• Follow us on Twitter @buckeyeplanet and @bp_recruiting, like us on Facebook! Enjoy a post or article, recommend it to others! BP is only as strong as its community, and we only promote by word of mouth, so share away!
  • Consider registering! Fewer and higher quality ads, no emails you don't want, access to all the forums, download game torrents, private messages, polls, Sportsbook, etc. Even if you just want to lurk, there are a lot of good reasons to register!

DaJuan Morgan

Jump to latest Follow Reply
Sort by date Sort by votes
I'm not quite as down on this one as many of you seem to be. First, I don't think that being in the top 50% of your class is an unreasonable requirement, and this guy simply did not make that academic admissions requirement. Furthermore, I think its likely that when a HS has a B+ as its average grade, that indicates that the grades there are inflated as much as it indicates that everyone there is a good student. If the coaches did something "wrong" here, it was to not do a better job of anticipating his failure to meet that requirement. Since he did not make academic admissions requirements, they offered him a gray-shirt; that's not the worst thing in the world. I don't buy the insinuations that the coaches "pulled" his offer because they were trying to make room for better players. Even if you think that they're cynical enough to do that, that would be stupid, and I don't think they're stupid. They've also taken several people in the past few years who weren't necessarily the most highly sought-after recruits in the land, but who were excellent students and who had potential.
 
Last edited:
Upvote 0
JohnnyCockfight said:
Doesn't Conley do chats from time to time on Bucknuts? Would someone who is a premium member at Bucknuts please ask Conley about this situation the next time he hosts one?
Click to expand...
I can totally see Conley being vague on the issue because I bet it falls directly at his feet.

When I read that DuJuan's ship was still good despite the car crash, I was so proud. When I read that he didn't qualify at OSU because of not being in top 50 percent of his class, I was like, oh well those things happen and best of luck somewhere else because we are trying to get better students in here. Then I read that he was at a college-prep HS and his GPA was 3.25 and I became completely disgusted. Sadly I don't think we will ever find out exactly what happened for a very long time. I will follow DuJuan's Wolfpack career with great interest and hopefully he has a stellar career.
 
Upvote 0
zincfinger said:
If they did something "wrong", it was to not do a better job of anticipating his failure to meet that requirement. Since he did not make academic admissions requirements, they offered him a gray-shirt; that's not the worst thing in the world...they've also taken several people in the past few years who weren't necessarily the most highly sought-after recruits in the land, but who were excellent students and who had potential.
Click to expand...
Uh, then why wait so late in the game to let him in on the academic issues? The problem here is a disparity in power that late in the game. A recruit who has committed to the Buckeyes can certainly screw us over on signing day and sign with someone else without giving us a heads-up (read: Stanley McClover). But we are a big enough football program such that we are not significantly damaged when this happens. We can, and in fact do, go and get great last-minute recruits when this happens. (Look at who we signed at the last second in last year's signing class and look at his academics and try to justify dropping Morgan based on academic reasons).

On the other hand, when the Buckeyes "change" or "pull" their scholarship offer, and that player had stopped evaluating and visiting schools for a significant period of time, he is in a much worse position, and will have to go with the best available opportunity at the last minute. Luckily for Morgan, there was a great academic school out there in a great football conference.

We were hot on the trails of Davis, Jarrett, and Lyons last year, and I don't think it was OSU's expectation that we only land one of those guys. We were also 50-50 with a couple defensive studs, if I remember correctly, that we did not land on signing day. The point remains that none of us have all the information, and cannot make a complete, informed opinion. That being said, we do know enough to see that the Morgan situation is "different" than the situation in which other players were dropped. And for a guy like that to admit that he broke down in tears in astonishment--well, I just don't get the feeling that he's lying about that. But I could be wrong.
 
Upvote 0
I'm not quite as down on this one as many of you seem to be. First, I don't think that being in the top 50% of your class is an unreasonable requirement, and this guy simply did not make that academic admissions requirement. Furthermore, I think its likely that when a HS has a B+ as its average grade, that indicates that the grades there are inflated as much as it indicates that everyone there is a good student. If the coaches did something "wrong" here, it was to not do a better job of anticipating his failure to meet that requirement. Since he did not make academic admissions requirements, they offered him a gray-shirt; that's not the worst thing in the world. I don't buy the insinuations that the coaches "pulled" his offer because they were trying to make room for better players. Even if you think that they're cynical enough to do that, that would be stupid, and I don't think they're stupid. They've also taken several people in the past few years who weren't necessarily the most highly sought-after recruits in the land, but who were excellent students and who had potential.
Click to expand...
top 50 in a regular school and top 50 in a magnet school are 2 different things.

im guessing people between the 50-75 percentile at the magnet school would easily be top 50 in a regular school.
 
