Jim Harbaugh Completed Michigan’s Dream Season Before Heading to the NFL and Away From NCAA Sanctions
Did Jim Harbaugh ride off into the sunset? Or was he beating the posse out of town?
Both.
The Michigan Wolverines football coach fulfilled the manifest destiny that brought him back to his alma mater in 2015. He restored the Wolverines to prominence, and eventually to dominance. He finished with a flourish, defeating Ohio State three years in a row and winning the program’s first undisputed national championship since 1948. Already a favored son for his time as a swashbuckling 1980s quarterback, his place in Michigan lore is now second to none as he departs for the Los Angeles Chargers and the NFL.
But it’s not quite as simple as all that. Because Harbaugh also is evacuating ahead of more probable NCAA sanctions for alleged violations on his watch. He was suspended for six games this past season, and that might have just been the warmup penalties. Two Michigan infractions cases remain ongoing, with Harbaugh likely to face Level I allegations in both of them—quite likely an unprecedented pileup of charges in such a short period of time.
In that respect, Harbaugh joins Pete Carroll fleeing USC and Chip Kelly abandoning Oregon in going pro before getting got by the NCAA. Maybe the NFL will try to apply a “no safe harbor” suspension of some kind to Harbaugh the way it did Jim Tressel when he left Ohio State and took an advisory role with the Indianapolis Colts, but tagging a head coach with any kind of suspension would be pretty wild.
Harbaugh led Michigan to a national championship before leaving for the NFL.
Erick W. Rasco/Sports Illustrated
The best guess is that in Harbaugh’s absence, the hammer instead will fall on Michigan. Maybe a velvet hammer, because NCAA crime and punishment moves in mysterious ways, but don’t expect a wrist slap. The first infractions case, centering on impermissible contact during the COVID-19 dead period, is largely understood and confined. The second case—the great Connor Stalions espionage campaign, guaranteed to be a Netflix miniseries in a few years—remains open-ended and potentially more problematic if staff members beyond Stalions are implicated.
Regardless, the fan base and others will howl about how unfair it is, because Michigan has whined like champions for about a year straight over the ongoing investigations. It has been an Auburn-level bravura performance. Ultimately, though, they will take the trade-off.
Winning a national title is a forever thing, even if it’s vacated (which seems unlikely). The Wolverines will deal with the repercussions to follow.
Losing the coach hurts, losing star quarterback J.J. McCarthy and others to the draft hurts, and losing a few players to the transfer portal in the wake of Harbaugh’s departure could hurt. Watching Ohio State load up for what could be a massive season could also hurt. So will whatever penalties are applied—coach suspensions, recruiting restrictions, possibly even a postseason ban—but most Michigan fans will find the 2024 hangover to be a tolerable price to pay for the raging 2023 party.
In all likelihood, the broom-and-dustpan cleanup job falls to offensive coordinator Sherrone Moore. He performed heroically in Harbaugh’s late-season absence, leading the Wolverines to wins over the Penn State Nittany Lions, Maryland Terrapins and Ohio State Buckeyes—calling an excellent offensive game against the Buckeyes especially. Giving a guy his first head coaching job at a place like Michigan is fraught with peril, but Moore did get a taste of it this season. And program history is more kind to promote-from-within hires than many others (see: Lloyd Carr and Gary Moeller).
The Wolverines should be prepared to move quickly, especially if athletic director Warde Manuel simply asks Moore to move a few doors down in Schembechler Hall. (It’s not unreasonable to suspect that Michigan might have signaled to Kalen DeBoer to go ahead and take the Alabama Crimson Tide job, because its job was going to be filled from within.) Even if it wants to have an expanded search, the school has been bracing for this for weeks, if not months, as the annual Harbaugh dalliance with the NFL ramped up while NCAA inquiries continued.
The shoes Moore (or anyone) will be filling are immense—bigger, you could argue, than even Nick Saban’s at Alabama.
National championships are considered inevitable at Alabama—Bear Bryant won a fistful and Gene Stallings won one before Saban arrived and cleaned up. At Michigan, not so much. Carr’s split 1997 title is the only thing between the 1948 championship under Bennie Oosterbaan and 2023 under Harbaugh.
Then there is the whole Michigan Man-ness of Harbaugh. He was a direct heir to the Bo Schembechler lineage, which still brings tears to the eyes of grown men. He personified the program in every conceivable manner.
And there is the heat-seeking, heat-attracting persona of Harbaugh. He was a big deal as a player, and thus expected to be a big deal as a coach (and has been at every stop). He is endlessly quirky, completely unpredictable, unafraid to stir any pot within reach and a cultivator of conflict. He morphed from curiosity to underachiever to massive lightning rod in his eight seasons as the Michigan coach.
For those who love the theater of it all, Harbaugh will be sorely missed in college football. But they do theater in the NFL, too, so stay tuned there.
Michigan fans will mourn his departure, but they should also feel wildly fortunate in terms of how it all played out. What if Manuel had gotten impatient after Harbaugh’s 0–5 start against Ohio State? What if Harbaugh had been offered an NFL job he wanted either of the previous two years and departed before this championship season? What if the Stalions case had blown up a year earlier and led to major sanctions that affected this season?
In the end, the timing worked out fortuitously for Michigan. The Wolverines got their dream season and elusive title. They authored their first Ohio State three-peat since the mid-1990s. They exorcised a Southeastern Conference demon in the College Football Playoff. They went 15–0 with a head coach that was present for only nine of those wins.
And now, quest complete, Jim Harbaugh is headed West. He’s riding into the sunset and away from the NCAA posse at the same time.
