Acting HC Harlon Barnett breaks down Michigan State’s recruiting philosophies through the years

East Lansing, Mich. – Michigan State acting head coach Harlon Barnett has worked with four different head coaches at four different universities since his college coaching career began 20 years ago. 

That means Barnett, who is now Michigan State’s leader following Mel Tucker’s indefinite suspension, has seen his share of recruiting strategies. In his 14 seasons at Michigan State alone, Barnett has practiced under two different recruiting strategies – one utilized by Mark Dantonio, and the other utilized by Tucker. 

“There’s several different ways you can do it (recruit) in college ball,” Barnett said on the weekly coach’s radio show Thursday evening. “Here with coach Dantonio, we used to have recruiting areas. For example, when I was here with him, I had the Flint-Saginaw area, southwest Ohio – where I’m from – Cincinnati, Dayton. And then I would have the Tampa area, down the gulf coast. That was pretty much my area the whole time with coach Dantonio.

“More recently, we’ve done more ‘your position.’ There’s more than one way to skin a cat. We were going all over, just going by position. (There’s) a lot more travel. You had the area deal, where you would be there for several days. When you’re doing the position deal, you’re kind of bouncing around a little bit. Again, it’s all just what you want to do. I’ve done it both ways. I know a lot of schools do it several ways, it’s just what works best for you.”

Barnett, however, preferred the “areas” philosophy.

“In the spring you can go out twice,” Barnett said. “The first time, you would go to your area. Say I saw an offensive lineman or something out of my position, then the second time, the o-line coach would go, be it Mark Staten or Jim Bollman or whoever. And that’s how we pretty much did it. I thought that was good. I thought that was really good.”

Barnett appreciated that recruiting strategy because it allowed him to build relationships with high school coaches in his areas.

“You get a chance to not only know them (the high school coaches), you know their players and their upcoming players,” Barnett said. “They’ll tell you, ‘Hey, I have a freshman, keep an eye on him.’ Then you come back next year and he’s a sophomore. ‘How’s that kid doing? You said he’s going to be pretty good.’ ‘Yeah, he’s doing well.’ And then you start building a relationship that way. That’s what I personally like.

“But you get to build a relationship and they get to know you. They (coaches) knew when Michigan State was going to come into the school, it’s Harlon Barnett, or it’s whoever. I know how it is coming in and it’s a good thing because they’ll tell you things sometimes that they won’t tell everybody else because you’ve built that relationship and that trust.”

With Michigan State honoring its 2013 Rose Bowl-winning team during Saturday’s game against No. 8 Washington, Barnett was able to reflect on the players from that team, many of whom he recruited and developed. 

Michigan State recruited Ohio as hard as any state during that time. Every coach was assigned an area of Ohio to recruit, and Barnett had great success identifying players in his southwest Ohio region.

“We had a lot of guys come from southwest Ohio and Ohio period back then, and Michigan, of course,” Barnett said. “We always tried to focus on the five-hour radius for Michigan State football players, and we found a lot of them. I can rattle off names. Marcus Rush, from Cincinnati, Ohio – all-time leader in starts in Michigan State history. RJ Williamson, Josiah Scott, it just goes on and on and on. A lot of guys came from Ohio and did a really good job for us.

“We really developed guys here under coach D. It’s funny, it got to the point where we were going to schools and recruiting and other schools would come in and say, ‘Oh, if Michigan State’s here, I know I’m in the right place. What guys are we looking for? What diamonds in the rough is he (Barnett) looking for?’ And I wouldn’t say anything. ‘I’m just here seeing the coach, man. What’re you talking about?’ But that’s part of it. That’s coaching, developing the guys and getting them to play to the max of their abilities.”

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