Upvote 0
JohnnyCockfight said:
Uh, then why wait so late in the game to let him in on the academic issues? The problem here is a disparity in power that late in the game. A recruit who has committed to the Buckeyes can certainly screw us over on signing day and sign with someone else without giving us a heads-up (read: Stanley McClover). But we are a big enough football program such that we are not significantly damaged when this happens. We can, and in fact do, go and get great last-minute recruits when this happens. (Look at who we signed at the last second in last year's signing class and look at his academics and try to justify dropping Morgan based on academic reasons).

On the other hand, when the Buckeyes "change" or "pull" their scholarship offer, and that player had stopped evaluating and visiting schools for a significant period of time, he is in a much worse position, and will have to go with the best available opportunity at the last minute. Luckily for Morgan, there was a great academic school out there in a great football conference.

We were hot on the trails of Davis, Jarrett, and Lyons last year, and I don't think it was OSU's expectation that we only land one of those guys. We were also 50-50 with a couple defensive studs, if I remember correctly, that we did not land on signing day. The point remains that none of us have all the information, and cannot make a complete, informed opinion. That being said, we do know enough to see that the Morgan situation is "different" than the situation in which other players were dropped. And for a guy like that to admit that he broke down in tears in astonishment--well, I just don't get the feeling that he's lying about that. But I could be wrong.
Click to expand...
Nothing that you said, other than your insinuation that Morgan was dropped so that they could get both Davis and Jarrett, was really an argument against what I was saying. I don't dispute that the University has "more power" in a sense than the student does, nor do I doubt that Morgan shed tears when he learned of what had happened. But that's totally beside the point.

Why do you think that the fact the coaches told Morgan about this relatively "late in the game" disproves my suggestion that the coaches' error was a failure to anticipate Morgan's falling short of admissions requirements? If they had been able to tell him about it early in the game, then that would mean that they didn't fail to anticipate it. What you're suggesting is that the coaches' approach is something like this: "OK, we've got this kid from Florida committed, but he had an injury, and that diminishes his stock, plus there are a couple other guys out there that we like better. So..let's fabricate some bogus excuse to renege on his scholarship and grab those other players that we like better." If that is so, then Jim Tressel is a despicable person, an exceptionally talented liar (as more than one parent has been quoted as describing Tressel as the most honest coach they dealt with), and also, as I suggested in the previous post, not very bright and totally lacking in foresight. I agree that it is highly possible, maybe even likely, that there is some relevant information here that no one outside the situation is aware of, although it's not so clear to me how any of us is able to know that this situation is "different" (and I'd need to know some of the situations that you're comparing it to in order to know exactly what that means), and I'm fairly skeptical about some of the more conspiratorial suggestions floating around.
 
Upvote 0
How anyone can continue to keep their head in the sand on the DeJuan Morgan issue is beyond me. Helpinghand has explained the whole situation several times and stated that it had little to do with grades. If you don't believe him, I can assure you that Conley's take wasn't vague at all as to what the reasoning was behind the decision. He never even mentioned grades but rather talked about concerns over the class filling before signing day decisions were made.

You can spin it and spin it and spin it but the bottom line is Tressel pulled the kid's scholarship because he thought that there were better players available. He then didn't have the sack to tell the kid to his face, probably because deep down he knew it he wasn't in the right. Does this make him a bad football coach, no. Does it destroy the Ethical Shrine that some people have placed him on, of course. Deal with it and quit with the conspiracy theories.
 
Upvote 0
Buckem said:
Deal with it and quit with the conspiracy theories.
Click to expand...
What conspiracy theory are you referring to? Of the two "theories" out there, what I suggested is the less conspiratorial. If you feel that you know the answers here, and that I've simply got my head in the sand due to an Ethical Shrine that I place Jim Tressel on, so be it. That's not really something that I'll feel a need to deal with.

As far as the grades thing the BN27 mentioned, I think that top 50% is a reasonable admissions requirement precisely because not every school grades the same way. A B+ at one school does not equal a B+ at every other school, and when B+ is the average at any given school, I think grade inflation is as likely a contributor as overall excellence of the student body, "magnet" or no.
 
Upvote 0
Yeah Yeah--

Whatever.

He's there now, He's not here.

Seems like a nice enough kid.

Now let's go beat the piss out of him and his little friends.
 
Upvote 0
Looks to me that Morgan fell into the "marginal" group of potential signees at crunch time. It's tough to be told "we don't want you", especially when one's hopes are high and there was an oral commitment.

In the context of time, I wonder what were all the choices then faced by JT and staff as the signing day approached? Who was chosen over Morgan? Was it a choice of a position player more needed? Or a player with a better grade profile who had equal football potential?

I'm guessing awkward recruiting situations like this occur more than we know...at all the schools...as they jockey for position on signing day. Most leave bad taste...an unfortunate byproduct of the whole recruiting process. The opposite side of the coin is when a sought after recruit disses the Bucks on signing day.

I wish Morgan a good football career. It's amazing how many current NCSt players have some previous association with the Bucks...almost all are negative experiences for the player.
 
Upvote 0
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top