Former Michigan football CB says Jim Harbaugh tricked him into retiring

As a freshman from the 2017 recruiting class, Benjamin St-Juste committed to Michigan football and had high hopes of being the next great Wolverine cornerback.

Jim Harbaugh won a big recruiting battle for the Canada native who was ranked in the top 100 in the class by 247Sports and he had a quiet first season with Michigan. He played in just three games and had three tackles but expected to have a much larger role as a sophomore.

In his second year, he suffered a slew of hamstring injuries and tried to go through rehab with the Michigan medical staff with little progress.

St-Juste then decided to go to an outside facility, approved by Michigan football, to get some rehab work in and he was pretty much back after a couple of months. He was expecting to play in 2018, but the coaching staff said he’d have to sit out the year and prepare for the 2019 campaign.

Jim Harbaugh had other ideas, though.

St-Juste “decided to medically retire” from Michigan according to headlines at the time but he recently opened up on Twitter about the situation and, well, it’s not a great look for the Wolverines.

This is just a bad look.

Michigan football forced St-Juste into retirement

According to St-Juste’s eye-opening story, something he signed that he thought was just supposed to allow him to see an outside facility to rehab his hamstring was actually him agreeing to give up his scholarship. He was essentially tricked into signing his medical retirement papers.

While this probably happens at a lot of programs, it doesn’t make it less shady. It just opens the eyes of a lot of people who probably don’t realize that kids are forced out consistently.

Luckily for St-Juste, he landed on his feet at Minnesota and became a star before getting drafted. He’s currently still in the NFL with the Washington Commanders.

But man, I wouldn’t be surprised if this story blew up.