Michigan's Jim Harbaugh has a point: College football is broken. And not sustainable
Jim Harbaugh showed up with notes to his weekly, in-season news conference Monday. That meant he was extra serious. And if the notes didn’t cue the import, his fist, pounded several times on the lectern, surely did.
Harbaugh came armed with a big idea, and before he took questions about his Michigan football team's upcoming season opener Saturday at Michigan Stadium against East Carolina, before he discussed how it would feel watching from television, if he decided to watch at all — his bosses suspended him for the first three games of the season to pre-empt a potentially harsher penalty from the NCAA — before any of those fairly pressing topics, the U-M coach had something to say:
College football is broken. And not at all sustainable. Unless universities start paying their players.
Harbaugh doesn’t know how it would work. He just knows it’s wrong for everyone involved, including him, to profit directly — in cash — while players do not.
“What I don’t understand,” he said, “is how the NCAA, the television networks, conferences, universities, and coaches can continue to pull in millions and in some cases billions of dollars of revenue off the efforts of student-athletes across the country … without providing enough opportunity to share in the ever-increasing revenues.”
Harbaugh has a point. He’s made it before. Never so emphatically.
Why now? Why open his news conference the week his team’s season kicks off with a broad missive?
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He didn’t give a direct answer, other than that he’d been ask a few general questions about the state of the game at a recent news conference and he got to thinking and taking notes and decided it was time.
Now, the more skeptical among you might wonder if he was trying to change the topic and thus, the headlines he knew would follow his statement. Then again, he had to have known that his plea to pay the players wouldn’t eat up the entire news conference, and that the questions about his suspension would still come.
Besides, he’d been asked about them plenty, and while Harbaugh can lean into eccentricity at times, he’s been consistent about sharing the wealth with the players. He was simply more pointed about it Monday, a lot more pointed.
“I want them to be treated with the respect and the dignity that they deserve,” he said. “... we have to try to make it work, we have to try to make it better, and right now.”
The fist came down for emphasis. And he followed that with this:
“The current status quo is unacceptable, and it won’t survive. In my opinion, when we capitalize on the talent, we should pay the talent for their contributions to the bottom line.”
College football — and, to a lesser degree, college basketball — has been capitalizing on players’ “talent” for decades. What’s finally changing is the amount of “capitalizing.” As Harbaugh said, it’s billions, and for him, at least, it’s gotten too hard to stomach.
“As a former player and current coach — mentoring many of these student athlete — what I wanted to do was be a voice for these student athletes,” he said.
He also added that he doesn’t mind being a martyr. Oh, he didn’t use that word, but he might as well have.
“I’m aware and understand that when someone speaks out for those without a voice attempts are made to diminish the individuals character and credibility,” he said.
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Look, Harbaugh can be right and self-serving, though there is no hard evidence that’s what he was doing Monday.
Will his message play well with recruits? You betcha.
Will it will curry favor with the families of recruits? Of course.
In fact, a couple of his players took their turn at the podium Monday and said that while they weren’t thinking about the particulars of how revenue sharing might work, they were grateful their coach had their back.
So, yeah, Harbaugh’s message will sell to the folks that make the sport go, and largely determine wins and losses: the players. And it makes sense, because the players deserve to share in the spoils, beyond what they earn in name, image and likeness monies.
What will that look like?
Harbaugh couldn’t say. Frankly, he shouldn’t. He’s not an accountant, or a lawyer, or an administrator of finance or human resources. He is a CEO, and like most CEOs, he’s asking that the business he helps oversee figure it out.
“I’m not saying that I have all the answers,” he said. “What I’m hoping to accomplish today is sparking constructive conversation and timely action.”
Think of John F. Kennedy telling the scientists in his government to get a man too the moon. Now, the stakes aren’t that high, nor the goal as lofty, but figuring out the math and circuitry?
It’s complicated. And, as Harbaugh noted, best determined by getting all parties together in a room to hash it out:
“(The) NCAA, conferences, coaches, universities, certainly a group that represents the student-athletes, along (with) legal experts.”
This isn’t Harbaugh passing responsibility. This is Harbaugh using his voice to try to get a movement going. And whatever else you think of him as a coach, or his motives in pushing this message at this moment, his history suggests he sincerely believes what he is selling.
He may not have the answers, or even what a starting point might look like, but he is savvy — and self-aware — enough to understand he’s made millions coaching players who haven’t shared in those millions.
Not directly. Not as fellow employees, or even contractors, because that’s what it’s going to have to look like sooner or later. No more hiding behind “amatuerism” or “innocence” or “the love of the game,” whatever that means.
Athletes don’t get to big-time college football without loving the game on some level. The game is too hard and demands too much. Of course they love it.
It’s time to pay them for their love, and their work, and their “talent.”
To stop playing games with those who make the games possible.
“I don’t know how that sausage is gonna get made,” admitted Harbaugh. But “the current system, the status quo? We can’t just keep kicking the can down the road.”
Because, as he said, “this is much bigger than any one game. Bigger than any game this season.”
Contact Shawn Windsor: 313-222-6487 or swindsor@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @shawnwindsor.
For openers: Pirates
Matchup: No. 2 Michigan (13-1 in 2022) vs. East Carolina (8-5 in 2022).
Kickoff: Noon Saturday; Michigan Stadium, Ann Arbor.
TV/radio: Peacock (online only); WWJ-AM (950), WTKA-AM (1050).
Line: Wolverines by 35½.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan football's Jim Harbaugh has a point: Time to pay the players
