Michigan State picked up a handful of commitments this past weekend, pushing the 2027 class to 13 with two official visit weekends left in the month of June.
Pat Fitzgerald has to be pleased with how he’s been able to secure commitments from some of his top targets and he’s landing guys that would have thrived in the Mark Dantonio era. It remains to be seen if these types of under-the-radar recruits are going to thrive in the NIL and transfer portal era, but Fitzgerald is following a specific blueprint.
Over this past weekend, he landed unranked recruits Zach Forbish and Cordaro Parham — the latter has since been given a ranking — as well as three-stars Ryan Pankey and Lawrence Kanneh.
The new commit entered the weekend as the highest-rated of the four that committed to the Spartans but mere hours after his announcement, he plummeted in the recruiting rankings.
Kanneh was a top-850 range edge rusher who was No. 71 at his position in the 2027 rankings but with an update less than 24 hours after his commitment, he’s now all the way down at No. 1,137 overall. Oh, and he’s down 22 spots in the edge rusher category to No. 93 on the composite.
This composite update was rather surprising given the egregiousness of the drop, but this is nothing new to Spartan fans who have seen recruits commit and then drop in the rankings shortly after.
We call that the “Spartan bump”. Most programs have a “bump” in a positive direction while Michigan State recruits usually get bumped down. It’s a frustrating reality.
I’m not quite sure what happened from June 6 when Kanneh committed to Michigan State as a top-900 kid until June 7 where he fell about 300 spots, but that’s just ridiculous.
Michigan State recruits are already developing that “chip”
During the Dantonio era, a lot of recruits who committed to the Spartans were undervalued and they came to East Lansing with a chip on their shoulders.
It looks like the same is going to happen at least at the beginning of the Fitzgerald era.
Parham got a decent jump from unranked to the No. 96 cornerback in the country but Kanneh’s drop is just par for the course in East Lansing. I do expect Zach Forbish to go from unranked to top-1,000 here soon, but after seeing what happened to Kanneh, I’m not nearly as optimistic.
Kanneh will now come to Michigan State with a massive chip on his shoulder, ready to prove all those recruiting experts who overlooked him wrong.
Another recruiting class, another fresh batch of disrespect for the Spartans.
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