Tuesday, August 13, 2019

Michigan Tuesday: Taters Are Going To Tate

Michigan for a short time had a famous Tate from California before he flamed out.  Ohio State recently had one until he transferred, Tate Martell.   Its a slow news day, so I'm going to give you a quick update on the former OSU QB.

Being Tate Martell:

Tate grew up in San Diego but decided to transfer to Las Vegas Powerhouse Bishop Gorman to become a nationally recruited QB.  That strategy paid off and Tate became a 5 star Dual-Threat QB in the 2017 class.

Let the recruiting process begin! Well sort of, when Tate was 14 he committed to the University of Washington.   Then in 2015 he de-committed from UW and committed to Texas A&M.  Then in 2016 he again de-committed this time from the Aggies and committed to Urban Meyer and Ohio State.   After playing in his senior season at Bishop Gorman, he transfers to Dessert Pines HS so he could join Ohio State early.   Not sure how that would work bit there is clearly some Urban Meyer magic in there.

Tate at Bishop Gorman also found himself to be a TV star, as he was the subject (along with Jake Fromm and Tayvon Bowers) of Netflix's QB1 reality series.   Tate threw up video game numbers his senior year and was named the Gatorade Player of the Year.  He passed for 41 TD's and ran for another 21, while posting a 15-0 record.   He was a rock star and knew it.

Tate joined the Buckeyes and found himself buried on the depth chart, mostly behind Dwayne Haskins and JT Barrett.  This offseason Tate's time was finally here, as Haskins entered the NFL Draft early and JT was gone the year prior.   Then things started to change in Columbus, Urban steps down and Ryan Day takes over.  Another 5 star QB decides he wants to be in Columbus and Justin Fields transfers from Georgia.  Justin also secures a waiver from the NCAA for immediate eligibility due to race incident in Athens.

So now what?  Tate like he has done in the past, decided to make another change and enters the transfer portal.   He finds a home at the University of Miami and gets a waiver from the NCAA to play right away due to the coaching change at OSU.   Miami is in bad shape at the QB position and also has a new head coach in Manny Diaz.  Tate again is ready to start, this time for the Hurricanes.   If you remember, Tate Forcier also tried to transfer to Miami but his grades stopped that transaction.

The time in now as Miami has a very early and important game against Florida in Orlando in 11 days.  ESPN asked the NCAA and both teams to move this game up a week so it could be the highlight of the weekend and the start of the college football season on 8/24.

Yesterday, Miami head coach Manny Diaz announced that freshman Jarren Williams would be the starting QB for the Hurricanes in their match-up against the Gators.   Tate doesn't show up for practice on Monday.

What is next for Tate?  Only Tate knows.


Megafonn said...

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Tim said...

All: I follow U of M pretty close and the Big Ten in general, but I don't follow the rest of college football closely.

There have been some small school athletes graduate early and excel at big schools and there have been some athletes at big schools that didn't start and made the transition to a small school and did well.

From what I understand Russell Wilson was shown the door at Maryland due to him playing baseball. He excelled at Wisconsin.

I look at the Wilson situation as a bit of an anomaly due to circumstances. Can anyone think of a player that didn't work out at a big name school and then went to another big name school and excelled?

I don't believe history is on Martell's side here.

Chowman said...
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Chowman said...

Welcome to the wonderful and wacky world of Big time college football. This is about as unusual as water is wet! Any time a kid commits and decommits more than once while still in HS you know he'll transfer at least once if not twice while in college.