Terry Foster: Jim Harbaugh Is A Trailblazer
By Terry Foster
@TerryFoster971
University of Michigan football coach Jim Harbaugh became even more dangerous by packing up his entire football team and practicing in Florida, which by the way is SEC country.
He became even more dangerous by the innocent gesture of coaching first base for the Tigers during a split squad game against the Pittsburgh Pirates. You add all of this with wrestling with recruits, well publicized sleep overs, climbing trees, wearing khakis and giving the SEC the middle finger and Harbaugh is a trailblazer that you cannot keep your eyes off of.
Do you know how the Republican Party is trying to find ways to stop the real Donald Trump? Well the NCAA must find a way to stop the Donald Trump of college football before he takes over. Trump, I mean Harbaugh, is forcing everybody's hands.
Here are your options in college football. Coaches must either join Harbaugh and do wacky things they don't feel comfortable with or the NCAA will impose rules making many of Harbaugh's legal but unconventional illegal.
He is weird but Harbaugh is keeping the Michigan brand in front of high school recruits. You don't think a bunch of them will be at IMG Academy Friday checking out the Wolverines? Even if they don't show up Michigan is making headlines across Florida.
University of Alabama coach Nick Saban sells his brand by being on ESPN every 30 seconds. Ohio State's Urban Meyer does the same. Recruits take notice.
In the next three or four years we will see the most talented players in Michigan football history come to Ann Arbor. That is what makes Harbaugh one of the most dangerous men in college football.
^^ The Red Wings were in no position to make a blockbuster move at the trade deadline because of salary cap restrictions. It caused angst among some Red Wings fans but I am fine with it. My position the past two years is to let the young dudes grow into men. If you do they will be champions someday. The banners will come if Red Wings General Manager Ken Holland builds around goalie Petr Mrazek and exciting center men Dylan Larkin and Andreas Athanasiou.
The Wings are beginning to score a little more and if they can keep that up and if Mrazek can get through his mini-slump in time for the playoffs, then this team can be dangerous this year even though you cannot consider them as Stanley Cup favorites.
Do you want to know what is dangerous? It is the antiquated old school thinking of conservative activist Phylliss Schlafly who wants baseball to ban foreign born players and return the game to the way it was in 1944. That was three years before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball in an all white league.
"It is time to cut off visas for foreign born baseball players and return our national pastime to Americans," she said in a column that appeared on Right Wing Watch.
Maybe I should cut her some slack. She is 91 years old and does not know any better.
And before you stand and applaud her remember that Tigers slugger Miguel Cabrera was born in Venezuela, not California.
(Foster can be reached at Terry.Foster@cbsradio.com)
