Remember the good old days, when football was football, families lacked the financial means to send their kid a thousand miles away for college, and college football recruits generally had like two or three viable options? Remember how Woody Hayes could recruit by just being Woody Hayes and then a white high school football player would eagerly promise to go to Ohio State just so he could be with his black teammate and we all learned a valuable lesson about tolerance?
Well unfortunately I must report to you that the above clip is from "Remember the Titans" and did not actually happen. Also: Kids These Days do not care about your tradition, or your fight song, or how dad used to sit you down in front of the TV and regale you with stories about what Ohio Stadium used to look like before they went and ruined it with useless modern contrivances like "proper lighting."
Nope, what your average high school football recruit wants in 2015 is a solid relationship with their potential coach, potential playing time, possibly a little cash on the side, thousands of texts at all hours of the day, and an endless avalanche of overly rendered recruiting materials that won't stop coming until you file a restraining order against the athletic department.
The problem is that high school recruits are usually 16-18 years old, whereas the people making and distributing these materials are usually in the 40-85 year old range. There is nothing more awkward on this earth than an adult trying to act cool around a kid, but luckily for Michigan, Jim Harbaugh brings his own personal brand of psychotic panache to the scene that people find distressingly authentic. Still, as this review of Michigan promotional materials will show, he's got his work cut out for him if he wants to convince high schoolers to be a Wolverine.
Exhibit A:
This is a classic case of completely misunderstanding your target audience. You know that scene in This Is Spinal Tap where they're at the Air Force banquet and start playing "Sex Farm?" This is the Michigan football equivalent of that.
First of all, tons of schools have it better than Michigan. Especially their chief rival, which just won a national championship and is returning a team full of elite talent to make a run at a repeat. I feel like that's pretty okay.
But more importantly, recruits don't care about any of that any more than any other normal, non-boring human being. Here's a better approach to woo young men looking to play football:
See? Your bona fides pale in comparison to an NFL coach, hot babes, and the potential of a weird Amish guy/popular NFL quarterback hanging around the program. I understand that this is a dramatic mental leap for most Michigan fans to make, since it doesn't involve bragging about Doing Things The Right Way or a long winded lecture about how poorly behaved Ohio State fans are in comparison to the paragons of virtue that make up the Michigan fanbase, but it might be occasionally worth it to not be the embodiment of a llama wool ascot slung over the shoulder of some spoiled douchebag on his dad's yacht.
Exhibit B:
I actually kind of like this one a lot, and for being a bro we here at 11W like Jay Harbaugh in general (whose Twitter account I got this from). But I'm a professional, dammit! And if Michigan is violating any potential copyright laws, I need to let the world know about it.
That's why yesterday I called up Dreamworks Animation, the company which currently owns the rights to Where's Waldo to see exactly how much trouble Michigan could get in for their half-hearted stab at going viral via the nostalgia ravine our culture is currently trapped at the bottom of. Here's that approximate conversation:
“Hello, Dreamworks Animation”
Hi, my name’s Johnny Ginter, and I’m calling to ask about copyrights, specifically about Where’s Waldo.
“And what organization are you with?”
Eleven Warriors, it’s a sports website. I’m just curious about and how alterations to owned properties are handled.
“So who exactly were you trying to reach?”
Well, essentially I was just trying to see how you guys handled it when a sports organization or a coach or a fan group and so on took an existing property that you owned and made alterations for promotional purposes. Like Where’s Waldo or something similar.
“I know that they have to get licensing to use the characters, and if they didn’t, there’d have to be a formal complaint and then we’d submit it to the legal department. But you never know, they might’ve gotten licensing! Do you wish to file a formal complaint?”
I mean, yeah I did, I wanted to complain that Michigan is terrible and I can't believe that I have to write an instructional article to help them not look like your weird creepy uncle that smells like tuna and failure all of the time, but I held back. Also, what if Jay really did get licensing? Dammit! He's always one step ahead!
Exhibit C:
Michigan players pooping on a post-apocalyptic Chicago. A dad pooping while presumably playing a good ol' fashioned game of "give me the football, you don't know how to throw it right." Players dying horrifically while being electrocuted.
My advice is to not show any of those things. Specifically anything related to pooping, unless it's some kind of meta statement that's slamming Joe Paterno. In that case, definitely show pooping.
Exhibit D:
The worst of the worst:
Again, nothing really anyone not currently or formerly enrolled at Michigan cares about.
You know what? I thought about it, and this one I leave to you. We here at 11W are helpful and kind, even to our most hated rivals, and so I think it might be a good exercise to see exactly what images you guys think would be more appropriate/exciting to attract high school recruits to the University of Michigan. Here's a template, have at it in the comments:
And there you go. Jim Harbaugh is a deeply weird man with a childlike exuberance (kind of like a pasty Brian Fellows), and while that will serve him well in attracting recruits, he's got a lot of ground to make up if Michigan wants to revamp itself after years of damaging their brand with crappy football and some seriously weak marketing. While generally equally bad and befuddling from a design standpoint, U of M would do well to look at what Urban Meyer has done at Ohio State to convince teenagers that he's relatable fun guy and not a taciturn man in his fifties with zero patience for childlike BS.
It's not easy, but even a school with a reputation of snobbery and sucking like Michigan can appeal to kids born after the Clinton administration. All that's required is a willingness to divorce themselves from a lengthy past that increasingly few care about.
Or maybe you guys could talk about the helmets some more. That might do the trick.
