Jim Harbaugh's Recruiting Tactics a Reality of Michigan Rejoining CFB's Elite

As a creative renaissance led to the so-called "Golden Age of TV" in the mid-2000s, the entertainment landscape found itself littered with complex antiheroes who could not be easily defined.

Tony Soprano was a family man and a mob boss. Don Draper was a creative genius and a womanizing sociopath. Walter White was a high school teacher who built a drug empire.

"These were complicated male leads whose actions can be described as morally ambiguous at best," wrote the Atlantic's Hope Reese in 2013.

In a way, college football, especially when it comes to recruiting, isn't much different.

The comparison might be a bit dramatic—this is just sports, after all—but the reality is that what it takes to land a top-level recruiting class doesn't always mesh with the "student-athletes first" personas that many college coaches try to portray while in the public spotlight. Coaches can claim to be putting GPAs over on-field product, but when it comes to attracting those players in the first place, matters can get messy.

If Nick Saban has established himself as the Tony Soprano of the college football world and Urban Meyer is Don Draper, then Wednesday marked the moment Jim Harbaugh's Walter White revealed his Heisenberg alter ego to the world.

While the second-year Michigan head coach has dominated the headlines in the run-up to national signing day, with unorthodox sleepovers, tree climbing and some "Netflix and chill," Wednesday brought the first real backlash Harbaugh has seen in his 13 months in Ann Arbor.

After decommitting from the Wolverines' 2016 class, 4-star offensive tackle Erik Swenson revealed to MLive.com's Nick Baumgardner that he only did so after being told there was no longer room for him in the class he had been committed to for more than two years.

Swenson later revealed to UofMDiehards.com's Bobby Kunz that Harbaugh's withdrawal of his offer came as a surprise, with no prior hints this could be an outcome. With national signing day a mere two weeks away and Swenson having been firmly committed to Michigan since 2013, the timing could not be worse for the Downers Grove, Illinois, product.

Carlos Osorio/Associated Press

Meanwhile, Harbaugh has been touring the country, very publicly recruiting the players who could wind up taking Swenson's spot.

Welcome to the world of big-boy recruiting, Michigan. If you want to land an elite class—the Wolverines' currently ranks sixth with the chance to rise in the next two weeks—prepare to get your hands dirty.

It's something Alabama and Ohio State fans have come to terms with since the arrival of their respective head coaches, two of the most aggressive recruiters in college football history.

For the Crimson Tide, accusations of "oversigning"—the practice of a team adding more players than it has space for and then using roster management tactics to get under the NCAA limit of 85 scholarships—have become commonplace throughout Saban's tenure.

In 2013, Alabama signed 26 prospects to the nation's No. 1 class, despite only having 14 spots available on its roster, per CBSSports.com. Yet by the time the season rolled around, the Crimson Tide were back down to the 85-scholarship limit.

Conducting such practices means every scholarship matters that much more, leading to situations like Michigan unexpectedly dropping Swenson. For his part, Saban has denied using roster management tactics, insisting each player who has exited the program—thus helping it reach its required scholarship limit—has done so of his own volition.

"We have never gotten rid of a player because of his physical ability," Saban said in 2011, per AL.com's Don Kausler Jr.

"Any player that has left this program prematurely has created his own exit route," Saban added. "He's created his own conditions for leaving, if that makes any sense, whether they're academic in terms of not doing what he needs to do academically, whether there's some violation in terms of team rule or policy, whatever it is. Some of these things we're not allowed to comment on."

LM Otero/Associated Press

The numbers over the years, however, speak for themselves.

Ohio State has been accused of using similar tactics under Meyer, who, like Saban, has denied oversigning his roster.

"I've never really oversigned," Meyer said on national signing day in 2015. "We just don't do that."

The Buckeyes have, however, found themselves in situations similar to the one Michigan is in at the moment, needing to drop previously committed players in order to make room for more prized targets.

Such was the case last fall, when 4-star running back George Hill decommitted from Ohio State after having been the Buckeyes' first commit in their 2016 class since June 2014.

Four days after Hill, now committed to Pitt, decommitted from Ohio State, the Buckeyes received a commitment from 4-star running back Antonio Williams. Quite the coincidence, huh?

Ohio State fans have argued the timing of the two otherwise similar situations is what makes their favorite team's recruiting more morally acceptable, but at that point, you're pretty much splitting hairs. Besides, Harbaugh has already admitted to roster management methods such as not guaranteeing scholarships for fifth-year seniors, a tactic the Buckeyes have used more frequently under Meyer as well.

"A fifth year is mutual," Harbaugh said last August. "When it comes to a fifth year, if you have a fifth year of eligibility, then it becomes, 'Do you want to come back for a fifth year, and does the football team mutually want you to come back for a fifth year?'"

NCAA rules prevent coaches from commenting on unsigned players, and with Swenson landing at another school, Harbaugh will ultimately be able to dance around any questions on the matter that come his way.

But don't expect this to be the last time controversial recruiting tactics are associated with the Michigan program as long as the Wolverines are competing with the Alabamas and Ohio States of the world.

Welcome to modern day recruiting, Wolverines fans. Like TV nowadays, it's not always for the faint of heart.

Ben Axelrod is Bleacher Report's Big Ten lead writer. You can follow him on Twitter @BenAxelrod. Unless noted otherwise, all quotes were obtained firsthand. All statistics courtesy of cfbstats.com. Recruiting rankings courtesy of 247Sports.