Harbaugh speaks! Harbaugh's 15 minutes at the mic at Big Ten Media Days have come and gone with a couple of items of note. One is that Harbaugh declined to elaborate on the Media Kerfuffle Of The Week:

On his comments about Urban Meyer's controversy that follows him and if he would add any context

No, I don't see any -- no context you should know about. I don't think it was anything that was anything new or anything of a bombshell. It's things that many of you all understand and have written about.

A second is that Harbaugh came out in favor of a one-time transfer:

My opinion is that every student-athlete should have a one-time ability to transfer and not have to sit out a year, and then if they were to transfer a second time, then the previous rule that we had, where you had to sit out a year of eligibility, and with that, I would also keep the graduate transfer rule that we have in place right now, where you can graduate and transfer and become immediately eligible.

FWIW, many NCAA sports already have this rule.

And finally:

On Michigan being picked as the favorite to win the Big Ten East and conference title game

I think that's where I would pick us.

All righty then.

Oh, one last item:

This is almost certainly a bad idea. There are limited ways in which this can be a good idea.

"we're really close to announcing playing a team on foreign soil" -- Harbaugh

— angelique (@chengelis) July 19, 2019

Neutral site games are bad. Neutral site games when you have the largest stadium in the country are worse. If this is something like Washington moving a home game to Vancouver because their AD has been infected with Pac-12 disease, whatever. If it's Michigan playing someone in France, hard pass.

I guess a one-off with Syracuse in Toronto wouldn't be the worst.

[After THE JUMP: Rutger offers up some batting practice]

This, on the other hand… eh. Basketball and wrestling will face Rutgers at Madison Square Garden this season. These are both technically Michigan home games getting moved. This is unlike a couple of previous events where teams moved home games to extreme consternation because:

• Unlike Indiana playing Penn State in freakin' Maryland, this will still functionally be a Michigan home game.
• Unlike Dave Brandon moving a hockey game against Michigan State to Chicago, this was announced before season ticket sales have closed… and is against Rutgers.

This is the third time Michigan has done one of these double-headers and the second time they've spent a basketball home game to do so. The next time needs to be on the opponent; this is otherwise fine.

Rutger is specialized in dropping letters. I am offended at this as an internet content generator:

SHI Stadium is new name of Rutgers football stadium after company, that is “global provider of technology solutions & products,” signs multi-year naming rights deal. Can’t imagine how many jokes will be made about the letter missing from stadium name

— Brett McMurphy (@Brett_McMurphy) July 19, 2019

I don't need your charity, Rutger. I've got jokes! Stop grooving obvious ones down the middle. There's no art in that. Now, the cannon…

[Patrick Barron]

…that is something you can work with.

Bill Connelly at the mothership. The S&P+ purveyor has moved to ESPN, and previews both halves of the Big Ten. His Michigan section will be familiar to most people who read this site. The disintegration of MSU's offense makes for some paragraph, though:

The Spartans' offense has grown more and more hopeless for a while. After leaping to 12th in Off. S&P+ in 2014, it fell to 30th in 2015, 55th in 2016, 72nd in 2017 and 112th last fall. After a brief slip, the MSU defense, Dantonio's calling card, was as good as ever in 2018. But the offense was an outright detriment. MSU scored 13 or fewer points in five of six losses and exactly six in each of the last three.

There's a difference between having a plodding, physical and not-that-creative offense and having one that can't actually pull off being plodding and physical. Michigan State has, for a while now, been a team that wants to run the ball but can't, and things hit a potential low point last season. The Spartans ranked a ghastly 122nd in marginal efficiency. Their running backs averaged just 3.8 yards per carry.

And Dantonio went full Hoke in response:

So you fire your offensive coordinator and bring in a bright, young, energetic new guy, right? That's what's supposed to happen?

Nah, Dantonio just gave everybody a different job.

Quarterbacks coach Brad Salem is now running backs coach and took over as offensive coordinator. Co-coordinator and RBs coach Dave Warner is now quarterbacks coach. Co-coordinator and tight ends coach Jim Bollman is now offensive line coach. Offensive line coach Mark Staten is now tight ends coach. Assistant DBs coach Don Treadwell is now receivers coach, and receivers coach Terrence Samuel is now assistant DBs coach.

On the other side of the conference, a wide-open race with six contenders. And Illinois. Minnesota comes in as the most inexplicable team of 2018:

Fleck's second Minnesota team did all of the following things:

• Beat eventual MWC champion Fresno State (which finished 16th in S&P+)
• Destroyed Purdue 41-10
• Destroyed Wisconsin in Madison 37-15
• Destroyed Georgia Tech in the Quick Lane Bowl 34-10

The same team also did this:

• Lost at Maryland 42-13
• Lost at Nebraska 53-28
• Lost at Illinois 55-31

Minnesota started 3-0, lost four straight games by at least 16 points each, then won four of six to finish the season.

The Gophers are starting a right side of the line that goes 370 and 400.

Mike Locksley would prefer not to talk about Josh Gattis. He fielded a few question about his former colleague and didn't like it:

Gattis recounted on Jim Harbaugh’s Attack Each Day podcast in January that Alabama coach Nick Saban chewed him out for leaving the Crimson Tide for the Terrapins’ job before Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh called with an offer. According to Locksley, at least publicly, that wasn’t the case.

“I never thought that Josh was going with me,” Locksley said. “He was a guy that I considered. I was happy that he was given the opportunity that he was given at Michigan.”

Then, expressing annoyance at multiple questions about Gattis, Locksley vouched for the coach who actually is his offensive coordinator, recently fired East Carolina coach Scottie Montgomery.

“I’m also happy that I got Scottie Montgomery,” Locksley said. “He is my offensive coordinator, has called played before. Has been a part of winning programs — Duke, the Pittsburgh Steelers — played in the league, you name it. I want to spend a little more time talking about Scottie Montgomery and the job he’ll do running the system that I ran at Alabama 100-percent of the time and developed all of the weekly schemes.”

Locksley has a history of getting mildly cross, so that's not a huge surprise.

More realignment, intramurals edition. PJ Fleck asserted that more Big Ten realignment is "inevitable":

“Change is inevitable,” Fleck said. “I think we all know that. I think that the East and West have been around for a while. I like it, I like the division of it. But I don’t think it will stay the same. I think we’ll change it at some point because change is coming somehow, some way. And I think people are going to want to move it around, and shake it up a little bit.”

Seems pretty speculative, though. Scott Dochterman brings up a potential MSU/Purdue flip, citing MSU's run under Dantonio, but if Brohm stays around and Dantonio heads into retirement after another couple of indifferent years that move might backfire. It would also lock Michigan into an annual MSU crossover game. Net effect: Michigan plays Purude annually and gets even more reduced exposure to the rest of the West. No thanks.

Also here's a thing:

In the last two seasons, a midlevel West Division team has toppled East Division Ohio State in regular-season play by at least four touchdowns.

I wonder if that's why the Big Ten hasn't had a playoff team the last two years.

Man exists. PFF is featuring various players in the run-up to the season, and can confidently assert that Cole Chewins was certainly a human being in pads:

 

Cole Chewins takes the field again for Michigan State this fall. pic.twitter.com/378ch8OzLB

— PFF College (@PFF_College) July 12, 2019

If that's the guy you're highlighting off the MSU OL… welp.

Etc.: Shea Patterson lawyer and all-around NCAA irritant Tom Mars is hired by… the NCAA.