EDIT:  For the TL;DR crowd:  An OSU grad who is currently a prof at Michigan was the academic key in recruiting Rashan Gary.

Now that recruiting for the 2016 class is largely over, I thought I'd share a tidbit on how OSU indirectly helped Michigan land their prize recruit, Rashan Gary. Many of you have wondered what it was that so impressed his mother Jennifer Coney about Michigan. It has been said that it was academics, which is partially true. It is also academic support. On the support side, I would give a lot of credit to Greg Harden, a behind the scenes guy who supports the athletes, and has inspired and helped Tom Brady, Desmond Howard, Michael Phelps, Warde Manuel, and Nik Stauskas, among others.

On the academic side, the key individual was Professor Tyran Steward, a graduate of Ohio State. Here is a bit of bio:  "Tyran Steward is a lecturer in the Department of History at the University of Michigan and a recent recipient of the National Center for Institutional Diversity Diversity Scholar citation. He is historian of African-American and modern U.S. history, with a particular interest in American political and social history. He completed his PhD at Ohio State University under the generous support of several prestigious fellowships and grants, including the Presidential Fellowship. His first book, tentatively titled “The Benching of Willis Ward: The Making of a Black Conservative in the Jim Crow North,” is a study of black conservatism and race relations through the lens of sport."

On their official visit, Jennifer Coney had this to say:  "I met Tyran Steward. He’s a history professor,” Coney said. “He was just telling me about his classes. “I can talk to this guy for hours. The day we left, Sunday morning, we went and had breakfast together and we just talked about everything. Not so much about Rashan, but just about life. Going through questions that I had, picking his brain… I was really impressed by him. I said if Rashan goes to Michigan, Rashan will be definitely taking one of his writing courses."

The fact that Steward got his doctorate from OSU speaks well of your school. And of course, Michigan fans are glad that he is now teaching at Michigan, and that he was instrumental in bringing Gary to the Maize and Blue.

EDIT:  What brought Professor Steward to mind was that he was one of the presenters in Michigan's "Signing of the Stars" event yesterday afternoon.