Props to Coach Harbaugh for being ahead of the game (again) off the field

I mean it’s been professional for a long long time. It was always a farce. When’s the last time CFB players were brought into college to be true students just happening to play a football game? The 1950s? Harbaugh as the Stanford head coach in 2007 infamously talked about how he wasn’t allowed to major in history like he wanted to when he first showed up on campus (1982) because it would take up too much of his time as a football player and was steered into another major. And then he talked about how Michigan alumni would parade these men when they’re on the field but then those same alumni wouldn’t hire them because they didn’t study the right things or pick up the right skills while in college (this is why most players end up having to work in sales). They were never brought into a school with a primary goal of completing a field of study OF THEIR DESIRE/CHOOSING WITH THE SAME EXPERIENCE AS A NORMAL COLLEGE STUDENT in a long long time. Their educational and college experience was never the same as a normal college student in ages. So let’s stop trying to pretend college football was some pure love of the game stuff.

If you read Bacon’s Endzone, he talks about how in the oversigning days, we would sign 140 scholarship players meaning we would sign a ton of players just to be stranded on the pine without even a chance of playing and no real easy way of transferring to another team. Dave Brandon was the specific player he discussed who only got in on 1 game during Michigan’s 1971-73 run where we had only 2 losses and 1 tie. So in 1973 Bo decided to run a scrimmage of players who didn’t get into the previous week’s game called the “Toilet Bowl” (talk about fucking degrading your players who aren’t contributors; all this love and talk about Bo but the man was a fucking bully in more ways than one) and at this point Dave Brandon was getting pretty discouraged that he came to Michigan just to sit on the bench for his whole career and was not enthused about playing in the “toilet bowl”. Bo picks up on his apathy and then pretends to kick him off the team and tells him to go pack up (like is this how a leader behaves? Pretend to kick people off the team to prove a point? Urban Meyer behavior). And people still want to bemoan the 85 scholarship player limit, the NIL, the transfer rules? We want teams to stack players who have no chance of seeing the field but still ask them to give their full dedication and time to the team to the point where now they still can’t pursue a normal education & college experience but they have absolutely no shot of seeing the field. Those are the players who throughout modern CFB have gotten screwed the most. Imagine some of those talented athletes having the ability to transfer to another school to actually get playing time. Or some of them wouldn’t have even come to UM since we would’ve been at a 85 scholarship limit and they would’ve gone elsewhere to a school they had a chance to play. Instead we put them out into the working world without prospects of professional football and also without the skills & experience that most Michigan grads have to have good earning potential. I understand there’s guys like Hackett and Brandon who still became wildly successful but there’s a hundreds and hundreds of football players who could’ve have had and deserved better economic prospects with modern scholarship limit rules, NIL, and transfer rules.

I'm with you emotionally, but I try to keep in mind that over a third of college students (not just athletes, but all students) transfer at least once during their college careers. I have no idea what the statistics are for athletes, but I think it's worth understanding that there are a lot of reasons why a college kid might want to change schools, and they're not all sports-related.

I'm sorry, but that sounds a lot like pearl clutching to me.  These kids are worked to the bone and everyone makes money off of them except them, and now that's changing.  A lot of them are going to live a life around football, even if they don't make it to the nfl, many end up as high school coaches or other periphery jobs.  They are at college to learn about football, period.  And god bless them.  I don't care if the future RB coach at some highschool has knowledge of Locke and Shakespeare.  His relevant job training is what he's spending 40+ hours per week on, football. 

Pay them.