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The question (How good do you want the college football or basketball team for which you root to be?) can be answered, in part, with another question (At what cost?) and a cliché (Practice makes perfect).

But those questions and cliché prompt another question: Is too much practice — along with other demands — imperfect and impractical and improper and unbalanced and unfair?

Such concerns were raised this week when Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh announced his Wolverines team would hold part of its spring practice at the IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla., during the school's spring break — from Feb. 27 to March 6. Traditionally, that break has been exactly that — time away from school and football, time for student-athletes to separate themselves from the work and pressures attendant with their normal schedules.

Harbaugh now is tearing into a good part of that break to conduct his practices at a remote site — and, as first reported by CBSSports.com, the SEC has a major problem with the plan. While that plan violates no current rules, the conference is asking the NCAA to step in and disallow it, with league commissioner Greg Sankey telling columnist Dennis Dodd: "Our primary reaction [is] that, in the face of the time-demand conversations, we've got one program taking what has been 'free time' away. Let's draw a line and say, 'That's not appropriate.' "

He added: "We have work to do [on giving athletes a] day off. We have work to do on how [to] provide a postseason break? It seems this is one where reasonable people could say we just shouldn't be in this space."

Many top-level college football players — and scholarship athletes in other sports — have indicated they feel, as one athlete put it, "owned" by the programs for which they play. They say they have advantages and privileges, but they also feel beholden to coaches pretty much year-round, and that voluntary offseason workouts are, in effect, mandatory, that there's not much down time, and there's not enough time or energy for them to study, at least for those who legitimately choose to do so.

In Dodd's report, he mentioned time demands as a focus at last month's NCAA convention, and cited a Pac-12 study completed last year revealing that league athletes spent 50 hours a week on their sport and, in many cases, were "too exhausted to study effectively."

Technically, athletes are supposed to spend a maximum of 20 hours a week on their sport and have four weeks completely away from it each year. Former Utah player and current New York Jet Trevor Reilly said time requirements in college go far beyond practice, including film study, rehab and treatments when players are dinged up, which are mandatory, workouts outside of and preparation before practice.

"You're looking at 25 hours a week on the light side, minimum, and 75 hours a week on the heavy side," he said. "It's not just about practice. It's about all kinds of other demands on an athlete's time."

Harbaugh's plan eats further into that time.

Often, people — coaches foremost among them, and sometimes players, too — forget that college sports — even college football — is supposed to be a side gig to a college education. A small percentage of athletes will one day turn pro. But these guys currently aren't professionals. They're playing for a stipend, for the glory of the school, for everybody else's entertainment and pleasure, not for a large personal paycheck — no, those are reserved for the coaches.

As mentioned, the college life is relatively sweet, but remarkably taxing.

For their part, fans want to see quality football. But if it's too good, does that mean it's coming at too high a cost, at the perversion of priorities?

The cynic says Sankey and the SEC aren't really concerned about time demands. They're worried about the Big Ten's Michigan invading their own recruiting turf, bringing their spring-practice show straight into the heart of the SEC. And maybe that's the case, although, think about the flipside to that, the deep recruiting success, say, Alabama could have if the Tide held part of its spring ball in Texas or Southern California.

Already, Harbaugh ticked off the SEC when he appeared at satellite summer camps held far away from Michigan, in SEC recruiting territory.

"The net of that is to say the Southeastern Conference is not going to be outpaced in recruiting," Sankey said. "If the national approach is that we want to have more aggressive summer camps and coaches touring around all summer, then we will not only engage in that behavior, we will certainly engage in that behavior more actively — probably more effectively than others."

That sounds like both a threat and a potential power move by the best league in college football.

Either way, ultimately, it doesn't really matter to fans that their college team continues a progression toward perfection, toward the time and effort necessary to play like an NFL team, classes and down time be damned. All fans and boosters — along with the money that follows from winning — want is for their team to have an equal shot at being better than the other amateurs. That's good enough.

GORDON MONSON hosts "The Big Show" with Spence Checketts weekdays from 3-7 p.m. on 97.5 FM and 1280 AM The Zone. Twitter: @GordonMonson.