Recruiting is a relative topic divided.

Some believe you should recruit stars and tally as many top 100 players as possible to compete with the likes of Alabama, Georgia, and Ohio State.

Others, like Michigan running backs coach Mike Hart, don't see it as a cookie cutter, black-and-white process.

Freshman running back CJ Stokes is in contention for the third running back spot. Stokes was a low three-star from high school with a decent offer sheet, including Penn State.

However, among the schools that actively pursued his commitment following an offer, Michigan was a night-and-day program compared to his other options, which included Missouri, Vanderbilt, and Virginia Tech.

Despite lacking recruiting spotlight, Stokes found an opportunity in Ann Arbor thanks to Hart's evaluation.

"At the end of the day, I don't recruit stars, if that makes sense. I recruit good players. I try to recruit good players, and (CJ Stokes) was a kid who was under-recruited, had great film, fast, great track time, ran the ball hard, ran through people, and showed he could catch the ball," Hart said when asked about his impressions of the former three-star who worked his way into the 3-deep as a freshman. "At the end of the day, it's about who he is as a person. He has a strong mind, he's confident in himself, and he's not afraid of competition; a kid that you know will have success in the long run and wants to be great. You have to have kids who want to be great. Some kids like to be recruited, and those are the kids you have to call every day. He's a kid that knew who he was and just that self-motivation."

Hart's evaluation process looks at many things but none more than the recruit's character and how it will or won't fit the program.

The second-year Michigan assistant explained his philosophy further.

"Blake Corum, Donovan Edwards -- those are kids who show up, work every day, and you have nothing to worry about. They're going to class, and they're going to take care of those things. Those things are more important to me as a coach than kids getting five stars because they go to a big school. They may not be that good," Hart said to the media on Wednesday afternoon. "That's my recruiting philosophy, personally. If you recruit a high-maintenance kid, when they get here, they're going to be high-maintenance. Not to say some of them aren't great, but there are a lot of players out here who are really good players, and (Stokes) is one of them. I want kids that want to be here and that love ball. You don't have to force them to come to work out or force them to come to class. There are enough kids out there who can do that."

At a time, Hart's jersey was the most sold in the M Den.

A former Wolverine great who broke many rushing records as a tailback under Lloyd Carr and beside quarterback Chad Henne, Hart is recruiting during a time that couldn't be more different than when Carr recruited him.

Does his old-school approach to recruiting resonate from his playing days?

"No, I think that you learn. I started coaching in the MAC, and I couldn't recruit five stars, right? There are good players. There are good kids. And so my big thing is, I mean, who I am as a person, you want guys like that, in my opinion, because then you have to work with me. And there are kids, again, they don't fit, and I don't mean that in a bad way. I mean, it takes a special kid to come to Michigan, is what I tell every Michigan running back," Hart added. "There's 110,000, the good, the bad, the Twitter, the Instagram, all these things. And you have to be special. You have to be mentally strong. And it's just those things I believe in that make a great running back, that your personality has to be different to play running back here. Everyone can't do it. Those are the kids. You see them come in and transfer in a year because they're just not mentally strong. "

If everyone can't do it, who can? Who will?

Hart used Edwards, a sophomore who was the high school player of the year out of West Bloomfield in 2020, as an example of a talented and mentally fit recruit to succeed at U-M.

And so far, so good for Edwards, a split starter next to Corum as a sophomore.

"We're going to have good backs here. It's going to be a competition every year on the field. I mean, look at Donovan Edwards last year, right? Five-star kid, the biggest recruit at running back in Michigan in a long, long time. He didn't play that much," Hart said. "So if that kid was mentally weak, he would've transferred. And so we need kids who believe in who they are, who knows how good they are, and want to stay here. And you know how that saying goes, right? And so like, that's just who I am, that's what Lloyd taught me, that's what Bo taught everybody, right? It's who we are. And I believe that to be great. You have to want to be great. You have to know you're great. You have to want to compete."

Compete, they will.

The Wolverines have a loaded running back room at the top as Stokes and Tavierre Dunlap continue battle for the third spot on the depth chart.

Michigan has two running back commits in 2023 in four-stars, Benjamin Hall and Cole Cabana.

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