We’ve got a post in the works about just how good Michigan was this year, and just how good Jim Harbaugh was as a college head coach. It’s not ready yet, not because it’s some brilliantly insightful piece looking at his greatness, but because we’re running chronically late these days and I think the relevant files we need might be on the wrong computer. I tell you this to say: We aren’t trying to ignore the Jim Harbaugh piece of this.
As for the Michigan side of the breakup:
Did…did Jim Harbaugh want to stay?
My impression throughout this saga had been that Jim Harbaugh wanted to go to the NFL but wanted Michigan fans to think he wanted to stay, so that there would be no hard feelings in the event the NFL wouldn’t take him. The primary evidence for this conclusion was Harbaugh repeatedly saying he wanted to stay at Michigan and then repeatedly going back to interviewing for NFL jobs over the last few years. Last night, though, it got weirder. Last night, after more than a week of Harbaugh’s clear pursuit of multiple NFL jobs and after 24 hours of reports that the Chargers and Harbaugh were honing in on a deal, Michigan reportedly finally offered Harbaugh the contract he was said to want: One that not only would make him the highest-paid coach in college football (this side was confirmed by Michigan AD Warde Manuel), but would grant him immunity from being fired by Michigan over anything that comes of the ongoing investigations into his football program (this side was reported by the Detroit News, and possibly by others). There’s a narrative, one hinted at in the Detroit News report, in which it appears Michigan’s brass didn’t want to give Harbaugh what he wanted, but still wanted to be able to tell their own fans that they did.
There’s the question, then, of whether Michigan wanted to give Harbaugh what he wanted. That question probably isn’t financial—I would guess that a school who wants national championships as badly as anybody would have no trouble raising the money for the coach who just got them their first in the current era. That question is about the immunity. Did Michigan want the option of firing Harbaugh for cause? Were they worried he would receive a more serious suspension than the ones he’s already served? Were they worried about an outright one or two-year ban? Would the immunity Harbaugh reportedly requested leave Michigan paying a man under NCAA house arrest?
There’s also the question of whether Michigan might have wanted Harbaugh gone. This is another level, and it’s even stranger, but it requires no threading of the needle like the previous theory requires.
Did Michigan not want to give Harbaugh immunity:
It seems unlikely that Harbaugh would receive serious enough personal sanctions from the NCAA for those sanctions to financially tear Michigan apart. That last scenario—one in which the NCAA banned him for a full season or banned him from recruiting or dropped some other nuclear punishment on Harbaugh—is not believable. NCAA punishments are growing smaller in their vigor over time; and the NCAA is under legal pressure from multiple corners to do less in the way of punishments; and the NCAA has demonstrated multiple times with UNC alone that if you’re a big brand who refuses to cooperate with investigations and sics your deranged fanbase on NCAA administrators, you will get what you want. Maybe Michigan saw this differently, though. Maybe Michigan was concerned about having to pay a man not allowed to coach.
Did Michigan not want Harbaugh:
This one actually might be more believable, even if it’s more shocking on its face. At its core, believing the first theory—that Michigan didn’t want to give Harbaugh immunity—requires believing that Michigan probably erred in their judgment call, fearing worse than what is in any realistic universe the worst thing the NCAA would do. This second theory holds more water. Here’s why:
Had Michigan not won the national championship this year—had Penn State mustered an offensive effort or had Taulia Tagovailoa played the game of his life or had Ryan Day called a sensible game or had Alabama finished off a finishable win—Michigan would not have a national championship in the Harbaugh era, and they would now have to deal with two of the strangest scandals in college football without the benefit of that high. The sign-stealing scandal is bizarre. The Matt Weiss computer crime situation is also bizarre. Taken alone, the Weiss thing is unlikely to say anything about Harbaugh, if all the facts ever come out. But it does add a layer to the primary takeaway from the Connor Stalions scandal, which is that Jim Harbaugh had no control over his assistants, and that at least some of his assistants might have been thorough lunatics.
Jim Harbaugh was a great, great, great college football coach. He won a national championship at a place we didn’t think it was possible to do that in the Nick Saban Alabama Era. He was an excellent leader and an excellent motivator and an excellent administrator. One of the most compelling pieces of evidence supporting that Harbaugh didn’t know what Stalions was doing was how sloppy Stalions was. The man was making public Venmo payments. The man brought in around a dozen accomplices, breaking the number one rule of any successful conspiracy (limit the number of possible whistleblowers). It’s hard to believe that Stalions could have been as dumb as he was if he was acting on Harbaugh’s orders. Surely, a Harbaugh-condoned scheme would demonstrate more competence.
