Inside Jim Harbaugh’s years-long fight with the NCAA – and with Michigan

The following is an excerpt from “The Price: What It Takes to Win in College Football’s Era of Chaos,” a new book set to be released on Aug. 27, 2024. The Price, written by journalists Armen Keteyian and John Talty, dives into the “Wild West” era of college football, including the recent sagas involving former Michigan football coach Jim Harbaugh.

The first time Jim Harbaugh spoke with NCAA investigators about impermissible recruiting contact he did so without counsel. By the time Michigan submitted a ten-page memorandum, double-spaced, in 11-point font, as to why neither the school nor its coaches should face serious charges, Tom Mars was at his side negotiating with the association.

“We had some conversations,” Mars said in a September 2023 interview. “We worked out an agreement in principle that would not have been of any significance whatsoever.”

That sentiment changed in June 2022. That’s when the NCAA notified the university and Mars it had come into possession of some new information and wanted to interview Harbaugh again. With Mars in attendance, the two senior investigators assigned to the case, a male and a female, asked some general questions about whether Harbaugh remembered meeting with a couple of prospects and their parents in Ann Arbor on two occasions during a “dead period,” when no contact was allowed. Based on past experiences with the NCAA, Mars’s internal Geiger counter began to tick.

They don’t ask these kinds of questions unless they have some credible reason to believe you were there, he told Harbaugh.

“Well,” Harbaugh said, “I would remember that, but I don’t.”

On October 4, 2022, the investigators were back for yet another video interview, eighteen months after the purported meeting. Mars, on high alert now, cautioned Harbaugh to be nothing but honest. If you don’t remember, say you don’t remember. If you do remember, say you do remember and answer their questions.

This time when the investigators came calling, they had specifics: Benny’s, the famous Ann Arbor diner, on such and such a Saturday in February; Benny’s diner, on this or that Saturday in March. A thirty-four-page transcript of the interview showed Harbaugh never wavered. I don’t remember any of those meetings. The investigator, attempting to trip Harbaugh up, spun what Mars later termed a “word salad” question he was forced to interpret.

“She’s asking if you’re lying,” said Mars. “No, I’m not lying,” replied Harbaugh.

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Lacking subpoena power, NCAA investigators are forced to use other tactics — teasing out information or evidence, withholding it, holding the possible loss of eligibility over a player’s head, threatening a coaching suspension, playing cat and mouse.

“If you were in a civil case, taking a deposition, they would show you something, let’s see if this helps your recollection. They didn’t do that,” said Mars.

Funny thing was, as Mars discovered, the investigators had done essentially that on the same case with Grant Newsome, a U of M graduate assistant. In a July 13, 2022, interview with investigators, Newsome had twice denied any knowledge of being at a dinner meeting at the Brown Jug, a campus pub, in February 2021 with a prospect and his father during the forbidden pandemic dead period.

“No, I don’t — I don’t recall that,” Newsome told investigators.

In response, an investigator refreshed Newsome’s memory with a veiled threat:

Okay, Coach — so we’ve had multiple interviews where it’s been re- ported that you were at that dinner and there are expense reports — for that weekend for the [prospect and his father] being in town. So I need you to think very seriously about whether maybe you recall that dinner because we have very specific information from multiple individuals about your presence occurring at that dinner. So I don’t know if you want to take a minute to think about that or you feel very secure in that answer that it didn’t happen.

At that point, according to a transcript, Newsome abruptly ended the interview saying maybe he should retain “personal counsel.” Twelve days later Newsome returned with a lawyer to say, yes, he had a “vague” recol- lection of having met at the Brown Jug with the prospect and his dad. Despite his attempts to mislead an investigator, Newsome later received little more than a slap on the wrist from the Committee on Infractions. (When Mars asked why Newsome basically walked away scot-free, Mars said he was told such decisions were at the discretion of enforcement in terms of what or who to charge.)

Hoping to break a logjam, Mars asked one of the investigators if they would provide evidence similar to what they presented Newsome. A small mountain of material — receipts, telephone records, an eyewitness account of Harbaugh and his daughter coming into Benny’s for takeout, chatting with a prospect and his father — soon landed in Mars’s lap, hundreds of pages of transcripts he condensed and sent to Harbaugh. The smoking gun, ah, bun, as it were, a breakfast receipt from Benny’s noting the purchase of, of all things, a cheeseburger.

