Through various on-line rumor mills, it has become evident that Ricardo Miller has expressed a desire to take some visits. This update, pried by Scout and Rivals posters from Miller's facebook page, is accompanied by scuttlebutt that he has no desire to go elsewhere, and that his primary motivation in taking these visits is to gain access to the recruits at other schools in order to recruit for Michigan.Frankly, this statement doesn't pass the smell-test. Schools spend money, and, more valuable, time, on recruits who visit. Inordinate hours are spent wrangling to be among the five schools that get chosen to visit, and nearly an entire weekend is spend once the recruit arrives on campus. Recently, Michigan cancelled the official visit of Florida recruit Jayron Hosley because he had publicly stated that he would certainly be attending USF. Rather than waste time and money, Michigan declined to host him, despite Hosley playing a position of extreme need.
Why would a school like LSU or Oregon (the two schools Miller mentions) waste their time and money on a recruit who swears up and down that he won't attend their school? Why would they host a player who's stated intention is to steal the other kids they are spending so much time attracting? If Miller attends visits at these schools, you can bet that Miller has pitched them a story different from that the one he's provided to Michigan fans. If the schools are willing to spend the time and money, and willing to place him around their fellow recruits, you can be sure that Miller has convinced them that he is at least taking the visit seriously - not as a clandestine operation for University of Michigan.
This begs the question: why? Even the seamy underbelly of college athletics known as recruiting has it's own seamy underbelly - and that is the adulation and border-line stalking that a recruit undergoes. We're not speaking even of the recruiting services like Scout or Rivals who make the decisions of these kids a viable business. Ricardo Miller, specifically, has granted hundreds of Facebook requests to complete strangers - strangers who's interest in him is limited strictly in his football ability and his stated desire to play at Michigan. Message boards have been littered with threads extolling the greatness of Miller - ranging from fantasizing about what jersey number he'll wear to ascribing things like "character" and "class" to a kid based purely on a purported love for Michigan. In the case of Tate Forcier, this fascination and idolization has sometimes sunk to the point that (adult?) posters will speculate and comment on the sexual conquests of an 18-year-old.
The level of scrutiny through which the disturbingly obsessed subject these teenagers to is vast. Recently, message board posters have cut-and-pasted passages from Tate Forcier's (possible?) Myspace page (most of these have been deleted by responsible moderators) for the purpose of being dissected by fellow amateur psychologists. Forcier's personal website, in addition to being a lightning-rod for controversy (how arrogant can he be?), is, like Miller's Facebook page, a conduit through which the obsessed can gain access to these players.
So, if you're Ricardo Miller or Tate Forcier - teenage kids - who have naively given a legion of obsessed strangers access to you (no matter how remote - it is just Facebook), based purely on their obsession with all things Michigan football, how do you break to this motley crew that you might want to take some visits without generating a ground-swell of hatred? The same people who define "class" as "liking Michigan" are the same people who will begin to assign negative character attributes to someone who chooses to go elsewhere. Such is how such bizarre explanations as Miller's are created.
In the end, the problem, clearly, isn't with Miller, and we aren't claiming that he won't, in the end, attend Michigan. We doubt that any seventeen-year-old would deal with a similar situation in any smoother a fashion. He's a kid that received a groundswell of adulation based on announcing his allegiance to a University, and he's clearly worried about disappointing all the people that he has attracted as a result. It has become cliche to say that we, as adults, shouldn't obsess to this degree over the whims of a teenager, but this is merely further proof. If you don't know Miller, don't e-mail him. Don't talk to him on Facebook. Don't sing his praises merely because of his association with Michigan and don't attack him should he visit, or attend elsewhere.
