Part One: Matt Dudek Discusses Michigan Recruiting, Updated NCAA Rules

With the coronavirus quarantine throwing recruiting through a loop, Michigan director of recruiting Matt Dudek spoke about how the U-M staff is adjusting to the changes.

As part of a regular segment on The Michigan Insider podcast, Sam Webb interviews a different member of the Michigan football community to provide an additional look into the Wolverines sports landscape.

With the coronavirus quarantine keeping many people indoors, Webb invited U-M director of recruiting Matt Dudek onto the show on Wednesday to discuss several pertinent topics regarding Michigan recruiting. During the conversation, Dudek shed light on U-M’s approach to virtual recruiting, an increase in the rapidity of the recruiting cycle as well as a few new changes to the current rules and regulations made by the NCAA.

Sam Webb: “Recruiting is the thing. It’s the everyday sports news these days, and how it works, how it’s functioning different during this pandemic is I think one of the more interesting things going on right now.”

Sam Webb: “Talking to Matt Dudek here at The Michigan Insider, Director of Recruiting for the University of Michigan. I’m sure many of you listeners out there are well versed now in the rules, so you know Matt can’t talk about specific recruits here in this current class, but we can get into strategy and process and how that has been obviously affected by the coronavirus pandemic. So let’s just start there, Matt. The pandemic hits, and normally the spring is one of the busiest times in recruiting, having kids on campus, you are able to make your presentations in person. So how have you guys accommodated for that? How have you switched things up? How is recruiting different in light of the pandemic?”

Matt Dudek: “You are learning more things. You are really trying to be more thoughtful in how you are presenting things. Everyone across the country, all schools in the spring, we had over 100 visitors scheduled to come when we were spring practicing, and that’s just the guys that were scheduled. There were probably going to be 100 more of various classes. That on campus touch, that is what every school is looking for, Michigan included, because that is where we feel like we flourish. Guys come and they get to interact with our coaches interact with our players and interact with our staff. See everything for their own eyes of what’s great, what Michigan has that is great to offer. That is why so many guys rave about our visits. When we build those relationships face to face and in person, so having that all taken away, and then now having the spring recruiting, so when you go on the road, your two visits in the spring, and that’s about getting evaluations done. That is about grabbing transcripts and that’s less about seeing and talking to the kids because you’re not allowed to do that in April and May, but you are allowed to talk to their teachers and talk to their coaches and talk to their principals and see them lift or see them spring practice or run track. So, eliminating that evaluation and along with all the camps that go on, the Rivals and the Adidas and the Nike and all of those camps where you’re getting verified heights, weights, speed, all those things are now not in play. Now today, the NCAA is going to come out today and extend our dead period into June and eliminate some June visits, so we will see what the NCAA has to say about that today. It will be interesting in that aspect, so you have to take Michigan to them in some way. I think early on with the guidance of Coach Harbaugh, we all got in the staff room literally as the doors were closing, everybody got in the staff room, social distances away from each other. We were ahead of the game on that, and really just talked through how are we going to present this, how are we going to give this to everybody for a time period where we don’t know how long this is going to last. With coach’s guidance on that, I think we did an excellent job of first, getting guys on the phone with coach daily, getting them on the phone with their position coach daily, adding other variables like the weight room and nutrition and academics and player development and getting the on the phone, but more than just the phone—FaceTime. Having that face-to-face contact because visits are a really different mode of communication. It’s not to say we wouldn’t be doing the text and the phone call and communicating and building relationships, that we wouldn’t be doing this if it was a normal time, but it would be different than how we were doing it. Now you’re FaceTiming, Din Brown is doing chalk talks from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. with guys and teaching them football, simple as that. There is no recruiting pitch necessarily. Hey, let’s learn about this today and he is teaching guys football, which, if he was on the road recruiting right now, literally today he wouldn’t be teaching guys football. They are seeing his style of coaching, so it’s been really good for us. I think it’s been really good for others as well, but it’s a whole different relationship, a whole different strategy that I think lends well to Michigan and Michigan’s staff.”

Sam Webb: “Yeah, I think you hit upon something very, very key with the FaceTime or the Zoom or however you schedule video conferences with the players. The number of those types of interactions and the length, the amount of time that coaches can spend with each guy seems to be at a higher level. It really feels, at least to me, feels like with guys not being able to be on campus, while that is detrimental to the recruiting process, the opportunity to spend more time with them on FaceTime would seem to me to be kind of beneficial. I hear more guys talking about how much time they’ve gotten with Coach Harbaugh, for instance, recently, and it feels like you have a lot of guys in the recruiting process getting an even better feel for it.”

