The NCAA banned satellite camps a week a ago, prohibiting teams from running camps and clinics that are away from their home practice facility, and Jim Harbaugh is not pleased.
Harbaugh uses the camps away from campus as a recruiting tool for high prospects, so this hurts his chances of acquiring top prospects outside of the Big Ten region.
Campcrush.com has the details:
As Harbaugh tells SI : “The incompetence of the NCAA has reared its ugly head yet again.”
From there, Harbaugh really got going, firing at the NCAA’s use of the term “student-athlete,” a certain SEC head coach and the two conferences (the SEC and the ACC) that seem to benefit from this ban. However, Harbaugh wants to be clear: The NCAA is not some nebulous group of bureaucrats. It is comprised of the people who work in intercollegiate athletics. Coaches, athletic directors and school presidents make these decisions. And they completely botched this one.
Harbaugh says the ruling was “knee-jerk … like somebody was shaving in the morning, cut themselves when they were shaving and said, ‘Let’s just ban satellite camps.’
“I mean, what’s it based on? A survey? There wasn’t a lot of discussion or study. What are the facts? What are the perils and merits of making that decision? It just seemed lacking in that regard.”
Harbaugh says, “This is going to affect thousands and thousands of people.” That is no exaggeration. It willaffect thousands and thousands of people. To understand why, let’s look at what the NCAA really did.
Harbaugh points out the hypocrisy: “During the NCAA basketball tournament we discuss the term ‘student-athlete’ ad nauseam in promoting our governing institution and our member institutions. Then, when we have an opportunity to truly promote the ‘student-athlete’ with a concept shared by educators and football men from all backgrounds, our leadership goes into hiding.
Harbaugh’s rage likely stems from the fact that Nick Saban spoke out against satellite camps shortly before they were banned last week. Satellite camps help Big Ten schools gain recruits from the SEC region, so it’s no surprise that Saban would be in favor of the ban.