In the early-morning hours of Jan. 11, Mike Jones was talking on the phone in his dorm room when the fire alarm went off.

Jones, an early enrollee on the Michigan football team, figured someone was playing a prank. So he grabbed a light jacket and headed outside. He quickly realized he'd walked into the annual West Quad-South Quad snowball fight.

Jones, a Florida native, didn’t throw any snowballs because he didn’t have gloves. So he just stood off the side and watched.

Asked which dorm won, Jones said he had no idea. He was too cold to concentrate on what was going on around him.

So how will he, or any of the other 11 signees from warm-weather states, handle November football games — or just living — in the Midwest?

In his first full offseason, Michigan coach Rich Rodriguez has significantly altered the Wolverines’ recruiting strategy after replacing Lloyd Carr, emphasizing the South as a recruiting pipeline.

Seventeen of Rodriguez's 29 recruits have come from warm-weather states, compared to 33 of Carr's 136 recruits from 2002 to 2008.

This new strategy of marching through the South carries significant risk, but Rodriguez has done an impressive job of minimizing it.

Risk: Wasting time on prospects who wouldn't want to come and missing out on local recruits who would be more receptive to a Michigan offer, therefore ending up with a lower-quality class.

Response: The Wolverines had a more-impressive class from the state of Florida than any out-of-state program. And Michigan is seventh in rivals.com’s recruiting rankings — eight spots ahead of Michigan State, which focused mostly on in-state recruiting.

The Wolverines already have a commitment from Ricardo Miller, one of Florida’s top-ranked players in the class of 2010. And Michigan is high on the list of several other Floridians in the class.

Secondary coach Tony Gibson said opposing coaches use the cold, snowy Ann Arbor weather in hopes of persuading recruits not to travel north. But Gibson said a lot of negative recruiting can be a positive when recruits visit and see the weather isn’t as bad as they imagined.

And many of the players, some of whom had never seen snow before, actually see the weather as a positive for Michigan.

Denard Robinson and Adrian Witty, two of the eight Florida natives to sign with the Wolverines Wednesday, made snow angels and had a snowball fight in the Big House with Rodriguez on their official visit.

Rodriguez even told the story of a recruit who tried to take some snow in a Ziploc bag, just to be disappointed when it melted on the plane home.

Risk: Players used to playing in warm weather will tank in November.

Response: Five players from warm-weather states are already on campus due to early enrollment.

This is, by far, the biggest worry with Rodriguez’s recruiting strategy.

Enrolling early will help players get accustomed to the cold. A freshman last year, slot receiver Martavious Odoms struggled mightily against Northwestern — the Wolverines’ first game of the season in the bitter cold.

Most of the early enrollees from warm-weather states acknowledged their play would be affected by the cold if they had to play a game today. Still, they were confident they would be well-adjusted by the weather changes next season.

But I’m not so sure. Wide receiver Greg Mathews, an Orlando, Fla., native, shivered uncontrollably after last year’s spring game. To be fair, that was a very cold day — but that was his third year at Michigan.

On the flip side, players should have more productive offseasons. Quarterbacks coach Rod Smith, who used to work at South Florida, said during summer workouts it was “so hot and humid, you couldn’t breathe.”

But wins over Ohio State, not summer workouts, will obviously be how this class and Rodriguez’s recruiting strategy will be judged.

Games against the Buckeyes are in the bitter cold of November. Rodriguez is taking a calculated risk that his southern imports can heat up the rivalry — and that The Game doesn't freeze them out.

He has done all he can to increase his chances, but his team's fate may have more to do with Mother Nature than his coaching.

— Feldman can be reached at danfeld@umich.edu.