NCAA Suspends Jim Harbaugh For One Season – After He Already Left For The NFL

Well, it’s official: Jim Harbaugh won’t be coaching college football this year.

Of course we’ve known that since January, when Harbaugh left Michigan to become the head coach of the Los Angeles Chargers not long after leading the Wolverines to the national championship.

That makes today’s discipline from the NCAA pretty meaningless. But nevertheless, apparently they felt like they had to after the sign-stealing scandal and improper communications with recruits that were uncovered during Harbaugh’s time in Ann Arbor.

Despite claiming to have no knowledge of the Connor Stalions-led sign-stealing scheme, Harbaugh served a three-game suspension imposed by the Big Ten Conference last November. And that came top of a three-game suspension that Michigan self-imposed on the coach for recruiting violations during the COVID-19 dead period back in 2021, when Harbaugh reportedly had improper contact with potential recruits.

It’s not really any wonder that Harbaugh would want to leave a national championship team for the NFL with all the trouble that he had to have known was coming.

And today, the NCAA dropped the hammer on the former Michigan coach.

Ok, dropping the hammer on a former coach doesn’t really do anything. But whatever, they did it anyway.

Officials announced a 4-year show cause order for Harbaugh, meaning that if any school wants to hire him within the next four years, his hire would have to first be approved by the NCAA.

And they also announced that Harbaugh would be suspended for the entire 2024 college football season…which he wasn’t going to be coaching anyway.

Harbaugh denied any part of the impermissible contacts, and refused to cooperate with the NCAA’s investigation, which elevated his violation from a Level 2 to a Level 1 (the most serious of the violations).

The penalties were for the COVID recruiting violations and not the sign-stealing scandal, which could have implications for new Michigan head coach Sherrone Moore after it was discovered that he deleted 52 texts to Stalions on the day the news of the sign-stealing scandal broke.

Among the coaches who are believed to have committed the most egregious NCAA violations are Harbaugh, Stalions, fired defensive assistant Chris Partridge, and ex-Wolverines quarterback/departed assistant personnel director Denard Robinson. So really, the only person of any immediate consequence to Michigan’s program who could face disciplinary action is Moore at this point.

Gotta hand it to Harbaugh. He set the place on fire and left Moore to put it out.