Myles Hinton’s transfer story highlights Michigan admissions insanity
ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Michigan football heavily pursued former five-star offensive tackle Myles Hinton during his recruitment. While it seemed the Wolverines had a few aces in the hole, Hinton opted to carve out his own path.
Hinton’s brother, Christopher, was a defensive tackle in Ann Arbor at the time, and his parents moved to town as a result. However, when decision day came around, the younger Hinton opted to attend Stanford, all the way on the other side of the country.
However, Michigan waited patiently, and Hinton ended up in Ann Arbor after all. When he entered the NCAA transfer portal this offseason, he only had one real choice.
“Yeah, so, entered the portal and in my mind, I feel like it’s only one real option with me, which is Michigan,” Hinton said. “Because I had the prior experience my brother going here, family lived here for like a year, my brother went here. I had a lot of experience and being around the team, as a recruit, and then like, during COVID-19, when I like, went home. I felt like it was just natural — knew people on the team, knew people on the staff. It was just like, an easy transition versus like going to somewhere completely new.”
But the path to Ann Arbor from Palo Alto wasn’t as easy as one would think.
The Wolverines have long struggled to bring in top-flight transfer prospects because the University of Michigan admissions often doesn’t clear students from other programs. And when they do, if they haven’t already graduated and come aboard as a grad transfer, they’ll lose out on the credits attained from the classes they’ve taken at their previous college.
Such was the case for Hinton, who is still an undergraduate. He says that he cannot major in what he wants to at the moment, because, inexplicably, his credits from the prestigious Stanford didn’t transfer.
“Here, right now, general studies, because they had like, transfer — like the credits kind of messed up,” Hinton said. “But I was in human biology at Stanford. And then for some reason, they didn’t take a lot of the credits like, all my bio credits dropped. I don’t know, it’s crazy. But I’m trying to get into environmental science. I want to do marine biology — it’s what I want to do when I get out of football.”
At the moment, Stanford is the No. 3 school in the country per the US News & World Report rankings — tied with Harvard and Yale. The University of Michigan-Ann Arbor is ranked No. 25.
Hinton’s story certainly highlights why the maize and blue don’t generally receive many undergraduate transfers as semesters, if not years, can be erased should players a few seasons in choose to continue their career with the Wolverines.
He continued, noting that in what is considered his senior year, Michigan had him take a class he started with when he first arrived in Palo Alto.
“Yeah, it was crazy! I was like, ‘What in the world!” Hinton said. “I took an intro to writing class last semester, and I was like, ‘What’s going on? What is going on?’ I took this class freshman year, it was crazy.”
This isn’t limited to football. Most recently, the Michigan basketball team had gotten a commitment from former five-star guard Caleb Love, who had started his career at North Carolina, only to learn he wasn’t admitted into the university.
So, when Michigan insiders insist that transfer targets couldn’t make it in due to extenuating circumstances when they opt for other programs, now you know one of the reasons.
