Written by Dan Murphy at ESPN.com
All roads lead to Rome, and college football is joining the caravan this weekend. Michigan’s football team will land in the Eternal City on Saturday for what could be the most unusual week of practice in the game’s history.
Jim Harbaugh, his staff and 99 of their football players will hold three workouts next week in Italy. They’ll spend the rest of their time abroad touring Rome and some of its biggest attractions. Harbaugh billed the trip in February as a cultural, educational and international football experience for his program. Earlier this week, he said he’s hoping the week is “the best experience in these youngsters’ lives up until this point” and the best experience of his too.
It’s an idea, hatched by the head man himself, that makes it awfully difficult for outsiders within the sport and beyond to criticize his desire to take Michigan on the road. His stated plans to make these international trips an annual affair is an obvious recruiting incentive (paid for by a single anonymous donor) that few other schools can afford to offer. It’s also a genuine effort to find creative ways to enrich his players’ lives within restrictive NCAA rules.
Pushing boundaries to seek any possible competitive advantage while simultaneously trying to spread the good word of football has, as much as anything, defined the first two-plus years of Harbaugh’s tenure at his alma mater. Rome may be his splashiest move to date, but it fits the mold.
Here’s more on what Michigan has planned this week and how in the world the winged helmet (now adorned with an Italian flag sticker) ended up flying nearly 5,000 miles from Ann Arbor:
How did we get here?
A year ago, Harbaugh shipped his team to Florida for a week of practice during the school’s spring break. The trip raised the ire of several other coaches and powerful figures in college football, and future trips like it were subsequently outlawed.
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