The freshman class that Michigan signed last week is ranked 17th in the 247 composite rankings, 17th to Rivals, and 19th to On3, The class has, pending their pursuit of 5-star Nyckoles Harbor in the later signing period, zero top-100 players. This is quite clearly below the level Michigan normally recruits at. To have a class like that after a second straight year of beating Ohio State by three scores, winning the Big Ten championship, and going to the Playoff is, without question, a disappointment. I'm one of the people who kept saying over the first half-decade of Harbaugh that beating Ohio State was the key to unlocking a higher level of recruiting. So far, it has not. This has led to two major questions about the 2023 class, which might be seen as the optimistic and pessimistic versions of the same question: Pessimist: Why is a 13-0 Michigan recruiting like 8-5 Michigan? Optimist: Is this class like the 2018 class? Every other question is another form of what this all signifies. Is Michigan doing something wrong? Is Michigan systemically disadvantaged in a new pay-for-play world? Was this wound self-inflicted, bad luck, overstated, or even worth discussing? Is Warde Manuel a second Fritz Crisler who's too cheap, too conservative, and too obstinately attached to outdated ideals of amateurism to keep up in a landscape rapidly reshaping to a new more capitalist order, while simultaneously too revered to be dispensed with? I can't answer all of that. But I can tell you what happened with the 2018 class, and what that means for the very similar 2022 class. [After THE JUMP: the 2018 recruiting tag is revived]