Is Jim Harbaugh about to flip one of Illinois' verbal commitments? It seems fairly likely. Class-of-2017 running back Mike Epstein (Fort Lauderdale, FL) took a visit to Ann Arbor on Wednesday to check out the Wolverines, and he evidently came away pretty impressed.
Awesome visit at The University of Michigan! 〽️ pic.twitter.com/i4tsMDJyje
— Mike Epstein (@Dat26Kid) March 30, 2016
Our friends over at Maize n Brew had an opportunity to chat with Epstein after the visit concluded.
"It was an awesome visit," he said. "I met the whole staff, toured around, stayed in for a RB meeting and had an academic meeting."
"(The staff) said they loved my film. Meeting the whole staff was great," he said. "They said Michigan is my home."
Epstein, who's rated as a three-star recruit by 247Sports, originally committed to Bill Cubit and his staff back in early August; he held other scholarship offers from Cincinnati, Central Florida, New Mexico State, Temple, and Florida Atlantic at the time. Since then, however, he's picked up interest from Syracuse and West Virginia in addition to Michigan.
The coaching change at Illinois likely forced Epstein into some second thoughts, but the St. Thomas Aquinas product reached out to our Twitter account shortly after the hiring of Lovie Smith to inform us that he had a "great talk" with the new Illini head coach.
Epstein could very well just be exploring his options, but at this point it's probably safe to chalk him up as a 'soft verbal'. So don't be surprised if/when he eventually switches his allegiance to another program.
2017 Illinois Football Recruiting Class