“When I showed Jim the receipt,” Mars recalled, he said, ‘I guess I was there. You know anybody else that has hamburgers for breakfast? That’s what I order for breakfast. It’s obvious I was there. You can tell them I was there. I still don’t remember anything about being there.’”

Admission in hand, Mars went to work on a settlement, in NCAA-speak, a “negotiated resolution,” otherwise known as a NR. “You’re talking about a guy fifty-nine years old,” Mars told the investigators. “Been bumped in the head a lot. You’re asking him to remember something that happened eighteen months ago. He meets hundreds of prospects a year. How do you know he’s lying, given the fact he promptly acknowledged he was there?”

The negotiations went on for months. Enforcement insisted Harbaugh admit he lied or was deceptive during interviews. In a video conference call with Duncan and his team on January 18, Mars had drawn an indelible line against any such admission. As Mars recalled, this was his response: “We’ll never agree to any NR that involves Jim Harbaugh saying he lied to anybody, he was deceptive, that he intended to mislead anybody. If that’s a requirement of the staff, as I’m hearing you suggest it is, then we have nothing to talk about.”

The next day Yahoo Sports national columnist Dan Wetzel wrote a story that said negotiations had “broken down” over Harbaugh’s refusal to admit he lied to investigators. The word “impasse” was used in the headline, which accurately described the current state of the talks. But Jon Duncan and his staff didn’t much cotton to reading the news in a national story written by a columnist with ties to Mars.

Duncan dashed off an email to Mars saying such leaks were totally unacceptable, and in response, the NCAA was going to make a sweeping request for his phone records.

In an attempt to cool the waters, Mars sent Duncan and his team a screenshot he had received from Wetzel two and a half hours before the story was posted basically informing Mars the story was running.

“Dan didn’t ask for comment,” Mars said. “I think he was just trying to make sure he wasn’t off base. I was actually on a long phone call so I really didn’t have much time or interest in texting Dan about it.”

Duncan wasn’t buying it. Enforcement wanted images of Mars’s cell phone records. At which point Mars said he went into a version of Dean Smith’s famous “Four Corners” offense, slowing things down, circling back from time to time with language in which Harbaugh would admit he didn’t remember the dead-period Benny’s meetings until his memory was refreshed, searching for legal language that would satisfy both sides.

“It was like dancing on the head of a pin,” said Mars. “The minutiae involved in the discussions were unlike anything I’d ever seen. Spending months asking ourselves are we going to blow this deal up over whether we use this word or that word?”

Finally, after six torturous months, in July 2023 a negotiated resolution between Michigan, the NCAA, and Jim Harbaugh was submitted to the Committee on Infractions. In it, Harbaugh would serve a four-game suspension to start the upcoming season. Case closed, or so Mars, the university, and enforcement thought. Until Ross Dellenger of Yahoo Sports, as wired in as any college football writer in the country, reported that the Committee on Infractions had rejected the resolution as too lenient, and it was later discovered, “not in the best interest in the Association.” The COI claimed Harbaugh “was not truthful” during the investigation.

Dellenger’s story set off an entirely new round of fireworks in Indy. The enforcement staff was livid over yet another leak, suspecting Mars had once again been the source. Back came a demand for cell phone and text records.

That’s when things got ugly.

“I got so bowed up and pissed off about it, I wrote them a letter and basically said I’m not going to give you that information,” Mars said. “And if you push me, you take any more action that might [affect] Coach Harbaugh, I’ll sue you for tortious interference in Benton County, Arkansas. It got very personal and they backed off.”

Two weeks later, as the subsequent Harbaugh cheeseburger backlash spilled out publicly on the pages of Yahoo, ESPN, and Sports Illustrated, the NCAA decided to play a trump card: a statement from its vice president of hearing operations.

“The Michigan infractions case is related to impermissible on and off- campus recruiting during the COVID-19 dead period, not a cheeseburger,” the statement from Derrick Crawford began. “It is not uncommon for the COI to seek clarification on key facts prior to accepting. The COI may also reject a NR if it determines that the agreement is not in the best interests of the Association or the penalties are not reasonable.”

Mars was livid and not just about the spigot of leaks. In a post on the social media platform X he wrote: “Pursuant to the NCAA’s internal operating procedures, and under threat of penalties, Michigan, the involved coaches and their lawyers are prohibited from uttering a word about this ongoing case. Yet the NCAA can issue a public statement putting its spin on the case? Unreal.”

