My reaction to the news that Marcus Witherspoon has left the football team? The writing was probably on the wall for a while now, even if no one wanted to admit it. It's one thing to miss time due to injuries, but it was awfully strange to see a player move from a position in linebacker where Rutgers could use bodies on the two deep, to defensive end where Rutgers loaded up in the 2009 recruiting class.
When the rumors about moving to DE started floating around last year, I immediately started thinking about Chenry Lewis and other past LBs who seemed to switch positions for no discernable reason before fading into the ether. Doubly working against Witherspoon was that transfers at any program more often than not don't work out. He technically was enrolled at Michigan before failing to get through their admissions. Luckily for us, I don't believe that was the case with Darrell Givens.
Given that Witherspoon had yet to play a snap, this loss won't have any near time impact, although it's certainly bad to lose someone of his talents in the years to come. This does clear up the scholarship count somewhat, although I haven't looked at that in while (probably should at some point). This probably isn't that big of a loss, although it makes cleaning up on defensive recruits this year doubly more important. I think that's probably going to happen, and the staff will see a repeat of the 2009 class, but nobody will know for sure until the verbal commitments start coming in.