NCAA rule makes Michigan act of charity illegal

Surprise, it’s ridiculous. Michigan self-reported four secondary NCAA violations, none of which will result in any type of substantial punishment. Perhaps the silliest is as follows:

On March 18, Jim Harbaugh sent an autographed team helmet and jersey to an auction organized by a former high school classmate of his to benefit suicide prevention and awareness. The donation was not reviewed beforehand by Michigan’s compliance office, and the items that were auctioned ended up being used to assist a scholarship fund in the name of a student who had committed suicide, something Harbaugh was not aware of, according to U-M’s self-reported violation.

Per NCAA rules, programs/coaches may not personally donate items to benefit high school scholarship funds.

You can certainly see why colleges giving money straight to high schools wouldn’t work in amateur sports, when it comes to recruiting. And this is only Michigan self-reporting, not the NCAA investigating. Still, the fact that compliance departments know that even this sort of thing counts as a violation is ridiculous.

Harbaugh reacts:

Elsewhere in Michigan, EDSBS celebrated the Wolverines winning Charity Bowl 2015 by making fun of Michigan rivals.

Today in Everett Golson news. Tuesday it came out that Notre Dame was restricting its former QB from transferring to any team on its 2015 schedule, which includes Texas. Couple that with the potential difficulty of a transfer to an SEC school, and Florida State reportedly being the favorite makes sense.

Backing his man. The day after former lineman Simon Cvijanovic went off on twitter, Illinois athletic director Mike Thomas came out in support of head coach Tim Beckman. Cvijanovic accused Beckman of lots of things, but most importantly of physically abusing players, having a medical trainer who wasn’t licensed in the state, and of withholding medical information after a surgery.

[Explosion] Who are the most explosive running backs returning for 2015? Well, how do you determine explosiveness? How about like this:

Highlight Yards means the yards a back gets on top of the 5 he should usually get if the offensive line does a good job. A Highlight Opportunity is any running play over 5 yards; the running back gets credit for all yardage beyond the initial 5.

The national player average is 5.22 Highlight Yards per Opportunity, while the most explosive players double that. For example, Indiana’s Tevin Coleman averaged 9.79 in 2014. That meant any time Coleman’s line got him 5 yards, he was likely to keep going for at least 9 more.

There’s some familiar names on this list, and some you wouldn’t expect.

Longhorn Network chatter. Texas’ personal ESPN network is getting some business analysis, and it is not flattering analysis.

Roll Tide. I mean, who hasn’t seen a wedding cake that features Nick Saban holding a crystal football while riding an elephant?

There was a surprise waiting on the inside of the cake, though. [does gator chomp]

Not panicking yet. Last week, Auburn lost the commitment of five-star receiver Nate Craig-Myers. Bud Elliott posited that Craig-Myers’ decommitment may be related to the fact that receivers don’t catch a lot of passes in Gus Malzahn’s offense. College and Magnolia isn’t too worried, but thinks a big year from Duke Williams would go a long way towards quieting that.

SB Nation presents: The way-too-early 2016 NFL mock draft