This one actually came across yesterday and I decided against posting it because I'm always a bit wary of making the blog too recruiting-centric by focusing on every change of the mind of seventeen year old kids, but I did want to make one point here. Apparently Dee Hart is now backing off 'Bama and looking to sign with Florida if things fall through with Michigan and Rich Rodriguez. According to the Orlando Sentinel:
Dee [Hart] said Monday through several text messages back-and-forth that he will decommit Michigan if Rodriguez is fired and will then pledge to the Florida Gators; and NOT Alabama.
But first things first. Dee Hart wants to play in the spread offense. He wants to play at Michigan under the coaching staff that recruited him.
The back story here is that Hart apparently wanted to enroll early in January but was informed by our coaching staff that we did not have a spot for him then, hence his cooling on the Tide. Only one problem with that, though: players who enroll early can choose to either back-count to the previous recruiting class if there is space available or they can choose to count forward to the following year's recruiting class. In other words, the whole "did not have a spot for him in January" bit does not hold water. If we have room for him in the 2011 recruiting class, we have room for him to enroll early because he can enroll early and count forward.
Since that is obviously pretext, I figure the more likely scenario is that the 'Bama coaching staff is simply not as high on Hart as are most of the national recruiting websites. We are still recruiting him and I imagine that we would take his commitment in due time, but having said that I tend to think that we have both Isiah Crowell and Jeremy Hill higher on our board and that we may be slow-playing Hart a bit to avoid hurting our chances with those two.