Michigan Wolverines football coach Jim Harbaugh recently proposed an agreement between the NFL and the NFL Players’ Association to lift the requirement that players be three years removed from high school to be draft eligible. That means getting the NCAA to change football eligibility rules to be more like basketball, which allows underclassmen to return to school after the draft within certain guidelines.

U-M Athletic Director Warde Manuel said he and Harbaugh were on the same page when it came to that and the name, image and likeness legislation that will be voted on in January.

“From the perspective of football, I think the time has come,” Manuel said on a recent In The Trenches podcast with former U-M All-American Jon Jansen. “I think Jim is right … there are times athletes feel like we’re the ones holding them back from an opportunity to go professional. I agree with the rationale and the reason to do it, to allow young people to have the option if they can take it at some point while they are in college.”

The argument can be made that there are certain “transformative” players, maybe even out of high school but definitely in their early years of college, who have the ability to make the NFL leap earlier, Manuel added.

"Jim and I had had several conversations along these lines about his thoughts … I was very pleased when I saw him put it in writing,” Manuel said. “We talked about it, went back and forth in terms of it. I think it’s a good thing to start the conversations.

"Basketball has the G League, baseball you can be drafted in the Minor Leagues and you can still play three years in college. Hockey you can get drafted while you’re still in high school, and I think the NBA is thinking about the possibility of doing a similar thing … allowing [being drafted right from high school].”

On Name, Image and Likeness, Manuel is all for allowing collegiate athletes to profit from their names … to a point. They’ve already been doing it in different ways, he noted.

“Student athletes write a book and want to put their name on it, that’s allowable already,” he said. “If they’re part of a class and they develop an app and want to go out to market and sell it, they can do that. There are multiple other things they can do.

“Now, there do need to be guard rails. We know already that stuff occurs nefariously. People are out to take advantage of people, to entice people, do things around recruiting. Some of it has already started. But Fortune 500 companies in the cities … there are movies, things people can get into in Los Angeles, whatever it is. I think people just need to pump their brakes and make sure we are not overselling anything, because this is really for the student athlete, for them … not for us to set up opportunities for them so we wouldn’t block opportunities they have. To me, it’s two different things.

They won’t approach G.M, Chrysler and Ford to give their students money, for example. But if those firms decide to do that on their own — as a part of working with students on campus so the student athletes can be a part of something — then more power to them, Manuel said.

“If it’s about them personally them being students and having opportunities … about them doing some training, tennis lessons, basketball lessons, football, those kind of things they are good at and known for and they want to do that, then they should have the ability to do that,” Manuel said. “But I do worry about some of the nefarious stuff … people wanting to come in, befriend, wanting to pay them to do something because want to get close to them.

“We’ll make sure we talk to them about gambling, information, insider information they’re giving out, those kind of things like we normally do anyway, but we have to be diligent about some of these things. But in general, I think it’s very positive. The devil is in the details … we have to work through different rules, and then we hae to vote in January. We have a good 8.5 months before we know what parameters are, and they’ll we’ll work around it. I think the discussion will be good.”

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