It’s that time of yr in which journalists and different media members get to ask university football coaches that regularly cause those meathead leaders of the gridiron to show their ass on subjects they’re sincerely now not too well-versed on. The maximum current edition of this annual subculture capabilities the University of Michigan teaches Jim Harbaugh tackling intellectual health struggles in athletes.
To be clean, Harbaugh didn’t broach this subject absolutely on his own. It got here up for the duration of an interview with ESPNU Big Ten Radio almost about an athlete’s right to immediately eligibility if they transfer schools for depression or other mental fitness-associated motives. Harbaugh decided to approach matters from the “slippery slope” perspective.
And the alternative piece that bothers me approximately is the teenager that announces, ‘This is a mental health issue. I’m tormented by melancholy.’ Or that’s a motive to get eligible. And once that’s recognized: ‘Hey, say this or say that’ to get eligible. The problem I see in that is you’re going to have guys that are, ‘Okay, yeah, I’m depressed.’
Say what they’ve got to say. But down the street, I don’t see that helping them if it’s now not a legitimate element. But no one might know. But what are you going to mention? Ten years down the street – ‘I simply had to mention what I had to say?’ And I suppose you’re putting them in a position that’s unfair, no longer proper. And, as you stated, you’re announcing it to mention it. And that’s no longer trustworthy. That’s not necessarily honest. It’s no longer something we need to be promoting on the college stage. Telling the fact matters. Especially at a college. You can’t have experiments that aren’t straightforward. You can’t lie about equations – you shouldn’t be lying in soccer. That’s a message that we should be teaching.
Harbaugh delivered that he cares “very deeply approximately mental health” and asked listeners no longer to write down him any letters.
Like maximum university coaches, Harbaugh is not any stranger to the procedure of gamers shifting in widespread. Still, there’s an awesome chance that the motive he brought up a mental fitness-related transfer is due to revel in involving a person who used to play for him.
Former Michigan tackle James Hudson transferred out of this system to the University of Cincinnati simply before bowl season started in December 2018. The Bearcats filed a waiver for immediate eligibility, in all likelihood citing a rule that allows athletes to play the identical season they transfer if it’s for mental fitness motives. But the NCAA rejected that waiver again in May. In a Notes app screenshot published on Twitter, Hudson wrote that the purpose for this denial is because he in no way spoke about his mental health for the duration of his time in Michigan.