This is a great article on Coach Flecks recruiting ability..
Western Michigan head coach P.J. Fleck continues to impress on the recruiting trail
Mike Rogers
BroncoBlitz.com Publisher
Talk about it in The Zoo
Western Michigan head coach P.J. Fleck has made it a habit of surprising people.
He surprised people on the football field where he maximized his talents leading to a wonderful collegiate career as a wide receiver and, eventually, an NFL career.
He surprised people on the sidelines, improving from a single win in his rookie season as a head coach to eight and a bowl game last year.
He surprised people on the recruiting trail, where his 2014 class was the best in the Mid-American Conference history, nabbing numerous prospects away from power conference schools. He followed it up with the top recruiting class in the MAC in 2015.
He's doing it again in 2016.
The last four days saw two new prospects pledge to the Broncos. The latest is a hulking 6-foot-3, 275-pounder, Spencer Williams. Williams is currently the fifth best player in the state of Iowa and he chose WMU over offers from Colorado St., Florida Atlantic -- who sent him over a dozen handwritten letters over his spring break -- and Western Illinois.
A few days before he committed, Western received a shocking verbal commitment from Tristian Pipp, who pledged to Fleck over two Big Ten offers in Iowa and Wisconsin. In fact, Pipp had stated publicly that Wisconsin was the front runner, after he earned an offer in February and took two visits to Madison, Wis.
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Sometimes it only takes one trip and one meeting with Fleck to be reeled in.
"I've been told that when you feel a college is right for you, you know," Pipp said. "After being there today, I really felt it."
Much of that is owed to Fleck, whose youthful exuberance has drummed up millions in donations from WMU alumni, as well as drumming up publicity and notoriety on the recruiting trail.
Western Michigan currently has a dozen verbal commits for the class of 2016. Four of them -- Matt Little, Stefan Claiborne, Kalebb Perry and Tristian Pipp -- are rated as three-star prospects. WMU has as many three-star commitments as any other MAC school has total commitments thus far -- Miami (Oh) and Toledo have each received four verbal commitments.
The dozen prospects verbally committed is currently tied for third-most with Florida State, trailing only Kentucky (15) and Miami (Fl) (19).
Perhaps the most impressive fact about WMU's recruiting ranking is that their class is rated No. 29 in the country by Rivals despite half of the 12 commits being unranked. When re-rankings occur around May, it is not hard to see the Broncos sitting in the top-15 in the nation as we roll into summer.
That is the rub, though. We are just edging our way to summer and most will just ask to check back on Signing Day next year, presuming that WMU will see defections to bigger schools. However, not a single verbal commit in the 2015 class backed out on WMU -- Western Michigan and Junior McMullen mutually decided to part ways -- and as Signing Day 2015 approached, none of their commits ever wavered.
In 2014, WMU pulled off major coups landing Javonte Seabury who had offers from Miami (Fl) and Florida State; Chukwuma Okorafor who had offers from Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Nebraska, Ohio St., Oklahoma, Virginia, among others; and Chance Stewart who was once a Wisconsin commit before reevaluating after a coaching change.
Fleck has shown the ability to flip kids while holding on to his own high-end talents, erasing the doubts many have of a MAC school being able to fend off Power 5 teams. With the quality of the 2016 class thus far, WMU will have to again prove doubters wrong as Big Ten teams will assuredly be knocking down the door to the homes of Matt Little, Stefan Claiborne, Tristian Pipp, Kalebb Perry, et al. But, like the recruits before them, they're just as likely to politely listen to the offers while continuing to Row The Boat, because Western Michigan's just about as desirable these days as a Power 5 school.
When asked about how his WMU visit compared with others he's been on, WMU target Jeffery Pooler told me it was "better than Kentucky and Toledo." Pooler, who just recently de-committed from the Rockets was not shy in praising the facilities or coach Fleck, a sentiment that flows from all recruits who take visits to Kalamazoo.
It is those sentiments, and Fleck's candidness, that form an air-tight bond with the players he recruits and, in turn, making them want to honor their verbal pledge. We need to only look at the last two recruiting classes to remind ourselves of P.J. Fleck's recruiting prowess, to realize it's a pattern and not a phase.
We shouldn't be surprised this time.
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