Former 49ers coach and multi-team quarterback Jim Harbaugh seems to be at his happiest when something is pissing him off. And he’s currently rankled at the group that runs college football.
The Michigan coach has another beef with the NCAA -- and he has become more than willing to poke a bear that could, if it really wanted, treat him like Leonardo DiCaprio. (Just ask Jerry Tarkanian. Well, I mean, figuratively.)
The off-again, on-again satellite camp tour has commenced, and Harbaugh used an appearance in Baltimore on Monday as the platform for his latest verbal assault on the four-letter governing body. In so doing, Harbaugh made a not-so-subtle suggestion that the NCAA polices football more aggressively because its teams consist primarily of African-American players.
“Football gets the majority of the scrutiny and the rules that are intended to hurt the student-athlete and it makes no sense,” Harbaugh said, via ESPN.com. “That’s why I’m pointing this out because some of these other sports aren’t getting it. . . . Let’s take lacrosse for example. White sport, rising, affluent sport. Recruit ‘em in the eighth grade, dark period for a couple days in August, and it’s a totally different situation.”
When it comes to football, Harbaugh believes that the NCAA is constantly looking for violations.
“I believe we can do interviews,” Harbaugh initially told reporters. “That’s what we’ve been told. You were there, you saw what’s going on with the changing daily rules. It’s very interesting. It’s very interesting. The NCAA compliance people are here. They’ve been at every single one. The NCAA has sent at least one or two of their people to each of our camps and we’ve had one of our compliance people at each one of these camps. That notion that there’s not oversight of these camps -- you’ve seen it with your own eyes, there absolutely is.”
Via CFT, Harbaugh separately complained that the NCAA makes up the rules as it goes. Of course, the NFL has been accused from time to time of doing the same thing.
But the NCAA seems to be even worse. For Harbaugh, the fact that he never ended up on the wrong side of the league office’s we’ll-do-what-we-want approach to rules enforcement reinforces that perception.
Which brings me (finally) to the broader, spinning-it-forward point. If Harbaugh has become sufficiently exasperated with the NCAA after only one season with Michigan, how long will it be until the guy who never stays at a job more than four years returns to the NFL?
