Jim Harbaugh is entering his second season with the Los Angeles Chargers, but the former Michigan football coach is still supporting the program he took to three straight Big Ten championships and the 2023 national title. 

Champions Circle is currently auctioning team-issued gear that Harbaugh wore during his time with the Wolverines. Proceeds from the online garage sale will support Michigan football NIL. 

“A lifelong football man and one of the sport’s most vocal advocates for student-athlete rights, Coach Harbaugh was among the most prominent college coaches in support of Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) during his time at Michigan,” reads a press release.

“Before departing for Los Angeles, Coach Harbaugh generously donated a wide array of team-issued gear, much of it worn by him during his nine seasons at Michigan, to NIL collective Champions Circle. These items are now up for bid and funds from the items will benefit Michigan Football NIL.” 

The auction includes cleats, shirts, jackets and other memorabilia collected during Harbaugh’s tenure in Ann Arbor. Some of the featured items: 

• A team-issued “MICH1GAN 1,000 Wins” bomber jacket given to the Michigan football team after becoming the first program to reach the 1,000 all-time win mark during the 2023 season.
• Autographed “career hat” pack including one autographed hat from Jim Harbaugh’s high school football team, the Ann Arbor Pioneer Pioneers, one autographed hat from Jim Harbaugh’s college football team, the Michigan Wolverines, and one autographed hat from Jim Harbaugh’s second NFL team, the Indianapolis Colts.
• Team-issued Air Jordan 13 football cleats worn by Jim Harbaugh. 

Those interested in the auction can shop the collection by clicking here. Bidding closes Wednesday, July 9 at 7 p.m. ET. 

Champions Circle was the first name, image and likeness (NIL) collective to become an official partner of Michigan Athletics. 

“We welcome the Champions Circle as the first U of M collective to achieve the status as an official partner of the Michigan Athletics,” Athletic Director Warde Manuel said when that news was announced in 2023. “Champions Circle has been thoughtful and proactive in its approach to support NIL activities for student-athletes across our entire athletic department. They have done a tremendous amount of work to properly leverage our marks to benefit our young people.”

Other Champions Circle initiatives have included the “One More Year Fund,” which helped retain Blake Corum, Mike Sainristil, Zak Zinter, Trevor Keegan, Kris Jenkins and others for the 2023 national championship run. The “Those Who Stay (Home)” campaign helped welcome the nation’s No. 1 recruit, Bryce Underwood, to the program. According to Champions Circle, more than 11,000 individuals have donated to the NIL collective. 

“We want to thank our Founding Members and others associated with Champions Circle who have worked tirelessly behind the scenes to make it possible to continue our work building championship teams at Michigan,” the organization said.

A screenshot from College Football 26 showing Dabo Swinney’s in-game model sparked strong reactions online. originally appeared on Athlon Sports.

Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney is officially in a video game — but fans are wondering if EA Sports has ever actually seen him.

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On Tuesday morning, EA Sports released a much-anticipated deep dive into the Dynasty Mode of College Football 26, unveiling gameplay footage and new features ahead of the July 10 release. Among the biggest additions: real head coaches are now officially featured on the sidelines — a major upgrade from the generic placeholders used in previous versions.

But when the Clemson faithful caught their first glimpse of Swinney’s digital likeness, the reaction was… not kind.

The model, which appeared in a screen capture during the EA Sports YouTube reveal, drew near-instant criticism across social media. Fans pointed out that while coaches like Kirby Smart, Marcus Freeman, and James Franklin bear a strong resemblance to their real-life counterparts, Swinney’s digital double looks like a random character generated from scratch.

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“This isn’t Dabo. This is Dale from Clemson, who eats at the Esso every Sunday after church and thinks NIL is witchcraft,” one user joked on X.

Another fan added, “EA really looked at Dabo Swinney and said, ‘Let’s make him look like a divorced stepdad who sells pest control door-to-door.’”

Others compared the in-game Swinney to a mash-up of Jeff Daniels, Liam Neeson, Bob Odenkirk, and even former president George W. Bush — anything but the Clemson coach fans know so well.

