Sherrone Moore is reportedly following in the footsteps of his predecessor, with Michigan again choosing to enforce a voluntary suspension. But the outcome should be a bit different:
The terms “Jim Harbaugh” and “suspension” probably bring to mind the three-game stretch at the end of the 2023 regular season, where the Michigan Wolverines took down No. 10 Penn State, Maryland, and No. 2 Ohio State without their head coach on the sidelines. It was a wild back half of the season that seemingly saw new information about the sign-stealing scandal come to life every day, and the outrage was apparently too much for the Big Ten to ignore, culminating in the punishment to Harbaugh.
Those were not the only games the former Michigan head coach missed during his final season in Ann Arbor, though. In what feels like a lifetime ago, Harbaugh was also suspended the first three games of the year due to a self-imposed suspension stemming from Covid-related recruiting violations (aka Burgergate). This decision was quickly overshadowed by the Connor Stalions fiasco, but really was a major move by the program in its own right.
Just two years later, Michigan is reportedly on the verge of following this playbook once again in hopes of preemptively mitigating any substantial NCAA punishment. Much is still unknown, including any official confirmation and being able to determine what its benefit might be, but there does appear to be some similar motivations (yet differing circumstances) from these two scenarios.
Strategic apologies
Many schools have been penalized for recruiting violations, but seeing an incident actually result in a head coach being suspended is rare. Harbaugh was clearly displeased with the program’s decision to make this choice willingly, and it would have possibly driven him back to the NFL even without a national championship or the sign-stealing scandal.
The self-imposing of penalties is always an attempt to display remorse and demonstrate a handling of the situation prior to the NCAA going heavier. That did not exactly work out for Harbaugh, with the four-year show cause (and one-year suspension upon any return to college football) levied by the NCAA last offseason. Seemingly, the three-game suspension to start the 2023 season did little to limit any sort of damage.
Fast forward to this week, and the Wolverines are hoping the gambit plays out differently this time around. Sherrone Moore deleting texts with Stalions feels less severe than Harbaugh’s recruiting snafu, especially because the contents of those messages were clearly harmless; any substantial smoking guns would have prevented Moore’s promotion to head coach and subsequent retention.
A two-game suspension is nothing minor, but one wonders if the NCAA will care at all. Whether or not there is a vendetta against Michigan, clearly the organization is none too pleased with how this program has been operating, and there seems to be very little room for benefit of the doubt or building up goodwill. The fact that Moore is missing the third and fourth games of the year — conveniently being available to face his alma mater, Oklahoma — is unlikely to yield many brownie points.
The institution or The Institution
Personally, I do feel like the NCAA has been handling these recent issues in an inordinate way, but not because of the Michigan program itself. Harbaugh has never been one to bow down to authorities, and his antics have surely made him some enemies within the NCAA. Maybe that animosity still lingers with his successor and his former program, but it does seem like he is at the center of any escalation.
While the self-imposed three-game suspension feels like a failure because of the later penalties Harbaugh received from the recruiting violations, that decree feels far from objective. For one, Harbaugh was out of college athletics by the time the ruling was decided, making the penalty more or less performative. Michigan’s willingness to fight vs. settle was also compromised as the former head coach had already moved on.
Moore, meanwhile, is the future of the program. Michigan hopes and expects him to be here for a long time and will surely do what it needs to in front of the NCAA to keep him around. This is not to suggest that the Wolverines simply threw Harbaugh (or Jesse Minter or Steve Clinksdale) under the bus, but the parameters change when a coach is actually still in Ann Arbor vs. the NFL.
That leads me to believe that Michigan would only go down the self-imposed suspension route if it had confidence in its effectiveness. Suspending Moore for any amount of time is a big deal, and after seeing how the recruiting violations played out despite the self-imposed Harbaugh suspension, there is no way the program would repeat the same tactics without thorough investigation.
So yes, it appears that the three games Harbaugh missed at the start of 2023 was a pointless exercise, but an entire era of drama played out between that decision and the finalization of the associated penalties. The circumstances are much different this time around which should give some encouragement to fans and Moore alike.