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BRADENTON, Fla. — When it was reported that Tennessee offered scholarships to 20 IMG Academy players, it reeked of desperation.
The timing of it stood out more than anything. Tennessee, in the midst of a barrage of negative press, made a feeble attempt to make an impression on some of the nation’s top players before Jim Harbaugh set up shop at their home base.
Certainly Tennessee’s actions don’t represent the entire SEC — thankfully — but there is a concern among some SEC folk that Harbaugh’s adventure into SEC territory will pose an immediate threat to the conference. Greg Sankey can deny it all he wants, but he knows that his latest public push for spring break practice regulations have Harbaugh-driven motives. Even Bret Bielema and Butch Jones wanted to take a trip to Bradenton to see what all the fuss was about.
Bielema pumped the breaks on that idea when he was told by the NCAA that it was a quiet period. Rarely would I suggest copying Bielema, but in this case, it seems appropriate.
Let’s all pump the breaks on the notion that Harbaugh’s Florida trip is threatening the SEC.
For now, it isn’t. Could it down the road? Perhaps, but it would take a lot more than a few padless March practices for Harbaugh to truly shake up the narrative.
If you’ll recall, Harbaugh gained more attention than anybody during recruiting season. With Tom Brady and Derek Jeter on hand, Michigan signed the No. 5-ranked group in the country according to the 247Sports Composite rankings. Despite all of the attention, Harbaugh’s 2016 class still finished behind Alabama and LSU. Michigan landed 14 four-stars and consensus No. 1 recruit Rashan Gary.
Only one of them came from SEC country. That one recruit was Devin Bush Jr., whose father was hired by Harbaugh last month.
Harbaugh is still just trying to establish roots in the South.
There are still others — Clemson, Florida State and Ohio State to name a few — that pose a more immediate threat to the recruiting landscape than Michigan. Not surprisingly, those three schools have all appeared in national championships in the last three years.
Michigan, on the other hand, hasn’t won a share of a conference title since 2004. That could easily turn around with Harbaugh at the helm. But for him to make a dent in the SEC’s recruiting landscape, he has to sustain success.
Sure, recruits are going to notice and they might even compliment Harbaugh’s tactics. If Harbaugh has it his way, there will be a few top recruits who attend that one open practice — yes, that’s all they get to see — and turn down an SEC school to come to Michigan. That’s the best-case scenario for Michigan.
The bigger threat to the SEC is the manner in which some of its high-profile figures handled this situation. If Bielema, Sankey, Jones and Kirby Smart had chosen not to comment on anything Harbaugh/spring break practice-related, the SEC wouldn’t look like it’s back on its heels.
Instead, they played right into Harbaugh’s hands.
When Harbaugh took the field in Bradenton for the first time on Monday, he took the high road. He denied that there was any recruiting advantage to his spring break practices, and he denied knowing that there were coaches who didn’t approve of his bending of the rules.
He wasn’t shooting from the hip then, nor was he three days later when he went after Jones on Twitter. He told him to “worry about his own team.” Harbaugh took direct shots at Georgia and Tennessee, not Alabama and LSU.
Why? Well, Michigan isn’t on their level yet.
One week of spring break practices isn’t going to change that.
Connor O’Gara is Senior Editor of SaturdayTradition.com, a sister site to SDS that covers all things Big Ten. He attended two of the Michigan practices and talked to Wolverines coaches and players.
Connor O'Gara is the senior national columnist for Saturday Down South. He's a member of the Football Writers Association of America. After spending his entire life living in B1G country, he moved to the South in 2015.
