The recruiting video for the University of Michigan begins like so many others, with a flash of the school colors, a snippet of the school's fight song, highlights of past athletic successes, so many bright young faces clad in football jerseys or cheerleader uniforms.
There is one noticeable difference, however.
Those bright young faces are very, very young -- the youngest checking in at 6 months, the eldest at 5 years.
The target audience, according to text on the DVD cover: "For ages 5 months and up."
The objective, according to another line of text: "Raising Tomorrow's UM Fan Today."
All of this is helpful to know, because if you stumbled into a viewing of "Baby Wolverine" midway through and saw the baby building blocks spelling "M-A-I-Z-E" and
"B-L-U-E" and heard the soothing female voice cooing "\o7Wooool-verrrr-eeeen\f7," you'd shrug and say, "Must have designed this one for defensive line prospects."
A segment of the video is devoted to teaching viewers how to count from 1 to 10 by using Michigan jersey numbers as visual aids. Useful, yes, but some grown-up Michigan fans will look at this and grumble, "Where was this video back in 1993, when Chris Webber really needed it?"
"Baby Wolverine" is one of 12 titles currently distributed by Team Baby Entertainment, the brainchild of 31-year-old Michigan graduate Greg Scheinman, who will rank as the man responsible for the earliest form of college recruitment on record, at least until someone releases -- and you know it is coming -- the "In Utero Wolverine" series.
"The goal of Team Baby Entertainment is to allow parents, grandparents, alumni and friends to share their love, loyalty and passion for their university with the children," Scheinman says on the company's website, \o7www.teambabyentertainment.com\f7. "Our product is an informative, entertaining and educational way to introduce a child to the school and team you root for."
It is also an ingenious way to give Michigan a recruiting leg up on Ohio State. At the moment, the Team Baby catalog features no "Baby Buckeye" DVD.
Scheinman has plans to expand to 20 titles by the end of the year -- and, yes, USC and UCLA fans, "Baby Trojan" and "Baby Bruin" are in the works, so have your $19.95 ready.
