Georgia head coach Kirby Smart was asked this week about Michigan holding spring practices at IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla., next week. Smart’s comments were fairly innocuous and in line with the common groupthink percolating everywhere except Ann Arbor.
“They’re obviously trying to gain a competitive advantage, and obviously that’s their right, but I think the NCAA in due time will have to step in and keep it from getting out of hand,” Smart said. “There are a lot of factors that people haven’t thought about with that deal. You’ve got to think about recruiting rules, how they are going to handle those? Is it an advantage or a disadvantage? Are they going to let coaches go to those? Are they going to be open practices? Do we go over there and watch them and scout them? If it’s open practices, why don’t we go? It’s a Pandora’s Box of what they’re going to get into.”
“Obviously, I don’t want to get into it because I’d like to practice right there in our facility, and I’d also like to have the prospects in state to come to our practices, and us not have to go to them.”
Jim Harbaugh, though, responded with a brush back pitch for the ages.
If the Georgia coach is implying any intent on our part to break rules, he is barking up the wrong tree.
— Coach Harbaugh (@CoachJim4UM) February 24, 2016
The “barking up the wrong tree” pun will draw headlines (including this one), but Harbaugh pretending not to know Smart’s name is the lead diss track on this album.
Here’s hoping, for our sake, “the Georgia coach” is ticked off enough to respond.