Tarik Black’s transfer to University of Texas made official

The long-awaited transfer is now official, as former Michigan wide receiver Tarik Black is a Texas Longhorn.

The former four-star from Connecticut didn’t live up to the hype at Michigan over his three years in Ann Arbor. After a monster first game against Florida in 2017, he broke his left foot on the final drive in a win over Air Force just two weeks later.

Just before the 2018 opener against Notre Dame, Black suffered another foot injury and remained sidelined until the Penn State game in October. He played the entire 2019 season, but fell behind Donovan Peoples-Jones, Nico Collins and Ronnie Bell on the depth chart.

All in all, he ended his Michigan career with 40 catches for 507 yards and two touchdowns.

“Tarik is a big target, an athletic receiver and a player who has displayed the ability to catch the ball in traffic,” said Texas head coach Tom Herman in a statement. “He has competed against a lot of tremendous players in the Big Ten and at Michigan for three years, so he brings a great deal of knowledge and experience to our team.”

Michigan will look to Collins, Bell, Giles Jackson, Cornelius Johnson and Mike Sainristil as go-to receivers in the passing game in 2020. Incoming freshmen A.J. Henning and Roman Wilson will also likely be contributors.

Former Wolverines receive transfer portal rankings

The new rankings came out for the 247Sports transfer portal, and the aforementioned Black was rated as a three-star, with an 88 rating. That is higher on the three-star spectrum, but certainly not where he was coming out of high school.

The other former Michigan players who got a transfer portal ranking include offensive lineman Stephen Spanellis (three-star, 85), defensive tackle Michael Dwumfour (three-star, 85), safety J’Marick Woods (three-star, 84), linebacker Jordan Anthony (three-star, 81) and running back Jordan Castleberry (three-star, 77). Linebacker Devin Gil did not have a rank.

The biggest surprise to me is definitely Anthony, as he was nearly a top 100 player coming out of high school. Given the lack of production at Michigan, being re-ranked a three-star was to be expected, but to be an 81? Man, that’s a big drop.

National Brews

• MLB owners gave the OK to propose a plan to the players to start up their season in July. Spring Training would start sometime in June, with the regular season starting in early July. The players will be presented this plan later today. The season would be around 82 games.
• Remember the crazy recruitment of 2020 five-star running back Zachary Evans? If not, it’s an absolute roller coaster. Well, it finally ended, as he signed his letter of intent to play at...TCU? Only this recruitment would end as strangely as this one did.
• The American Hockey League, the NHL’s top minor league system, canceled the remainder of its season due to the pandemic.