Matt Dudek: “Yeah, no question. Coach is making multiple, multiple, multiple calls a day. And again, he would be making those calls during this time. We are allowed one call from April 15 to May 31, so it’s not like it wouldn’t happen, but they wouldn’t be scheduled out like the way they are because the kids would be in school and they would be at track practice and then they would be hanging out with their girlfriend and doing their homework and hanging out with their family. It allowed more time for both the recruit and for us, and really that FaceTime piece of it is, like you said, it is really changed the game in that aspect of it. Let’s go through a visit for example. When they come to campus, they are greeted by me and my staff as well as the coaching staff. We take them around the building for a building tour, a photo shoot, a meeting with Herb, a meeting with Trish and a meeting with academics and a campus tour to see the stadium. We sit down with your position coach, sit down with the head coach and all those things are roughly an hour each. You have to keep the day moving because at the end of the day, they leave. They have to go to the next school, they have to go home, whatever the case may be. So, in eight hour visits you get about an hour of everything. You are not doing that follow up call to get on a Zoom or a FaceTime and do more chalk talk with Don Brown. Has it happened? Sure, of course it’s happened. Would it happen twice a week, three times a week at 9 p.m.? Probably not. Again, Don is on the road at this time. I say Don, every one of our 11 coaches are doing exactly the same thing. It’s just he called me after his nine o’clock last night, and it’s fresh in my mind. Every single coach is working from sun up to sun down. It’s one of those deals that, I think that building and layering, that communication and that relationship, I would say it’s building a better Michigan communication and relationship.”

Sam Webb: “Obviously, you talk about them extending the dead period, likely going to be in to June. What, if anything, did the NCAA grant coaches? Were there any additional privileges or options or where there anything they gave you guys or allowed you guys to do to compensate what you can’t do with in person recruiting?”

Matt Dudek: “Initially, they were still sorting through, in my opinion they were still sorting through winter sports and spring sports and their eligibilities and their recruiting rules, and we were kind of operating in a normal, you know the rules, operate under the rules. Then they came out with some Q and As. They typically do that every week. This past week was really the biggest bunch of temporary waivers, as they are calling them. So now, you are allowed to have multiple recruits on calls, and this all started on Monday, literally on Monday. So, you are allowed multiple recruits on the same call. You are allowed student athletes to be on those calls with you as well as long as it counts towards their eight hours of mandatory workouts or meetings, things like that. So, they extended that. They allowed, always people are allowed to call me as a staff member, and I say me, but it could be anyone from Jon Falk to Ben Herbert, anyone who isn’t one of the 11 coaches. They are allowed to call me, and I am allowed to answer. I used to be allowed before the first Q and A, to be on the call with coach Harbaugh. So, it would be me, a recruit and Coach Harbaugh. They have eliminated that, but the one call we get from April 15 to May 31, I’m allowed to be on that call now. It is initiated by us. Just yesterday, they made basically unlimited calls, so I guess what I said just now is I’m allowed to be on every call again with multiple coaches, multiple recruits. I say I but I mean Ben Herbert, various staff members. They have given us unlimited calls yesterday and a couple of other things that were mentioned. For the most part, that is really all that there is. There is not much more they could give us that would help or help the recruit’s process or help our process.”

Sam Webb: “Man, I told you this is one of the most interesting things going on in sports right now, a lot of interesting questions from fans. One of the questions out there, Matt, this seems to be the face, but it feels like recruiting has sped up in this cycle. 247Sports reported that 627 players in the 2021 class had committed by a week ago today, so by May 6. That’s more than twice the number of 2020 prospects who had committed by that date last year. So the recruiting has really, really sped up by the numbers. Is that more school-driven? Let’s just talk about for you. I don’t want you to speak for other schools. Are you guys pushing for a decision sooner or are kids wanting to make a decision sooner?”

Matt Dudek: “I think the kids are wanting to make decisions sooner. I am not sure that we are pushing anyone. I think that it’s a conversation of I think guys are wanting to make that decision sooner. I think its two-fold. First, I think you have never had so much access to these schools and these coaches like we talked about and never had so much information being pushed to you. Again, basically 24/7 we can provide them information. They can call and ask questions. We can communicate and all those things. So, I think that’s one. Two, it’s the same reason why there is not toilet paper on the shelves. It is ‘I don’t want to miss my opportunity to go to the school that I want. I think I like school X the best right now. I want to go there.’ I don’t want to say hold my spot because I don’t want to make it sound like guys are going to be decommitting and those things, but it could be a situation where guys are like that’s a school I Want, I don’t know when I will be able to visit there. I need to get in the fold.”

Note: This is part one of a three-part series that takes a look into the day-to-day process of Michigan football recruiting through the eyes of Matt Dudek. What intrigues you the most about the current recruiting cycle? Let us know!