This dispute eventually led to the question: Do you believe Enforcement is attempting to make an example of Harbaugh?

“I do. I really do. I do,” Mars replied. “There’s really no other explanation for the disparity between [Harbaugh and] Grant Newsome.”

In a subsequent letter to the NCAA, Mars said he took pains to point out that exact disparity — only to get a response that he said read pretty much like this: “We think there are circumstances that support our decision. Go pound sand.”

(The NCAA would later deny any attempt to single out Harbaugh or send a larger message. “It’s just not what moves us,” said a high-ranking official.)

As if the NCAA needed any more ammunition against Harbaugh, he decided to launch another rocket in its direction at Big Ten Media Days. Without prompting, he delivered an impassioned speech in favor of paying players, this at the very time the association was lobbying Congress for a limited antitrust exemption that would prevent players being classified as employees.

Then, in a press conference prior to the season opener against East Carolina, Harbaugh was back on his soapbox offering a six-minute soliloquy on the state of college football.

“I don’t understand how the NCAA, TV networks, conferences, and schools can continue to pull in millions off the efforts of college students across the country without sharing ever-increasing revenue,” he said. “We have to try to make it better, and right now the current status quo is unacceptable and won’t survive.”

In the wake of the news that the Committee on Infractions had nixed a deal, attention turned to Michigan athletic director Warde Manuel. What would he do? In an earlier meeting in Manuel’s office, Harbaugh had owned the entire “impermissible” episode — telling his AD he should have known about coaches watching player workouts on Zoom, analysts coaching on the field, the breakfast and dinner meetings — while holding the line on one thing: he had never lied.

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Manuel later said after the COI sent the negotiated resolution back that he had conversations with both in-house and outside counsel on how to move forward. “We had agreed the violations occurred — head coach, [graduate] assistant coach—what would we put forward?” he said. “The recommendation was to suspend Jim for three games. That’s where I said okay.”

With Harbaugh watching from home the Wolverines blasted out- manned East Carolina 30–3. More importantly, they sent a direct message to the NCAA. Before the game they had stepped off the team bus at the Big House in T-shirts bearing their head coach’s last name and familiar number 4, Harbaugh’s old number. Quarterback J. J. McCarthy, the unquestioned star and spokesman of the team, added the word “FREE” in marker on white tape above the word “HARBAUGH.” Then, on their first play from scrimmage, Michigan’s offense huddle broke in single file — eleven hands extending four fingers to the sky.

On any given day, NCAA enforcement receives tips from whistleblowers in all shapes and sizes: current or former coaches and players, scouts, administrators, angry ex-wives, the media, bloggers, and meathead bullshit artists claiming wrongdoing at ol’ State U. With each and every tip cataloged by a member of its development team for real-time access, the investigative staff focused on corroboration and that knotty problem called . . . proof.

In mid-October 2023, an “independent third party” traveled to the national office in Indianapolis to present what NCAA president Charlie Baker later called “very comprehensive” evidence of impermissible activity under Harbaugh’s watch. Baker later told a select group of reporters at the NCAA convention in January 2024 that the evidence provided was so compelling as to require immediate action. So it was late on the afternoon on October 18, within days of the presentation to the NCAA, that both the Big Ten and Michigan were notified the association was “investigating allegations of sign-stealing by the University of Michigan football program.”

“We had to make a decision at that point,” Baker said later. “Because it was the kind of thing that had consequences for the outcome of games, we made the unusual decision to simultaneously call the Big Ten and Michigan and tell them about this.”

At 12:17 p.m. Eastern time the next day Yahoo Sports published a story by Dellenger and Wetzel that tapped into what had become a gushing faucet of leaks, reporting that the NCAA was investigating the Michigan foot- ball program for alleged sign-stealing, a violation of Bylaw 11.6.1., which reads, “Off-campus, in-person scouting of future opponents [in the same season] is prohibited.”

Observing and attempting to decipher an opponent’s offensive and defensive signs communicated by personnel on the field during or after a game by coaches and analysts had long been as much a part of the sport as pigskin. Scouting opponents in person, however, had been prohibited since 1994, in what was originally a cost-cutting measure.

In what was quickly looking like a well-orchestrated campaign to put Harbaugh out to pasture, ESPN’s Pete Thamel and Mark Schlabach, citing sources, dropped a bomb at 12:47 a.m. the following day. They identified the low-level Michigan staffer with a military background at the center of what the NCAA called “a vast off campus, in person advance scouting scheme involving a network of individuals.”

