Jim Harbaugh's One-Day Australian Camp Shows the NCAA Can Afford to Buy American

After the National Collegiate Athletic Association's ban on satellite camps was overturned, Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh, the king of satellite camps, went into a frenzy.

So far this offseason, Harbaugh has scheduled 28 satellite camps around the world, plus six more in Ann Arbor. That includes stops everywhere from Florida to California, and from Kansas to Australia. Yes, that Australia.

Australia isn't known as an American college football recruiting hotbed, but there is a unique pipeline of punters from the land down under. In fact, Michigan's punter last season was from Australia. So just in case this year's crop of homegrown punters isn't good enough, Harbaugh and his staff will travel halfway around the world to a suburb of Melbourne for a one-day camp in the hopes of possibly offshoring the job.

From a pure football perspective, this is arguably a good strategy for Harbaugh. It exposes Australia to Michigan's football brand, and it might make the best punters from the country more likely to choose the Wolverines. This is smart program marketing, and it's hard to fault Harbaugh for giving it a shot.

That said, it also highlights the fact that Michigan has way, way too much money.

Take off your college football goggles for a second, and think about how ridiculous this entire scheme is: flying executive staff to a distant continent, setting them up in hotels, putting together a recruiting and marketing pitch for a fairly large event. And all to maybe find an important, but not essential, immigrant employee prospect that your company might not have heard of otherwise, even though there are plenty of qualified candidates here in the United States!

Now consider that the Wolverines are doing 28 of these camps on the road—albeit with cheaper plane tickets—in just one summer. That's almost two extra seasons' worth of road basketball games, with very few events nearby. Michigan is very likely looking at a six-figure expense on a camp structure that netted it all of one recruit last season, a three-star player from Alabama with no major offers.

Michigan is doing this for the publicity and exposure. They're doing it so kids see the Michigan brand all over the world, and so they read articles like this and think, "Holy shit, those guys really want to win." There is nothing wrong with that, because Michigan is just doing what it's allowed to do under NCAA rules. But perhaps the NCAA should take note of the absurd priorities its prized amateurism rules create for its member schools: pay for satellite camps—and all sorts of other direct and indirect recruiting crap—because you can't just pay the athletes you're trying to sign.

The Michigan athletic department brought in $152 million last season. But since Michigan is a non-profit and has to look like it's broke in order to defend the NCAA's rules against paying players, the Wolverines have to spend that money. Last year, they spent $151 million.

That is an absurd number. Find me $151 million worth of practical, necessary things to spend money on in an athletic department. You can't. So Michigan and its big-time football counterparts are going on spending sprees, buying overpriced stuff they don't need. It's not just satellite camps—Yahoo's Dan Wetzel found that Michigan is hiring more people and paying them more money in an effort to, well, keep spending. And pretty soon, its current level of risible gold-plating won't be enough to keep up with increasing revenues.

The Big Ten is about to see its media-rights deal skyrocket in 2017, to almost double what it earned this year. Conference schools could soon be bringing in an extra $30 million per year. That's a lot of satellite camps!

Look, on face value there's no problem with satellite camps, and nothing wrong with athletic departments spending the money they make. This is America, and that's how this country works. If you make $150 million per year, you're allowed to buy a trip to a foreign country to maybe find a punter if you want to. That's what makes America beautiful.

However, there is a problem with schools taking on ridiculous expenses, and then crying that they're far too poor to ever possibly consider letting athletes keep a fair portion of the billions of dollars that their hard work earns.

Athletic departments aren't broke, like the NCAA claims—far from it. They just spend all of their money each year because they have no incentive to do anything else. Couple that with a low-cost, price-fixed labor force and ever-rising television revenue, and it's not surprising that coach and administrator salaries climb to previously unfathomable heights; that major athletic department staffing levels can rival those of the White House; that Harbaugh would have a $50,000-plus office bathroom installed while coaching at Stanford; that a Big Ten football power ends up mildly stimulating Australia's tourist economy. The money has to go somewhere, even if amateurism makes that process inefficient and ridiculous.

So the next time you hear NCAA president Mark Emmert or a power conference commissioner claim that there's just no money to pay players, remember Harbaugh's one-day punter-hunting trip to Australia—and how big-time college football can clearly afford to buy American.