Michigan has recently been both the benefactor as well as victim to players transferring. With former Central Michigan DE Mike Danna being the latest incoming, and QB Shea Patterson being the biggest impact incoming, the Wolverines have seen players like former five-star DT Aubrey Solomon and OT James Hudson elect to play elsewhere for the duration of their college careers.

And with the transfer portal now in place for the NCAA, college football is borderline in an era of veritable free agency.

On his weekly Attack Each Day podcast, Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh discussed with host Ira Weintraub, his father, Jack Harbaugh and director of recruiting Matt Dudek the ramifications for transferring, and how, right now, college football is in some type of proverbial purgatory when it comes to the rules allowing players to finish their careers elsewhere.

“It needs to be decided, too, amongst everybody across the college football landscape how it’s going to be treated,” Harbaugh said. “It was a case where, if you decided to transfer, you had to sit out a year from playing a sport – you’re ineligible. Or is that that anybody has a one-time transfer that they can make? A one-time transfer rule. Right now, I don’t know where we’re at. Somewhere in the abyss?”

Of course, every situation is different. Patterson came to Michigan after Ole Miss was hit with post-season sanctions, meaning, he would have had no opportunity to compete for a national title. Danna already spent four years in Mount Pleasant and has chosen to spend his final year with a potentially bigger spotlight in Ann Arbor.

When it comes to departing players, it gets a little tricky. Because sometimes, the reasons for leaving aren’t necessarily as cut and dry as the aforementioned who transferred into Michigan. Harbaugh explained a situation where the Wolverines had a player who wanted to depart early on, but due to the transfer rules, it was most advisable that he stick around, just to make sure that moving on was what he wanted to do.

Of course, the rules necessitated having that conversation, given the timing of that player’s decision. But, as Harbaugh said, if a player comes to campus, gives it the requisite time, and then realizes that Ann Arbor isn’t for him, then he’ll gladly support their decision to move on.

“Yeah, we’ve had that experience,” Harbaugh said. “Ja’Raymond Hall was a young man who came in as a mid-year. Within a couple weeks, he wanted to, he asked to be able to transfer. The thing I counseled him on was – one: if you transfer right now, you’ll violate this NLI rule, which I believe, at that time, you had to sit out for two years. Plus, you’d be leaving without passing a semester’s worth of classes. My advice to Ja’Raymond was: right now, you and me, we’ll sit down and circle this date on the calendar. One year from now. Give it your absolute best, pass classes, get the education. Work hard as a football player to improve as much as you can, and a year from now, if you feel the same way, yes – we’ll grant you that permission to speak to other schools.

“Ended up, he did everything right. From that point on, Ja’Raymond gave it his very best. He did well in school. He worked hard as a football player his freshman year, et cetera. And, a year later, he said he wanted to transfer. And we gave permission and Ja’Raymond ended up transferring to Central Michigan.

“So, you might be onto something there, Ira. But to (Jack Harbaugh’s) point, some real mistakes can be made if you’re just having a bad day one day, or you perceive you’re having a bad day, and then the next minute, you’re tossing away a $65,000 a year scholarship. That may not be the best thing to be doing.”

With the transfer portal making it so that players can enter their name, and schools can go and target them like in NFL free agency, Harbaugh is concerned that a bad day or snap judgment could see a player quickly reverse course on their commitment to the school that signed him.

Harbaugh doesn’t want to see that type of behavior become commonplace in college football. Bona fide reasons notwithstanding, players — or any college student, for that matter — should exhaustively examine whether or not moving on from their original commitment to a school is the right choice for them, he says.

“It is different,” Harbaugh said. “It is different that more guys are transferring. We’ve experienced it this year. Talking to guys, as a parent, there’s not even a good reason. Were you shaving this morning and you woke up and decided I want to transfer? If that’s my son or daughter – Gracie comes to Michigan next year, and it’s not gonna be you’re shaving your legs one day and then I want to transfer. Let’s talk about this and if there’s an issue, let’s try to get that corrected, that fixed, because the grass isn’t always greener on the other side of the road! I remember hearing that cliché, it’s cliché for a reason.”