The man in the middle: a twenty-eight-year-old with the comic book character name of Connor Stalions.

Stalions, who was immediately suspended with pay following the Yahoo report, was a 2017 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, where he worked as a student-assistant in the football program, gaining a reputation as a superfan, “obsessed” with Michigan football. He attended U of M games when the Midshipmen were on the road, deciphered opponent’s signals from TV footage — not illegal — and constantly worked on his “Michigan Manifesto,” a nearly six-hundred-page Google document, part of his long-term plan to one day run Michigan football.

A retired captain in the Marine Corps, Stalions had parlayed his Navy connection with Michigan’s then director of player personnel Sean Magee and linebackers coach Chris Partridge into a position as an unpaid volunteer, before being hired in May 2022 as a recruiting analyst at a salary of $55,000 a year. (Stalions was also accused of running a side business from the front porch of his home restoring old vacuum cleaners and selling an unusual amount of refurbished goods on Amazon, according to a Homeowners’ Association lawsuit. Stalions disputed the charges.)

Over time Stalions reportedly set up an elaborate scouting system, paying as many as sixty-five friends and associates through his personal Venmo account to travel to more than thirty games and using their smartphones to record sideline play-calling signals of future Michigan opponents. Stalions reportedly also went so far as to dress in disguise — sunglasses, a Central Michigan polo and hat, complete with a visitor’s bench pass — to attend Michigan State’s home opener against the Chippewas.

As detailed in Sports Illustrated, in January and February 2021 Stalions was said to have exchanged a lengthy series of texts with a student at a Power 5 school trying to break into big-time college football. In these texts, Stalions outlined his grand vision along two tracks — the long-term Michigan Manifesto plus short-term “products” that he believed altered head coaches’ thinking.

You can’t ask them what they need, he reportedly texted the Power 5 student. You have to tell them what they need. But it can’t be up for interpretation. It has to be very straightforward, unique and useful. If not one of those three things, it’s pointless.

Tom Mars was not about to shut up. On October 21, two days after Harbaugh issued a statement stating he and his staff would fully cooperate in the sign-stealing investigation and disavowed knowledge of any wrongdoing, Mars took to X to argue that “head coaches are presumed guilty the minute the NCAA leaks information about the investigation, which then prohibits coaches from defending themselves in the court of public opinion. What’s fair about that?”

One answer arrived five days later in a two-page “Letter of Reprimand” from Committee on Infractions chairman Dave Roberts. In short, shut up. Or else.

“Dear Mr. Mars,” it began, “this is a letter of admonition addressing recent comments made by you on social media platforms, directly or implicitly concerning the University of Michigan and your client.” The letter went on to say if Mars didn’t zip his lip regarding comments “unhelpful to the process and frankly inappropriate under NCAA bylaws,” there would be consequences, including “potential penalties for you and your client . . . including the immediate suspension of your client.”

“(Expletive) you, Dave Roberts, is what I should have said,” Mars said. “There’s no NCAA bylaw that would punish me or Jim.”

The closest thing the Big Ten had in terms of ticketing a scheme one high-ranking NCAA official later likened to “going 110 miles an hour when everyone else is going 75 or 80” was a sportsmanship and integrity policy containing two distinct categories of disciplinary action. A so-called standard action fell under the powers of the commissioner and included “admonishment, reprimand, fines that do not exceed $10,000 and suspensions for no more than two contests.” Major punishments required approval of the conference’s Joint Group Executive Committee composed of university chancellors and presidents. Either way, a very hot potato was now in the hands of first-year Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti.

A former high-ranking CBS Sports and Major League Baseball executive Petitti was a Harvard-trained lawyer and longtime consigliere to CBS Sports chairman Sean McManus and Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred. Just eight months earlier he had been hired to replace Kevin Warren, who had hastily departed to run the Chicago Bears.

As Petitti was getting up to speed, Harbaugh issued a statement saying he and his staff would fully cooperate in the matter, declaring he had no knowledge of his program illegally stealing signals nor had he directed any staff member or others to participate in off-campus scouting assignments. None of which satisfied a legion of full-throated high-profile television critics, led by ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith, Christopher “Mad Dog” Russo, and Paul Finebaum, each of them calling for Harbaugh’s head. With the outside criticism hitting a fever pitch, Harbaugh told his team to embrace the hate. “I’ve always been a good man, a good guy,” Harbaugh said, according to those present, “but right now we’re being painted as the bad guy, so why don’t we just be the bad guy?”

