Wisconsin football recruiting: per report, director of player personnel Saeed Khalif is leaving for Michigan State

Per a report from Jon McNamara at BadgerBlitz, Wisconsin’s director of player personnel, Saeed Khalif, will be leaving Madison and taking the same job at Michigan State on Wednesday. This is a pretty big blow to the Badgers because as of June 1 in-person visits for recruits are allowed again for the first time in over a year.

Khalif had been in his role in Madison for the past five seasons and had helped lead a noticeable uptick in recruiting for the Badgers. “We’re a blue blood program and that’s where we should be...We have the product, we have the history and we feel like we should be in those conversations,” Khalif said back in December about the Badgers having their third consecutive “best recruiting class ever.”

According to the 247 Composite, which takes all rankings into account, the Badgers had the No. 16 class in the country for the 2021 cycle which was their highest rating (by far) in the recruiting rankings era. In 2020 the Badgers were No. 26 and in 2019 they were No. 29. Those rankings were also UW’s highest rankings at the time.

“We want to be a top program...we want it all to measure up,” Khalif said in December and now it appears that he’ll be trying to help rebuild Michigan State instead of continuing to build Wisconsin into that top program.

UPDATE: Tuesday 6/1/21, 4:40 p.m. CT

Here is Khalif’s presumed goodbye tweet to Wisconsin.