponding enormous salary leap, I am disinclined to give a microcrap when millionaires whine about job security.

*(-ish. Like the kind of guy who's in the all-conference area: first team, second team, maybe the higher sort of honorable mention sort.)

Harris defends Amaker... sort of. Quotes in the run-up to tonight's projected hammering at the hands of Ohio State:

This is (a problem) just with everybody; this is (a problem) with the team," he said. "We're the ones going out there and playing. We can't put anything on the coach or anybody else. We're the ones that have to go out there and play and display certain things that we haven't done this year."

Sure. That's the sort of thing you hear all the time. It's a sports press conference version of a no-op, where you get asked a question you can't reasonably answer because it would cause widespread dissension amongst the team and spontaneous raging clues to sprout in every controversy-seeking journalist within 500 miles and answer it with some meaningless blather. But when you follow that up with...

"If you look at some of the stuff we do that looks awful -- that we see in film all the time -- you wouldn't know there were four seniors on the floor," Harris said. "Just looking at other teams, you don't see (those kind of mistakes), even from some of the younger teams."

... then how can that be a reflection on anyone but Amaker? MLive's Michigan blog has an email from an anonymous former Amaker player supporting Friendly Mr. Coachy; color me unconvinced.

Zook zook zook. Ron Zook, the pied piper of Champaign-Urbana, hauled in an improbable recruiting class this year. Result? Exploration at the WWL! Bemusement at SMQ! Depression, anger, and bullriding at EDSBS!