On his weekly radio show prior to Purdue’s November 4 game in Ann Arbor, Boilermakers’ head coach Ryan Walters wasted no time piling on. “What’s crazy is these aren’t allegations,” he said. “It happened. There’s video evidence. There [are] ticket purchases and sales that you can track back. We know for a fact that they were at a number of our games.”

By now the sign-stealing controversy had officially captivated college football. In an effort to calm the growing storm during the first two days of November, Petitti held a series of conference calls updating Big Ten coaches and ADs.

“There were a bunch of people upset,” said Maryland head coach Mike Locksley. “I was part of the calls and there were a bunch of people upset. But I always say I’m going to worry about my own shit.”

Locksley’s Maryland program got indirectly pulled into the scandal because the program’s offensive coordinator, Josh Gattis, was Michigan’s offensive coordinator in 2021. Locksley said he confronted Gattis and directly asked him, “Were y’all doing this?” He didn’t obsess over the specifics like some of his peers — when he looked back on previous losses to Michigan, he was much more upset about mistakes his team made than anything untoward happening — but he understood why other coaches were angry.

“It hurt the integrity of the game,” he said. “It made everybody go back and question.”

U of M president Santa Ono immediately responded with a letter supporting Harbaugh, urging fairness in any investigation, and warning that taking any action before “any meaningful investigation” would violate conference rules.

“The best course of action, the one far more likely to ascertain the facts, is to await the results of the NCAA investigation,” Ono wrote Petitti, adding, “but if you refuse to let the NCAA investigative process play out, the Big 10 may not take any action against the University or its players or coaches without commencing its own investigation and offering us the opportunity to provide our position. That is not just required by conference rules; it’s a matter of basic fairness.

“To be clear, oral updates from NCAA enforcement staff do not and cannot constitute evidence, nor do we think the NCAA would ever intend for an oral update to be given that meaning or weight.”

In words and action Michigan was moving into battle stations, influential alums texting Ono, begging for war. Said one Ono adviser to another in a text, Those (expletives). They haven’t seen a fight like this one now with Ono on board. Past UM Presidents all made the base feel ashamed. No more.

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To absolutely no one’s surprise, on Friday, November 3, Connor Stalions resigned. A statement from his attorney distanced the football program from any wrongdoing. “Connor also wants to make clear that, to his knowledge, neither Coach Harbaugh, nor any other coach or staff member, told anyone to break any rules or were aware of improper conduct regarding the recent allegations of advanced scouting.”

The same day Stalions resigned, Ono was set to meet in Ann Arbor with Petitti. He was wondering how to respond if the commissioner decided to heed the roar from the opposing crowd and unilaterally suspend his head coach.

Conspiracy theorists were meanwhile having a field “Day,” as in Ryan Day, speculating that the head coach at archrival Ohio State might somehow be involved. But that message board patter proved a red herring. When Michigan started searching, we were told, the third-party trail eventually led much closer to home — the most logical leaker being someone having legitimate access to the kind of “very comprehensive” evidence presented to the Enforcement staff, meaning likely a former football staffer or assistant coach with a grudge to bear.

As Big Ten coaches and officials pushed for a season-long sign-stealing suspension, advisers to Ono suggested he enlist former interim athletic director Jim Hackett, known for his unique ability to budge Harbaugh’s “iron will.” Turns out, Hackett had planned on asking Harbaugh to consider a compromise two-game suspension — Penn State and Maryland — if the Big Ten and NCAA would agree to drop any further investigation.

So it was at the end of a torturous week prior to the home game against Purdue that Ono made the point of seeking out Hackett and giving him a very public hug at a pregame tailgate. On Monday, Hackett said he woke up to a text from Ono asking Hackett to give him a call. Ono asked Hackett if he would engage with the school’s vice president of communications. Later that day, Hackett and the VP spoke on the phone for the better part of two hours.

By now things were getting weird on multiple fronts. How weird? The Associated Press reported a former employee at a rival Big Ten football program said it had been his job to steal signs, adding he had recently shared those documents — which showed the Wolverines signs and corresponding plays, as well as screenshots of text-message exchanges with staffers of other Big Ten schools — with Michigan in an effort to help Harbaugh and his embattled program. This was followed by a bit of news revealing that staff members at Ohio State and Rutgers had shared information with Purdue prior to its Big Ten title game against Michigan in 2022.

