I’m a faithful Wolverine, but I think that the response from Lloyd Carr and the others to Jim Harbaugh’s accurate comments is ridiculous. Note that none of them actually deny the allegations (because they know they’re true). They’re just upset because he’s perceived as being “disloyal.” I think that Michigan does as well to uphold academic standards as any program with their kind of record, but the notion that they don’t coddle the athletes academically is ridiculous. It’s unfortunate that this perception carries over to the athletes that are true scholars (and Michigan has many of those as well–I attended engineering classes with some football stars during my time there), but sometimes life isn’t fair.

They would have been better off not responding at all, since he certainly didn’t intend it as a specific slam at his own school, so much as the system in general. He was merely using Michigan as an example with which he was intimately familiar. In fact, you could replace the word “Michigan” in his comments with almost any other program, except perhaps Stanford, but then, they don’t win nearly as many football games.