Disappointing Michigan State football recruiting update for legacy target

The end of the June official visit season is upon us, and Jonathan Smith and his staff have had a very solid month. They’ve earned multiple commitments and have made immense progress with some of their other top recruits.

Michigan State football, however, won’t win with all of their targets, and there’s nothing wrong with that as no program in the country has a 100 percent hit rate with their recruits.

But there’s one recruit in particular that Michigan State lost that is tough to see.

Kaden Strayhorn is a three-star offensive lineman from Bradenton, Fla. According to 247Sports composite rankings, he is the No. 435 player in the country. Strayhorn also is the No. 28 player at his position and the No. 58 player from the state of Florida.

Strayhorn was thought to be a Michigan State lean for quite some time, but that is no longer the case. Recruiting site On3 changed their favorite in this recruitment from MSU to Michigan about a week ago, then 247Sports insider Sam Webb logged a prediction in favor of the Wolverines on June 22 as well.

Fast forward one day and Strayhorn made his commitment to Michigan official.

You may not think this is a big deal considering Strayhorn isn’t a highly ranked recruit, but this is a big deal for another reason.

Do you recognize the name Strayhorn? Jason Strayhorn, the father of Kaden, is a former defensive tackle for Michigan State and currently calls all of the MSU football games on the Spartan Sports radio network. So the connections to MSU are abundant, yet it doesn’t appear to be enough.

To be fair to Michigan State, it doesn’t appear they really pushed that hard for Strayhorn as he did not officially visit East Lansing this month. But I’m not sure that was the right choice from Smith. He’s a very good player, has many MSU connections and even has a younger brother they could target in the future, but now MSU won’t be getting Strayhorn and it will be tough to get his younger brother as well.