By Thursday, November 9, the legal tide appeared to be turning in Michigan’s favor. University attorneys were making powerful arguments against suspension, charging any action would be a “breach” of the Big Ten rule book and exceed Petitti’s power under the Sportsmanship Policy.

Friday was Veterans Day, the day before an away game at Penn State.

Media speculation had reached a fever pitch. Reports were ranging from a three-game suspension to a $10,000 fine and public reprimand, but Mars put a pin in those trial balloons when he issued a statement that he was “confident Jim will be on the team flight to PA this afternoon one way or the other,” adding, “we’re prepared for every scenario.”

But perhaps not this scenario: around 3:30 p.m., twenty hours before the PSU game, Harbaugh seemingly safe on the team plane to Happy Valley, ESPN’s Thamel dropped another bomb. He reported that the Big Ten would prohibit Harbaugh from being on the sidelines during the final three regular-season games but would allow him to coach and attend team activities during the week. Within minutes of Thamel’s story on ESPN, Petitti released a thirteen-page letter outlining evidence that the sign-stealing “scheme” was not isolated or haphazard in nature but rather “pervasive, systemic” to the degree it “compromised the integrity of the competition and violates one of the most fundamental elements of sportsmanship.”

Petitti also noted that Michigan’s November 8 response did not deny the “impermissible scheme occurred” but instead offered what it called “procedural and technical arguments designed to delay accountability.” Petitti’s letter contained this caveat: it was a sanction of Michigan, not Jim Harbaugh, who the conference said it had no proof was aware of the scheme, noting, however, that Michigan was the university that Harbaugh “embodies.” In effect, guilt by association.

Michigan immediately punched back. In its own statement, the university argued Petitti’s “hasty” action “violated basic tenets of due process, and sets an untenable precedent of assessing penalties” before an investigation has proven anyone guilty. In essence, the Big Ten was saying you’re guilty when we say you’re guilty, damn that thing called due process. The statement included a shot at the conference for issuing the sanctions on Veterans Day — a court holiday — thwarting the university’s ability to get immediate injunctive relief. It was clear that Michigan intended to seek a court order preventing any disciplinary action from taking effect.

With Harbaugh cooling his heels in a State College hotel, lawyers representing the Board of Regents and James J. Harbaugh had filed a lawsuit seeking a temporary restraining order in Circuit Court in Washtenaw County, home of Ann Arbor, pointing out, among other issues, the lack of due process and “irreparable harm” done to Harbaugh’s character and reputation.

You could almost feel the balance tilting — thirteen current Big Ten schools on one side, the vaunted University of Michigan holding firm on the other, and athletic director Manuel releasing a statement denigrating the investigation and fully supporting Harbaugh. He all but sneered at rival head coaches and ADs calling for Harbaugh’s head, saying they should be worried about the new standard of judgment that had been unleashed on the conference.

In something of a surprise, two hours before kickoff on Saturday, a local Circuit Court judge with ties to the university declined to issue a temporary restraining order and instead set a court hearing the following Friday at 9:00 a.m., leaving Harbaugh back at the hotel while his Wolverines faced a packed house of more than 106,000 opposing fans wearing white and shaking pom-poms like their lives depended on it.

So what did the Wolverines do under the interim head coach, offensive coordinator Sherrone Moore, in such a hostile environment? How about throttle the home team, 24–15, a picture-perfect tribute to their old school coach, punctuated by twenty-six carries for 145 yards and two touchdowns from star running back Blake Corum. Behind a ferocious offensive line they finished off the Nittany Lions with thirty-two straight runs and not a single forward pass after 7:41 of the second quarter.

In an emotional postgame interview with FOX Sports’ Jenny Taft, a tearful Moore left no doubt about his feelings.

“I want to thank the Lord. I want to thank coach Harbaugh. I (expletive) love you, man. I love the shit out of you, man. This is for you. For this university, the president, the AD. We got the best players, the best university, the best alumni in the country. Love you guys.”

Moore then turned and put his arm around Corum, standing just off-camera, and brought him in for a huge hug. “This (expletive) guy right here. These guys did it. These guys did it.” And then he walked away.

“We did it for Coach Harbaugh,” said Corum, his nose and face a bloodied badge of honor.

