Takeaways from the stunning and silly satellite camp saga

11:36 AM ET

For 20 angst-ridden April days, satellite camps — freakin’ satellite camps! — filled the college football news cycle. Digest that for a moment.

We now await the satellite camp miniseries starring Bill Paxton as Jim Harbaugh and Christopher Meloni as Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott.

Early Thursday afternoon, the NCAA Division I Board briefly diverted attention from the NFL draft by rescinding a ban on satellite camps. The NCAA’s Division I Council had imposed the ban on April 8 following a highly controversial vote. The ban led to widespread outcry, Scott’s stunning public rebuke of UCLA athletic director Dan Guerrero, and a report that the U.S. Department of Justice would open an informal inquiry into the decision.

It’s hard to find a less significant issue generating so much interest, even in college football’s offseason Sahara. But because of the characters, politics and commentary, satellite camps were the talk of spring football.

Here are five takeaways from the saga:

1. This was all about Jim Harbaugh: Satellite camps aren’t new. They’ve been around for years in various forms, unnoticed by non-recruitniks other than the occasional awkward picture of Urban Meyer and Brady Hoke eating chicken together at a camp. The camps connected coaches and recruits, but not in large numbers and rarely at elite levels. Only after Harbaugh completed his summer swarm tour in 2015, mainly through the recruit-rich South, did anxiety begin to build, particularly in SEC circles. The belief around college football is if not for Harbaugh satellite camps never would have been banned and then unbanned. By exploiting a rare SEC recruiting weakness (an inability to hold such camps) right in the SEC’s backyard, Harbaugh put the league on the defensive.

2. Voting reform is needed in the NCAA’s new …

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