Michigan football seems to be sticking to its recruiting approach

When Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh first learned of NIL, he was all for the opportunities it would create for his players. He was also at the forefront in demanding revenue sharing for them, all the while insisting he wouldn’t partake in signing deals for recruits or offering inducements before they got to campus.

“What that literally means exactly is, we’re not going to pay signing bonuses for players to come on to the team. We’re not going to pay recruits to sign here,” Harbaugh said at the time in a move we called ‘noble, but risky.’ “When they get here and they do well, they’re going to profit pretty good here off the jersey sales and other examples.

“Simply put, that’s how I feel about it and what our policy is here. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it’s not the way to do it.”

Tennessee thought so. They requested — and received — a temporary injunction after the NCAA notified them of potential violation. Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti called it a win for student-athletes.

“The court’s grant of a preliminary injunction against the NCAA’s illegal NIL-recruitment ban ensures the rights of student-athletes will be protected for the duration of this case, but the bigger fight continues,” he said in a statement. “We will litigate this case to the fullest extent necessary to ensure the NCAA’s monopoly cannot continue to harm Tennessee student-athletes. The NCAA is not above the law, and the law is on our side.”

Will the injunction affect Michigan recruiting?

Now that it’s “legal” to offer prep student-athletes while they’re still in high school, Michigan collectives are ready and willing to respond, Champions Circle’s Jared Wangler told us last week. But it’s up to the coaches to decide if they want to go that route.

Michigan basketball Dusty May has insisted he and his staff aren’t going after the “how much will I get?” crowd, more interested in those who want to be at U-M for other reasons. Those players will be getting money and opportunities, too, of course, and May is still working daily with the collectives to ensure it. More than anything, though, he wants guys who want to be there for other reasons.

Several have asked in recent days if Moore and Michigan are offering contracts to preps on the recruiting trail now that it’s “legal.” We went to the source directly Thursday, asking Michigan football coach Sherrone Moore if his approach had changed since the Tennessee injunction.

“Not really,” Moore said. “We’ve seen what happened, but we’re still going to commit ourselves to doing it a certain way. Obviously, you have to adjust and have a plan, which we have. We’ll do different things to adjust our plan and our tactics, but we’re not going down the road of other schools and other ways to do it.”

Which, when the dust settles, might prove to be the best approach. Several of the pay-for-play schools have had locker room issues, for example. Michigan just won a national championship by keeping its team together with the help of only $4 million or so from the collective (other NIL opportunities for players pushed it up $2 million or $3 million, but still significantly below other schools.

This year, the Michigan collective is at three times last year’s budget, and it helped keep most of the major players here (albeit “at a discount” one family member said). They wanted to stick it out together and finish their careers with their brothers, and it appears the culture is strong.

And that’s what Moore and Co. appear to be shooting for at Michigan. The hope, of course, is that revenue sharing and more commitment to fund raising for players (theoretically) will keep the program competitive, and then some.

As of now, it appears that’s what they’re banking on. We should get a clue again on signing day in December as to how successful their short-term approach is, hoping of course that playing the long game pays off.

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