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Western Michigan is out-recruiting USC and Arkansas?

Their Rivals 2014 football recruiting ranking is at 29th in the country! There are still eight more months of recruiting!

By Matt Sussman
It's early, but PJ Fleck is rowing the boat into recruiting's top 30. Did we mention it's early?
It's early, but PJ Fleck is rowing the boat into recruiting's top 30. Did we mention it's early?
Bob Donnan-US PRESSWIRE

I've long preached not understanding recruiting rankings, which gives me no room to complain, laud, analyze them or even embed this following tweet:

But it's quite adorable. They're excited about their spring chicken coach P.J. Fleck and his polar bear behavior, and so far they've secured nine verbal commitments, including a four-star quarterback. According to the Rivals ranking, this puts them at 29th in the country ahead of big shots such as Wisconsin, USC, the other USC and Arkansas. They're ahead of four SEC teams, four Big Ten teams and the entire Pac-12.

I really hope that WMU is just having fun with these silly rankings and not building any expectation that WMU is going to transform into a powerhouse overnight. Having verbal commitments this early in the game is a good thing, and this is a program trying to get over the Bill Cubit era that just seemed to recruit in Florida more than in Michigan. But it's probably more likely that, as is the case with any program, with a new coach there is new excitement, and you'll look for promising patterns in whatever tea leaves you have at your disposal.

Or maybe Western Michigan is the new Michigan based on this recruiting; perhaps we should be discussing the proper traits of a Western Michigan Man. They can develop a rivalry with Western Ohio, which I guess is Miami. And they can suffer crippling losses to the SEC on behalf of the entire northern United States. (The western part.)

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