Lift of Satellite-Camp Ban Proof That Jim Harbaugh Is 2 Steps Ahead of SEC

It turns out Jim Harbaugh isn't just an annoyance after all. He is the perfect coach to fight off a cutthroat, backstabbing era. The power vortex of college football—SEC coaches—thought they were much too big for him. Ha!

When he started holding football camps in their corner of the country and taking a few recruits to Michigan when they had been slated by god-given right for the South, well, it was time to swat Harbaugh away. On Thursday, the SEC found something out:

In this case, they are the mosquitoes and Harbaugh is doing the swatting.

This is really becoming something to admire. It has been just one year since Harbaugh took over at Michigan, and he immediately went right after the SEC. He put his camps on their turf and set up in their backyard. He ripped into them fearlessly on Twitter.

He outsmarted them. And if you're living on tradition and establishment, look out: Harbaugh has a way of cutting right through it all. Let's put this simply—he just kicked the SEC's butt.

Here's what happened: The SEC and ACC were so freaked out by Harbaugh's little tour of football camps, known as satellite camps, off his own campus and in the South that they muscled up and had the NCAA ban the whole practice. That was way back in, well, early this month.

The ban kept teams from having camps off campus and also prevented coaches in general from working at other coaches' camps. The problem was that when those camps had coaches from all over, high school kids would be able to go to one camp and showcase their talents to coaches from all over. Kids would be discovered and get scholarships.

In their panic over Harbaugh, the SEC's coaches accidentally were crushing the hopes of good high school players without a ton of attention or family funds to take them all over the country to multiple camps just so multiple coaches could see them. So, the NCAA lifted the ban Thursday.

Ralph Russo/Associated Press

Harbaugh outsmarted the establishment. Again. He did it when he was Stanford's coach, too, embarrassing USC's Pete Carroll, who had built his team into the sport's rock stars.

Actually, Harbaugh doesn't get 100 percent of the credit. He was helped by the one force that rivals him...

Football moms. That included Rozlyn Peoples of Detroit, who started a petition to complain about the ban even though her son, Donovan, is a 5-star recruit and didn't really need the camps. She wanted to help others. Her petition has over 14,000 signatures online.

"LOL," Kenthia Morton, one of those moms from Detroit, texted me after hearing that the ban had been lifted. "Us sports moms are something else to deal with."

And now her son, Jaeveyon Morton, who we wrote about here, is going to be able to go to college.

"There is a God!" Kenthia texted, with both an exclamation mark and a smiley face.

She wasn't talking about Harbaugh.

I think.

Now, Harbaugh wasn't the first one to run a satellite camp. Penn State did it. Notre Dame did it. But Harbaugh made a whole summer tour of them, and it was his lack of respect for the religion of southeastern football that got to people.

"It seems to be outrage by the SEC and ACC," Harbaugh told Sports Illustrated's Michael Rosenberg after the ban was put in place. "They power-brokered that out...the image that comes to my mind is guys in a back room smoking cigars, doing what they perceive is best for them."

Harbaugh also ripped into Ole Miss coach Hugh Freeze, suggesting he was just too lazy to run his own satellite camps. On ESPN's Mike & Mike show, he also ridiculed SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey for "fake outrage" in saying that Harbaugh's own team practices over spring break in Florida threatened spring break. He ripped Georgia coach Kirby Smart for suggesting that Michigan's practices threatened to break rules.

And when Tennessee coach Butch Jones joked that he was going to stop in during lunch and watch Harbaugh's practices, Harbaugh fired back on Twitter: "Suggestion to my Rocky Top colleague, rather than lunch in Florida you might spend your time and focus attending to your present team."

Harbaugh uses Twitter as a weapon while making the SEC look like power brokers in black and white in smoke-filled back rooms.

He brings in Tom Brady and makes a production at his signing days. He turned around Stanford in about 15 minutes and then took down USC. He turned around the San Francisco 49ers, one of the worst-run franchises in sports, just as fast.

And now he's heading straight for the heart of college football.

When the NCAA dropped its ban, that helped a lot of kids who need it most. That's the big thing here.

While the SEC is still winning national championships on the field, this was an incredible knockout against the establishment. Backstabbing Harbaugh just isn't going to work.

Greg Couch covers college football for Bleacher Report. Follow him at @gregcouch.