Why Jim Harbaugh should spurn the NFL, stay at Michigan and fight to get players paid

HOUSTON — If Michigan wins the national title on Monday night, the stage will be set for a seminal moment in college sports. 

All season long, and once again Saturday prior to the College Football Playoff championship game, coach Jim Harbaugh has advocated for players to share in the billions being generated by this sport. To do it with a trophy in his hand, on the night the entire country is paying attention, would be arguably the most significant stance for athletes’ rights ever taken by a prominent coach. 

“People come to watch the players,” Harbaugh said Saturday. “They really don't come to watch the coaches. They don't come watch the administrators. They come to watch the players. And in a world where the revenue is ever growing, the student-athletes being able to participate in that ever-growing revenue, who could argue against them?”

Even now, in an era of players being able to profit off name, image and likeness, arguing for schools and the NCAA to share revenue with athletes is a bold step for a college coach. Few have had the foresight, desire or guts to do it.

But if Harbaugh believes that sincerely and isn’t merely using it as media chum to distract from his multiple imbroglios with NCAA rules, then he needs to do it by staying at Michigan and fighting the fight. It’s easy to talk. It’s a lot easier when you have one foot out the door waiting for an offer from the NFL. 

“There used to be a saying, ‘hey, we're all robbing the same train here,’” Harbaugh said. “Coaches, administrators, media, television stations, conferences, NCAA. And the ones that are really robbing the train, the ones that could really get hurt, are getting a very small piece. That needs to change.”

There’s no reason to believe Harbaugh is being insincere in his desire to see athletes start to get a cut of the massive (and growing) revenues generated by college football. It does, however, make for a convenient topic on a day like Saturday to suck up some oxygen that might otherwise go to sign-stealing or breaking recruiting rules during the COVID-19 dead period back in 2020, both of which have put Michigan and Harbaugh in the crosshairs of the NCAA enforcement staff. 

Harbaugh may come off as the most aloof man in college football, but he’s not a dummy when it comes to how the media works. If he says a little as possible about the things he doesn’t want to talk about while fully engaging on the topic of athlete pay, he knows which one is going to get more attention.

“There's a lot of people profiting off the backs of student-athletes, and they do a lot of work to keep it from them with all kinds of rules,” Harbaugh said. “And (they) have been doing it for a long time.”

Even if they recognize the inequity of the current system, the vast majority of coaches don’t talk that way -- and they sure don’t do it in public. The big buzzword in college athletics these days is “alignment,” and when someone is making millions of dollars a year to coach, being out of alignment with their athletics director or president on that issue is more trouble than its worth. 

Harbaugh doesn’t care, which is admirable these days. In the eyes of some Michigan fans, it has even made him more of a legend because they truly believe the NCAA targeted him due to his renegade views. Though it’s a complete fiction, the narrative of Harbaugh as a martyr is far more palatable than the boring reality that Michigan was bad at cheating and made it very easy for the NCAA to find out. 

But if Harbaugh gets up on stage Monday night with a trophy in hand amidst the confetti falling at NRG Stadium and says the kinds of things he said Saturday, it will have an impact similar to former UConn basketball player Shabazz Napier using the Final Four platform in 2014 to tell the world he sometimes went to bed starving because he couldn’t afford food. 

It doesn’t matter that the reality was more nuanced or that the NCAA was already en route to changing its rules so that schools could offer unlimited meals, it brought an to the attention of millions of people and pressured the NCAA to act quickly. Similarly, there’s already a movement being led by NCAA president Charlie Baker that would require the highest-revenue schools to put a minimum of $30,000 per year in a trust fund to pay at least half their scholarship athletes.

The conversation is just beginning, and there’s a long way to go before all the details are in place, but Baker’s proposal will be discussed in depth next week in Phoenix during the annual NCAA convention. A newly-minted national championship coach making that case for the entire world to see has the potential to influence the tone of the debate and supercharge the urgency to do something significant. He even suggested Saturday that every coach, administrator and others profiting off the labor of college athletes should have five to 10 percent of their salary put into a pot that would be redistributed to players. 

“It's time to share,” Harbaugh said. “Maybe that's a start, a way.”

Whether you like that idea or not, at least somebody is willing to say it would be ridiculous for Michigan to offer Harbaugh a $9 or $10 million per year contract while claiming there’s not enough money to share revenues. It’s actually a very easy concept: If schools always seem to find enough money to hire and fire coaches, why would that be any different if they suddenly have to pay a workforce of athletes? It’s simply a matter of priorities. 

“If things can change as they've changed so quickly in college athletics just this year – just in 2023, we've seen so much change, including a whole conference going into a portal – then you're hopeful,” Harbaugh said. “I mean, you're confident that this is something that could change rather quickly with the right voice, with the right people talking about it, with eventually someone to speak for the players.”

So why wouldn’t Harbaugh be that person? The answer may be because he’s about to become the coach of the Los Angles Charges or Las Vegas Raiders or some other franchise.

Nobody knows what Harbaugh is going to do, but there’s a strong sense that Monday will be his last game coaching the Wolverines. When you look at all the factors in play – his desire to take another shot at winning a Super Bowl, the uncertainty of what lies ahead with the dual NCAA investigations and the possibility of going out as a national champion – it certainly lines up for an exit. 

“I'll gladly talk about the future next week,” Harbaugh said Saturday. “And I hope to have one, how about that? A future, I hope to have one, yes. Thank you.”

But if he truly cares about this issue, Harbaugh can actually make a difference by staying at Michigan and becoming that advocate he says is so necessary. Among his peers, nobody else has shown much interest in doing it. And Harbaugh certainly can’t be that transformational figure if he’s off in the NFL. 

For the longest time, Alabama’s Nick Saban has been the conscience of the sport when it comes to the big issues. When he speaks, people listen. But Saban at 72 years old is probably close to the end of his career. When he exits the stage, there’s going to be a leadership vacuum someone like Harbaugh could fill if he truly had the desire to stay at Michigan and make a stand. 

If Michigan wins its first national title since 1997, Harbaugh’s coaching legacy will be set for the rest of time. But if he wants to become one of the most important people in the history of the college football, there’s only one option: Stay at Michigan and do the hard work required to get this sport to change.