Three-point stance: Bad timing, sleepovers, Georgia's strong finish

Today’s edition focuses on Michigan dropping a recruit, Jim Harbaugh's sleepovers and a team that should finish strong in recruiting.

When it came out that Michigan had dropped long-time offensive line commitment Erik Swenson just a few weeks before Signing Day, I was ready to use this as an example of how players shouldn’t commit early and schools shouldn’t be pushing for early commitments. I was also ready to throw out a suggestion that the NCAA could allow written offers earlier (something I have pushed for) and allow prospects to sign financial aid tenders locking the school in the moment that written offer arrived in the mail. But none of that would work for this situation.

I can, of course, blame Jim Harbaugh for waiting so long to drop Swenson and I do. It’s a crummy thing to do and he has done this before when he was at Stanford. But back at Stanford, he was allowed to use the excuse that prospects didn’t meet strict academic requirements and Stanford has always let prospects know much later than most if they have been accepted. At Michigan, if he knew the kid wasn’t up to snuff and they wanted to go on other prospects, he should have let the player and family know back in December.

And who knows, maybe he did. The only side of the story we have is from the player himself. But Swenson was an early commitment to his dream school, Michigan, under Brady Hoke and it was Hoke and his staff that likely pushed for an early commitment and there was no reason for Swenson to wait once he got his dream offer. So throw that “don’t commit early” and “don’t push for early commitments” out the window in this situation because none of that had to do with Harbaugh.

And the financial aid idea I have is great, it really is, but in this case should a new coach be on the hook for a kid the old staff wanted? What if it’s a player at a position that the new staff doesn’t use like a pro-style quarterback inherited by a coach who doesn't run a pro-style offense (Ryan Mallett)?

So in this case, what the heck is the solution? I have no problem with a coach dropping a kid he doesn’t think is good enough because kids flip on coaches all the time. We see this daily down the stretch.

So in this case, the timing is what stinks. Luckily, Swenson is good enough to find a good new home where he will be wanted. It’s a cutthroat world and there have been many coaches who have dropped kids late. It happens. Let’s just try to do it with enough time for the player to find a new home without having to scramble.

ESPN's Danny Kanell had a very good career at Florida State and was highly-recruited coming out of high school. He was recruited during a different era of college football, though, where the media didn’t cover every single visit, phone call and aspect of a top recruit’s process. But when he said he was weirded out by the fact that Harbaugh was doing sleepovers with recruits like Connor Murphy, I agree with him completely.

Yes, I understand that Harbaugh coached Murphy’s brother Trent at Stanford and has a previous relationship with the family, but it’s still weird. And when he offered the same thing to Penn State kicker commitment Quinn Nordin, it became clear that this is going to be a tactic he uses moving forward. And it’s weird.

Any edge a coach can come up with in recruiting will be utilized if it’s legal or they can get away with it, that much we know. But there has to be a line. Offering to sleep on the floor in a kid’s room is just over the top. It’s odd, and to me it’s downright creepy.

Harbaugh is an eccentric guy, everyone knows that, but this is uncomfortable. Do parents really want a grown man sleeping on their son’s bedroom floor, essentially a stranger? Do kids, who are exhausted by the process, really want to have to figure out that awkward moment when you stop talking and start sleeping when a stranger is chewing your ear off? And will we be seeing Nick Saban or Urban Meyer in footy pajamas soon doing the same thing?

The NCAA is busy, I understand that, but they need to step in and stop this practice immediately.

I remember a big-time recruit, I’m talking a current NFL star and top 50 high school player in the country, who was being recruited so hard by a head coach that the coach wouldn’t leave the house on his in-home visit. The recruit, who ended up signing with another school, finally got fed up and went upstairs to sleep while the head coach continued to make a nuisance of himself to his parents in his own home. He told me way back then that he felt like a captive in his own home.

Coaches are iconic figures and in some cases, like with Harbaugh, nearly legendary, so kids have a hard time saying no and parents can be the same way. I’ve seen the recruiting line many times and I know when it has been jumped. This is an example.

Georgia is in the best shape to make a major move between now and National Signing Day.

With only 15 commitments, the Bulldogs have the highest average-star-ranking of any team in the country and have the most room of any program in the top 30 to add pure points with each new commitment based on our 20-player cap per team.

With big-timers like Derrick Brown, Mecole Hardman, Lyndell Wilson, Brian Burns, Michail Carter and others all considering the Dawgs, anything less than a top five finish would be disappointing.