Note to college coaching staffs: recruiting props are great, but they can backfire pretty quickly if you include embarrassing errors right in front of everyone on social media.
While there’s little question that grammatical errors are rife across all college football recruiting staffs, they appear to be most pronounced within the Big Ten. The conference’s two most prominent rivals, Michigan and Ohio State, even botched photoshopped magazine covers for the same player just one week apart.
The player in question is Mike Weber, the star of a powerful Cass Tech squad in Detroit and one of the top running back recruits in the Class of 2015. First, the Wolverines sent Weber a mocked-up ESPN The Magazine cover with his likeness in Michigan gear on the cover. He liked it, but there was a pretty glaring error right in the top right deck: It celebrated Weber’s “All Amercian” season. As noted by ESPN, were Weber to follow through on that promise, he would become the first All Amercian running back of all-time.
Incredibly, Ohio State couldn’t do any better to capitalize on the snafu. The Buckeyes sent a copy of Sports Illustrated with Weber mugging on the front. The banner title? “Ready to Deilver Titles to the Bucks”. We have no idea how one deilvers anything, let alone national championships.
Keep in mind: These are grown men, all of whom were educated themselves, representing academic institutions. And they can’t spell “American” or “deliver”?
Perhaps the most incredible part of this rash of editorial snafus is that none of them are coming from Rich Rodriguez, who has been using wild Photoshop edits in his recruiting pitches for years now. Or perhaps his mistakes have simply been less public. Consider that a challenge: If you’ve seen a bad Arizona recruiting photoshop job, we want to see it.