More believable, then, is that Harbaugh was running a college football program on a transcendent arc despite having major blind spots as to what was going on in his own program, and despite having a coaching staff weighed down by assistants with terrible judgment. Last year, it was an alleged wacky, isolated computer crime. This year, it was a wacky, intricate, clumsy sign-stealing scandal. What would next year hold?
I don’t think Michigan should have tried to push Harbaugh out the door. I’m not sure they did. Maybe Warde Manuel just misread his old teammate in the negotiations. But if Michigan didn’t want Harbaugh, there’s a plausible explanation as to why, and it’s that Michigan was worried about their program running off the rails in those blind spots of its otherwise tremendously effective head coach.
What Now in Ann Arbor?
The immediate counter to this theory is that reports hold Michigan is expecting to promote Sherrone Moore from within, elevating the Offensive Coordinator, Offensive Line Coach, and Acting Head Coach During Conference Games When Jim Harbaugh Was Suspended (I wish they’d given him this technical title) to the full-time head coaching job. If Michigan was concerned about Harbaugh’s program, promoting his top lieutenant seems like an odd way to get it back within the bounds.
The counter to this counter is that the issue with Harbaugh, as we keep saying, might have been blind spots. It wasn’t Sherrone Moore’s job to oversee the whole program before. Now, if he’s promoted, it will be. Harbaugh’s job included not having blind spots. Moore’s did not. Now, if he’s promoted, it will.
Michigan should be expected to take a step back next year, and they’d be expected to take that step back even if Harbaugh was staying. Michigan had a great defense and a good quarterback, but we’ve seen that before from teams in Michigan’s position (i.e., non-SEC/Ohio State teams). What made Michigan so special was its offensive line, one that grew from dominant in Big Ten play in 2022 to dominant nationally in 2023 and 2024. That offensive line undoubtedly has talent in the wings, but it is hard to ask an entirely new line to be as good as arguably the greatest in college football history. Michigan might win the Big Ten again, but they’d need to either pull a rabbit out of the hat or have Georgia and others dramatically underperform if they were to repeat as national champions. That’s true even if Harbaugh had stayed.
With Harbaugh gone, the question now goes beyond next year and becomes one which asks: How does Michigan establish itself as a perennial power in this new, 12-team-playoff, 18-team-Big-Ten era? First up, it appears Moore will be the new head man. If that changes and this becomes a broader coaching search, Michigan suddenly reverts to some blank slate that’s a hybrid between Ohio State and Notre Dame, but now with a more recent title than the Buckeyes, unlike before. Second, it appears Moore will need to replace defensive coordinator Jesse Minter, who is drawing NFL interest and not only from the Chargers. That’s not the hardest thing to do successfully—we’ve seen plenty of spectacular Big Ten defenses—but it’s a big thing, and it’s possible to whiff. Third, will Moore need to replace himself? How much other staff stays? How much other staff goes? Fourth, what happens with the transfer portal and recruits?
If Michigan does stick with Moore, all indications would hold that they’ll remain a top-ten program. The downside will be there, but it was there with Harbaugh too. The upside is new. Michigan is something different from what it was three months ago, and it’s entirely different from what it was three years ago. It’s also existing within a much more powerful Big Ten, yet not one in which it’s as much a second fiddle as it was those three years ago. Moore could be a spectacular coach. That’s why he was such an obvious candidate even before the reports started coming out. But there’s uncertainty, and it looks like the program will take some amount of a step back in 2024, and sometimes one slip can prove disastrous for these tenuous powerholders. Michigan never beat Ohio State at Ohio State’s game. Michigan used Covid eligibility to its advantage, made one key strength unbreakable, and seized a handful of advantageous opportunities (Georgia’s down year, Alabama’s slight fade, and Ryan Day making bad in-game decisions). It’s harder to make a specific recipe (build that historic o-line and be good enough in every single other place) keep working than to be the best at the mainstream thing (recruit the most five-stars and don’t make too many mistakes). It’s even harder when, by nature, that specific recipe is only built to work every three or four or five years.
Does No One Want Bill Belichick?
In NFL news, multiple reporters are reporting that the Falcons are hiring Rams DC Raheem Morris to be their next head coach. Unfortunately for Morris, this is more news about Bill Belichick than it is about Morris or the Falcons. Reports so far haven’t been linking Belichick to any other teams. If the Falcons don’t want him…does nobody? Did the NFL pass Bill Belichick by?
Oh No, Bucks.
From yesterday’s notes:
Was Doc Rivers a good replacement for Adrian Griffin? I don’t know that he’s a bad one as an interim. You could do a lot worse than Doc Rivers, and I can’t imagine the Bucks are under any illusions here about what they’re getting. Where it becomes a bigger issue is if the Bucks don’t conduct a wider search this offseason. That search can include Doc Rivers. But there are better coaches out there who would love to coach Giannis Antetokounmpo.