To be fair, the inclusion of actual head coaches — including assistants like Garrett Riley and Tom Allen for Clemson — is a welcome and long-awaited improvement. It adds authenticity and immersion to a franchise that had been dormant since 2013 due to NIL-related legal battles.

Still, many wondered how EA could get Swinney so wrong after reportedly receiving thousands of reference photos from Clemson. “If this is the worst part of the game, we’ll survive,” one fan admitted. “But seriously, they had one job.”

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This isn’t the first time EA Sports has missed the mark with a Clemson figure. In last year’s College Football 25 trailer, a quick shot of the Tigers running down The Hill showed an unrecognizable version of offensive lineman Walker Parks.

Parks, listed at 6’5”, 310 pounds, looked closer to 375 in the game — fans joked he was “one biscuit away” from needing his own zip code. The clip went viral and sparked a wave of laughs and eye-rolls across social media.

Now, with Dabo’s look causing a new stir, it seems Clemson still can’t catch a break from EA’s character modeling team.

EA Sports has yet to respond to the criticism, but based on the flood of memes and commentary, the developers may want to consider a last-minute patch — or at the very least, a more accurate rendering in next year’s release.

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Until then, fans will have to settle for watching “Not-Dabo” roam the sidelines, looking more ready to lecture on the dangers of TikTok at a Rotary Club than lead Clemson into Death Valley.

Related: FSU QB’s Trash Talk Gives Clemson Major Motivation for November Showdown

Related: Clemson Poised to Snatch 4-Star Safety From Jaws of Michigan, Miami

Related: Former MLB Umpire Who Ejected Clemson Star Strikes Again in CWS Controversy

This story was originally reported by Athlon Sports on Jun 25, 2025, where it first appeared.

Darian DeVries suffered his first high school recruiting decision day loss this afternoon.

4-star wing Sammy Jackson surprised many Wednesday when he picked perennial mid-major power Virginia Commonwealth over Indiana and Texas, along with St. Joe’s.

Jackson announced the decision at his high school.  His father, long-time NBA player Marc Jackson, also started his college career at VCU before transferring to Temple.

A Philadelphia product, Jackson chose to play at VCU for another product of his hometown.  New VCU head coach Phil Martelli, Jr. played at St. Joe’s in Philadelphia.

Jackson took an official visit to IU earlier this month.

DeVries and the IU staff have several other wing players on their 2026 board, including Prince-Alexander Moody, who is on an official visit in Bloomington this week.

For more on where things stand with IU’s class of 2026 recruiting efforts, GO HERE:

IU basketball class of 2026 recruiting scorecard: Here’s where things stand in late June

 For complete coverage of IU basketball recruiting, GO HERE.   

The Daily Hoosier –“Where Indiana fans assemble when they’re not at Assembly”

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The aura has been lost, and in year two of the DeBoer era, it is more important than ever for some of that to return to the Alabama football program. With the NIL and transfer portal era, there is a lot more parity in college football, and because of that, we’ve seen Alabama be less dominant and opponents having more confidence than ever before that they can beat Alabama. We saw that in 2023 with how Quinn Ewers came into Bryant-Denny Stadium and dominated, and it was seen far too much last season.

This summer so far, we’ve seen Diego Pavia’s social media response to Ryan Williams, and the newest hot topic this week is what Thomas Castellanos had to say about the week one matchup. I get it, players should have confidence in their abilities and teams being able to beat Alabama, but it’s a different world when Vanderbilt legitimately feels like they are on the same level, or a team coming off a 2-10 season has any bulletin board material to give going into the season. The jury is still out on the Crimson Tide going into this season, and because of that, now more than ever, teams feel like it’s time to get their licks back.

Everything seems to still revolve around what Nick Saban did and what he still does to help the program. Though his presence is important and his run will always be held in high regard, it is important that in Kalen DeBoer’s second season that we start to see less of that focus on the past. The big question is, how do you do that? And the simple answer is to win games, and that starts with winning convincingly in Tallahassee, winning all three revenge games at home in 2025, and ending the season much stronger than 2024 with at least one playoff game. The path of transition is far from easy, but if Duke was able to transition from Coach K to John Scheyer without much, if any, drop off, there is no doubt the same can be done in Tuscaloosa.