Every college football team is allowed 110 players to compete in fall camp. Simple, right?
Not exactly.
You would assume that all scholarship players would be involved in that 110 number, but that isn’t the case for Jim Harbaugh’s Michigan Wolverines.
In fact, he is giving every player a fair opportunity before the season begins, as he said on his podcast this week.
Harbaugh was originally talking about walk-on players, like third-string running back Tru Wilson, and the long road they almost always have to take to make it on to the team and contribute in an impactful way.
Host of Harbaugh’s podcast and Recruiting Director at Michigan, Matt Dudek, then kickstarted the conversation by asking how many players Harbaugh can have participate in fall camp.
After a bit of back and forth between the two, Harbaugh then dropped this:
“(The list has) been posted, we’ve posted it for the squad, so they know who’s in the 110 as of June 1 and who’s not in the 110 as of June 1,” Harbaugh said. “And we do expect that there will be movement. We expect and hope that ignites competition in the summer, because our guys know that 110 number is strictly based on merit, the team’s needs, talent, who’s gonna help at certain positions, who the best players are. There already is scholarship players who aren’t in the 110, there’s preferred walk-ons that are in the 110 and there are tryout guys who made it that way in the 110 right now.”
“We won’t know what that 110 final number is until about a week before we go to camp.
”The competitive waters are hot there.”
Now, if a scholarship player doesn’t make that 110 list, that does not mean he will lose his scholarship. Once a scholarship is accepted, Power 5 schools must remain committed to keeping an athlete on that scholarship, unless poor academics come into play.
Just because a scholarship athlete is not excelling athletically does not mean a Power 5 school can revoke that scholarship.
Regardless, this is an interesting development within the team. Harbaugh is all about equal competition among his players. We obviously do not know which scholarship players were left off the 110 list, but hopefully that gives those players extra motivation to work towards being better and eventually cracking the 110 list.