Getty Jim Harbaugh of Michigan football. Does he get the same treatment as Nick Saban?
Are we seeing a Michigan double-standard playing out in real time? That is the thrust of things out of Ann Arbor, where not only did Michigan football lose out on prospective prized transfer Domani Jackson, but it lost out to Alabama, the team it plays in the Rose Bowl on Monday. A little extra outrage: There was video showing Jackson at an Alabama practice shaking hands with coach Nick Saban, the kind of seemingly harmless violation for which the NCAA hounded Jim Harbaugh in recent years.
The video came from the AL.com website with the caption, “Nick Saban greets former USC cornerback Domani Jackson at Alabama’s Thursday afternoon Rose Bowl practice.” Thursday was December 28, in the NCAA’s recruiting “dead zone.”
Nick Saban greets former USC cornerback Domani Jackson at Alabama’s Thursday afternoon Rose Bowl practice
#rolltide #rtr #nicksaban #domanijackson #transferportal #alabamafootball #fyp #alabama #crimsontide #recruiting @domanijackson1
As the Michigan football account Michigan Nation 2 posted on Twitter/X:
“This is a level 1 violation. Domani was clearly invited by coaches to a practice. Nick Saban made it a point to run up to him and greet him. One of the assistants had to point out Saban to Domani too. Domani Jackson was not committed to Alabama. Even if he was it doesn’t matter. As he was still in a position of changing his mind.”
Will Nick Saban Face Punishment?
Of course, the outrage from Michigan comes in part from the fact that Jackson is a good player and that Michigan football recruited him in 2021, before he committed to USC, and again this month after Jackson entered the transfer portal. But more than that, it is the notion that Harbaugh was suspended for the opening of this season for relatively low-level violations, including buying burgers for prospective recruits and meeting with recruits via Zoom during the Covid-19 season.
As one Michigan fan on Twitter/X noted: “BUT BY ALL MEANS DO NOT BUY HIM A CHEESEBURGER FOR GOD’S SAKE.”
Another wrote, “Nick Saban and former USC cornerback Domani Jackson who is currently in the portal. Is this a blatant violation? Or is this allowed….”
Yet another said, “My only point was what Saban did with Domani Jackson is at the same level as the recruiting violations that started the Jim Harbaugh witch hunt. Harbaugh wouldn’t have been punished for those acts by themselves, unfortunately, the NCAA decided to escalate.
Jim Harbaugh & Michigan Football Active in Transfer Portal
Michigan football is slated to lose four players via the transfer portal this year, with two coming in. Harbaugh is, typically, aggressive in his use of the portal, and though the Wolverines have been connected to several players—including Jackson and former UCLA quarterback Dante Moore, who eventually committed to Oregon—they’ve mostly missed out so far.
Still, Harbaugh is a staunch supporter of the transfer portal.
“These people that are against it, you’re against something that allows a young man and his family to decide where he wants to go to college and where he wants to continue college,” Harbaugh said over the summer. “Why be against that? The players and their families, they’ll tell you, I think, if you really studied it that there’s more good there than negative.”
Harbaugh went on: “The question is, what is driving the ‘We don’t like the portal?’ or ‘We don’t like players and their families getting to choose where they go to school? Who’s opposed to that and why are they opposed to that? Give that a chance.”