Jim Harbaugh Refusing To Release Michigan's Roster Is Pettiness 101
There are 9 days left in August. Week 1 of the college football season begins on Saturday. The Michigan Wolverines are 11 days away from taking on Florida in their season opener. Take all of this into account and you may find it a tad bit weird that Michigan’s football roster still has the likes of Jabrill Peppers and Taco Charlton on it. Why is this the case? Look no further than the milk drinking man himself, Jim Harbaugh:
Wolverine 247sports-While Michigan beat writers (including yours truly) had bemoaned the Wolverines’ lack of a roster update when they opted not to provide pre-Spring, post-Spring and pre-Fall rosters, all of which are common practice nationwide, the issues was not seen as substantial or consequential.
That changed last week, when Ryan Dunleavy of NJ.com wrote an article revealing that he had submitted a Freedom of Information Act to the University of Michigan seeking out an updated roster. The Rutgers beat reporter also insinuated that a lack of an update could lead one to believe that the Wolverines were hiding something.
That’s right, a Rutgers (!!!) beat reporter decided to submit a Freedom of Information Act, which was created to protect against corruption in government and big companies, to the University of Michigan and Jim Harbaugh. I’m glad that his capital j Journalism ethics class from journo-school ended up paying off for him. Never know when you’re going to have to pull the old FOIA card to find out the height, weights, and high schools for a bunch of 18-22-year-olds. Dunleavy concluded his piece with this:
NJ.com-This is about making life just a little extra difficult for everyone around Harbaugh. Except for his fellow millionaires.
Boom. Roasted.
Dunleavy’s request was submitted on August 11th, but Michigan told him he’d have to wait until the week of August 25th for the roster. That wasn’t good enough for Dunleavy, so he submitted another FOIA to Michigan and they told him, wait for it…..the exact same thing. Eventually, this entire fiasco reached Jim Harbaugh:
I guess nobody mentioned to Dunleavy that Jim Harbaugh is the KING of pettiness:
Dunleavy brought a knife to a gun fight in this pettiness battle. You thought an FOIA was going to scare Harbaugh? That’s what you brought? Well, guess what? Harbaugh brought a made-up tryout date (I can’t find ANY information on this “tryout”) the week of their first game to make your little government mandated act look like a little bitch. You think he cares that the Ice Hockey team has already released their roster?
NOPE.
What about the men’s basketball team?
NOPE.
This pettiness from Harbaugh goes far beyond just his battle with this random Rutgers beat reporter. This is just Harbaugh being Harbaugh. There is absolutely zero point to not releasing your roster in 2017. You can take last year’s roster and add the 2017 recruiting class to find out 95% of the roster, but Harbaugh just doesn’t care. He believes in his big football guy brain that not releasing his roster until a few days before Michigan’s first game will give his team a .001% advantage and that .001% advantage matters, dammit.
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This is nothing new, though. Harbaugh has been doing this for awhile, along with refusing to release depth charts. It’s a shame that Dunleavy didn’t have the creative juices to respond similarly to Colorado last year:
P.S. Ya’ll worried about rosters and Jim is over here enjoying the solar eclipse:
Shocker of the CENTCH that Harbaugh was one of the only coaches out there pumped up about the science behind the solar eclipse.