Iowa Spins Fake News

Yesterday morning our good friends over at Black Heart Gold Pants decided to fill their diaper over recruiting, and there was some great stuff in it. As one could expect, when you have a coaching staff that recruits with the vim and vigor of a multimillionaire sexagenarian who has a nearly ironclad contract you have to go attack others to make up for your very obvious shortcomings. It’s almost expected at this point, because they should probably be terrified after their incredible 17-10 dismantling of last year’s very strong Gopher squad in Iowa City probably doesn’t bode well for the future prospects of retaining Floyd.

But while they were throwing their toys out of the crib, there was one little nugget in there that stood out among the rest:

Through two recruiting cycles with the Gophers, Fleck has seen nearly 40% of his commitments de-commit ahead of signing day.

40%? Wow. That’s a lot. It’s also fake news.

Since he was hired by Minnesota, P.J. Fleck has had two classes. The first one was mostly his, with 21 of the 25 recruits signing on after he arrived here, and he had one decommit among players he had recruited. Last year there were 8 “decommitments” in addition to another full class of 25 recruits, but Nolan Edmonds got back into the boat and Ahmad McCullough reclassified to 2018 (And yes, he eventually should be included. But not for this exercise) and were in those “8” that is actually 6. So in the two classes he’s signed so far, Fleck has had 7 decommitments and 46 commitments. 53 total. That’s...13.2%. A bit away from 40, isn’t it?

But what about the strong, ethical Iowa Hawkeyes? How have they done?

In 2017 Iowa had 5 decommitments from a class of 22 signings, and in 2018 they had 3 leave the nest from a class of 23 commitments. 8 from 53. That’s...impossible. How could the morally proper Iowa Hawkeyes lose 15.1% of their commitments while the scurrilous snake oil salesmen only lost 13.2?

At least Iowa has one other little victory over P.J. Fleck and Minnesota they can hang their hat on. They need to collect as many of them as they can before it’s too late.