Losing Austin White The Least of The Wolverine's Worries

Of all of the rumors flying around Ann Arbor, one of them finally came down the wire today. Freshman Austin White will transfer from the University of Michigan.

Although the trend of transfers is disheartening, it isn’t necessarily a bad thing for Rich Rodriguez and the Wolverines.

The first initial reaction to hearing players bail on a school is that something is wrong with the program. Either the coach doesn’t have a strong enough personality in the locker room or his players don’t respect him.  Did the player see that the RichRod regime is a sinking ship and got out without wasting a year of eligibility?

Or?

Did he see that there is a boatload of talent in front of him and he didn’t want to work his way into the starting rotation?

With White and the long-discussed Justin Turner, both players seemed to have one glaring weakness in their repertoire; they aren’t workhorses.

Turner was ripped for coming into the fall overweight and not prepared for the season. Even though he was a five-star recruit, J.T. Floyd won the number two cornerback spot over Turner. Many coaches speculated that Turner didn’t was dedicated to the team, especially after he showed up to fall camp 11 pounds heavier than in the spring.

White has a laundry list of solid running backs in front of him and he would really have had to make an impact in practice to be a contributor this year. Michael Cox has looked great in camp, Michael Shaw is expected to be academically eligible to play this fall, and returning underclassmen Vincent Smith and Fitz Toussaint are expected to get some playing time. White was getting consistent reps in practice, but he was one of the players called out by Rodriguez to “earn their wings”. It appeared that White likely would have faced a red-shirt year regardless.

Overall, the impact of losing Turner hurts more because the secondary is already depleted with the loss of Donovan Warren and the injury to Troy Woolfolk. It will force talented, but inexperienced freshmen Cullen Christian, Courtney Avery and Marvin Robinson to step up in his absence.

Does it hurt to lose quality recruits? Yes, but RichRod ultimately wants players who want to be here and wants to work for playing time.