Today:
The Bucks are reportedly hiring Doc Rivers through 2026–27.
I don’t know.
Maybe that was just the term Rivers wanted and the Bucks are comfortable paying the buyout if Giannis fires him.
NHL Expansion?
I’m not clued in enough to the NHL expansion/relocation world to know whether the recent bid from Salt Lake City to get itself an NHL team 1) is all that likely to succeed or 2) is truly an expansion bid. Maybe it’s still a relocation hope. I think the NHL is right, though, in celebrating the performance of Vegas and Seattle in terms of generating fans as recent Western expansion teams, and I think going after cities with only one Big Four team is a great plan. Get Salt Lake City involved. Look at Oklahoma City and Portland and Sacramento. At first, I was thrown off by the concept of a league already going past 32 teams, before the NBA and MLB have even gotten there, and there are definitely logistical questions there about scheduling. Upon thinking about it for a few minutes, though, I’m not sure there’d be anything wrong with a 36 or 40-team league? In fact, it might help ease some of the issues with how expanded the playoffs are. A little playoff deflation.
We’ll keep tabs on it. We love expansion theorizing. Relocation theorizing is less fun, because usually it comes with a victim, but I don’t think anyone could fault anyone else right now for relocation theorization regarding the Coyotes.
Betting News: Pushing and Pulling
A step forward for sports betting in America: North Carolina is fully legalizing it and making it mobile (in iconic fashion, they’re set to open the mobile books right before the ACC Tournament).
A step backwards for sports betting in America: Patriots wide receiver (and former LSU wide receiver) Kayshon Boutte was arrested today in Baton Rouge. He’s charged with betting under the age of 21 and also with betting using an alias, which is fraud. He allegedly bet on LSU football games while on the team.
Another step backwards, though more for fantasy–sports–as–gambling: The NFFC Post-Season Hold ‘Em contest has been marred by scandal after an employee was allegedly caught cheating, changing lineups after games had begun (and in one case, finished). Really bad stuff. We’ve talked before about how insider trading-style sports betting scandals can sometimes be victimless. There are victims with this one.
Last Night, Tonight
- Iowa State got a great win last night, in that it would have been a very bad loss. I haven’t been in the weeds of the drama between the broader Iowa State community and Jerome Tang, but my impression is that the best theory explaining what happened says an Iowa State fan was recording Tang’s huddle with their phone during a timeout? Speaking of Connor Stalions! Whatever happened, it impacted the game much less than Iowa State getting a lucky foul call and a lucky technical in short succession. The Cyclones still were likely to win, though. On to Kansas.
- Alabama got a great and expected win over Auburn, one that team kind of needed to avoid a round of “can they win a big game” talk. Boo Buie came through for Northwestern in a home upset of Illinois marked by the Northwestern student section letting Terrence Shannon Jr. hear it. I will say: “No means no” is a great thing to chant at a player accused of what Terrence Shannon Jr. is accused of doing. “Guilty” is weaker. It leaves open the interpretation that you’re hoping the terrible thing really did happen, because there’s no way you know any more than any of the rest of us. There are better ways to heckle and better ways to stand up for survivors of sexual violence. Like chanting “no means no!”
- The Bulls are in Los Angeles to play the Lakers tonight, giving Andre Drummond a chance to audition for a team reportedly interested in trading for him. On the Zach LaVine trade rumor wire, James L. Edwards III reported that the Pistons could be a possible destination. I don’t know exactly how much sense it makes for the Pistons, but if they want to give the Bulls something for LaVine, I’d hope the Bulls would gladly take it. The contract is just too big for the role LaVine’s suited to play, and while the Bulls might not get LaVine’s value back, he’s also severely limiting their ceiling by being overpaid and asked to do too much.
- The Blackhawks lost 6–2 in Seattle and now play Edmonton in the second end of the road back-to-back. Corey Perry is not expected to suit up for the Oilers, as of this morning. (The Oilers are one of the biggest moneyline favorites in hockey history. So that’s fun!)
- Coco Gauff’s out of the Australian Open, going down to Aryna Sabalenka in a result that wasn’t surprising, but would have been nice for American tennis. The men’s semifinals are tonight, headlined by Jannik Sinner trying to become the latest next–big–thing as the 22-year-old Italian faces Novak Djokovic in a bid to make his first Grand Slam final in his second try (he lost to Djokovic in the Wimbledon semis last summer). The match appears to be during late but mostly normal American viewing hours. I’m never positive about tennis start times, though.
