Five-star offensive lineman Seantrel Henderson (the No. 1-rated offensive lineman in the class) of St. Paul, Minn., dissed the Buckeyes and chose USC. Can you blame him, especially after USC has pounded the Buckeyes year-in and year-out.

Four-star offensive lineman Matt James of Cincinnati St. Xavier left the Buckeye State for the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame.

Five-star cornerback LaMarcus Joyner of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., committed to Florida State.

Five-star cornerback Josh Shaw of Palmdale, Calif., chose Florida State over Tressel’s Buckeyes as well.

Probably the real killer is the Buckeyes lost out on another five star, in-state linebacker prospect, Jordan Hicks, who chose Texas over the Buckeyes. Do we see a common theme here? Yes, Texas pounded the Buckeyes just a year ago. Boy, when you lose those Ohio boys, something must be wrong.

Overall, it appears the Buckeyes took a beating this year in recruiting.

Here’s a highlight video of Conelius Jones – Michigan’s QB recruit, along with Devin Gardner, for 2010. Depth at QB should no longer be a problem.

Here’s Michigan’s top QB recruit for 2010, Devin Gardner. He should push Forcier this fall as he has already enrolled in classes (Jan. 2010). Spring ball really helped get Forcier ready and it should do the same for Gardner. Question is – where will Robinson fit in with all these QB’s?

Here’s Pennsylvania’s top high school player, Jordan Paskorz, a Weakside defensive end from Allison Park, Pennsylvania. It will be interesting to see how much playing time he gets in the fall. At 6′3″ and 235 lbs., he’ll probably need to add some weight to play on the line. He looks good against high school competition.

Richard Ash follows several others from Pahokee, Florida who enrolled at Michigan. Ash is a four star recruit at Defensive Tackle. Ash originally planned to attend West Virginia but switched his allegiance after visiting Ann Arbor.

Old Mill’s Josh Furman rushed for almost a quarter mile, 414 yards, and scored 6 touchdowns and 2 2pt. conversions in his team’s 58-55 double overtime victory over previously unbeaten Arundel.

Michigan recruited him to probably play linebacker. At 6′3″ and 225 lbs, he runs a 4.4 40 yard dash. It will be interesting to see if he makes an impact as a freshman.

Seeking a punt returner, RichRod sought the services of Greenwell Springs, Louisiana resident, Drew Dileo. Dileo may also play slot receiver for the Maize and Blue. Watch his highlight tape. Great punt returners usually run straight up the field. Dileo does that well. He has decent speed at 4.5 in the 40.

As National Signing Day approaches and Michigan looks to sign its largest recruiting class ever, I thought I’d feature the members of that class. Let’s start with an Ohio boy from Y-town, Ray Vinopal.

Of course, Buckeye fans will be aghast that someone from Ohio would go to any school but Ohio State but OSU fans really don’t know much about recruiting or football in general.

Vinopal was recruited to shore up the defensive backfield at Michigan. This video sure shows how he can do it. Vinopal is only rated a two-star recruit but he’d like to prove that he was way underrated.

After a second losing season, fans and rival fans alike are calling for Rich Rodriguez’s head and that he should be fired. And guess what? There are at least a couple websites devoted to the topic – http://www.firerrod.com/ and http://www.firerichrodriguez.com/. I just read an article in the Detroit Free Press by Jamie Samuelson suggesting that Rodriguez should be fired because he showed no progress/improvement from year one to year two. So I began thinking, has Rodriguez not shown progress from year one to year two?

By the way, Michigan is not going to fire Rodriguez after two seasons. They stuck it out with Amaker for 6 years. I think they are going to give Rodriguez a fair shake. I also agree with Colin Cowherd that Rodriguez will be Tressel’s worst nightmare. So Buckeye fans, enjoy the victories over Michigan while you can.

Back to the question at hand, has Rodriguez shown progress/improvement from year one to year two?

I think we can just compare Michigan’s performance against Ohio State in the last two seasons to begin to answer that question. It could be as simple as saying – 2008 – OSU 42 – Michigan 7 and 2009 OSU 21 – Michigan 10. But some might consider a loss as just a loss much as many consider a win as a win. Even more simply, however, Michigan had a chance to win in 2009 but through quarterback turnovers pretty much gave the game to Ohio State. Some might say that we should have won the 2009 game. We really didn’t have a chance to win in 2008.

Despite the turnovers, the offense actually moved the ball against Ohio State in 2009. This didn’t happen in 2008. I have to give some credit to OSU for stopping the run, but we were without our first and second string tailbacks, Brandon Minor and Carlos Brown. Also, despite the turnovers, Forcier is light years ahead of Nick Sheridan and Steven Threet. Sheridan and Threet were abysmal against Ohio State in 2008. It may have just been Sheridan in 2008 as Threet might have been injured for the OSU game. And in fairness to Rodriguez, Forcier is a true freshman and still has a ways to go in his development as a quarterback. While we are mentioning being fair to Rodriguez (which nobody seems to want to be), we did lose our starting center, David Molk, early in the year and then lost him again for the rest of the year during the game he came back. Despite the loss of Molk to injury, our offensive line has come a long way from 2008. I mean, c’mon, we were able to move the ball against the so-called best defense in the Big Ten with relative ease.

But for the Ohio State game, it would have been easy to argue that our defense has not made progress over 2008. We had let-downs against Penn State, Illinois, Purdue and Wisconsin with the losses against Illinois and Purdue being especially devastating. Again, we have to look at available personnel before we can put the blame on Rod. Our secondary was abysmal with Jordan Kovacs at free safety and Michael Williams at strong safety and Troy Woolfolk playing cornerback (this move necessitated by injury to J.T. Floyd and Boubacar Cissoko’s poor play). Michigan was able to return to its original lineup of Woolfolk playing centerfield and Kovacs at strong safety against Ohio State and it showed. Michigan only gave up one long td scoring drive to OSU. OSU’s other 14 points were a result of Forcier’s fumble in the end zone and a Forcier interception resulting in a short field for OSU’s offense.

So was there a lack of improvement in 2009? Michigan had a stretch of games that were very disappointing especially from a defensive standpoint but injuries definitely played a role in those losses (as well as lack of depth in general on defense). Overall, however, Michigan has come a long way from 2008’s 3-9 campaign. 2009’s record should have been better but I take hope from the mere fact that we had a chance to beat a decent OSU team and, in the end, beat ourselves more than OSU beat us.

I finally found this video. And people vilify Elizabeth Lambert?