At a conference on Monday, Harbaugh sounded raspy but insisted he was not sick. Waxing poetic about his “iron wall that viruses bash against and shatter,” the respect he had come to have for chickens, which back in 2018 he’d said he refused to eat because they were a “nervous bird” but was now raising in his backyard.

“I was dead wrong,” Harbaugh said. “I stand corrected. These chickens are low maintenance and high production.”

Dispensing with the chicken salute he offered one to his team. “They’ve got to be America’s team, just got to be America’s team,” he said. “America loves, loves a team that beats the odds, beats the adversity, overcomes what the naysayers, critics, so-called experts think. That’s my favorite kind of team. Yeah, watching from that view on television, finally people get to see what I see every day from the players and coaches. The perseverance, just the stalwartness of these guys.”

A collective will undoubtedly tested that week when the NCAA dropped another hammer, presenting evidence to the school that a booster nicknamed — you can’t make this stuff up — “Uncle T” had partially funded Stalions’s scheme and that linebackers coach Chris Partridge had interfered with the investigation or violated NCAA Bylaw 19.2.1 by failing to cooperate with investigators.

From the moment the first scandal broke, Harbaugh had been facing serious NCAA sanctions — up to the most serious “show-cause” penalty that could ban him from coaching for a specific period of time, under a new bylaw approved in January 2023. The rule significantly altered language from a head coach “presumed to be held responsible for the actions of all institutional staff members” to one that read “shall be held responsible for their actions and the actions of all institutional staff members.”

This left Harbaugh vulnerable, given the ongoing investigations, to a career-ending suspension.

No sooner had the latest NCAA news landed than Michigan fired Chris Partridge. Michigan alum Tim Smith, a member of the Champions Circle collective and a familiar face around Schembechler Hall, denied to Yahoo Sports he was the now-infamous Uncle T, insisting he was being targeted as a “fall guy” by the NCAA.

“I’m not Uncle T,” said Smith. “But Uncle T is better than being Asshole T.”

The Wednesday before the Maryland game former AD Hackett was back in Ann Arbor, seated in Harbaugh’s office alongside Jim Minick. Known as “the Colonel,” Minick not only had served a half dozen combat tours as a Marine in the Middle East, but since 2015 he had been Harbaugh’s closest confidant, a dear friend since third grade, acting as a liaison between the head coach and the athletic department. Both men were among the few Harbaugh trusted and listened to.

That afternoon they found a man on edge, questioning why Michigan attorneys were suddenly looking to settle the case. Given his phone call with the university’s VP of communications, Hackett figured university attorneys were weighing their options, privy to some potentially damaging information. He suggested Harbaugh consider taking his medicine and not fight any suspension.

Hackett’s intuition proved right.

That very night, at 9:55 p.m., sensing a slowdown on the university side, Tom Mars had sent a text to Timothy G. Lynch, a Michigan vice president and its general counsel. Mars had not heard a word from Lynch all day— unusual since the court hearing was two days away.

In his text Mars wrote, FYI, if Michigan is even considering withdrawing its lawsuit or doing anything that may deprive Jim of his day in court on Friday we would expect the courtesy of knowing Michigan’s intentions ASAP.

At five minutes after midnight Mars said his cell phone rang. It was Lynch, telling Mars he’d been quietly thinking before making the call. In so many words, Lynch informed Mars that Michigan had reached a settlement with the Big Ten and was withdrawing its lawsuit. It was just about the last thing Mars, bracing for a legal battle, wanted or needed to hear.

The next morning on a conference call, Mars, Jeff Klein, Harbaugh’s longtime contract lawyer, and a local counsel in Ann Arbor tried to make sense of an eleventh-hour move. Michigan had encouraged Harbaugh to join the lawsuit as a plaintiff and agreed to pay his legal fees. The fact that Michigan had failed to inform its head football coach, his personal attorneys, or outside counsel of its decision only added to the confusion and anger. Bottom line, Michigan didn’t have the legal right to dismiss the lawsuit without Harbaugh’s consent.

Later that morning Mars said he reached out again to Tim Lynch and asked, for clarity’s sake, if Michigan wanted to dismiss the lawsuit on Harbaugh’s behalf as well. “Absolutely,” Lynch said.

“You can’t do that,” Mars said. And that’s when things got heated.

Lynch told Mars in no uncertain terms this was not a negotiation. He needed Harbaugh’s consent, and if he didn’t get it, Michigan’s wasn’t paying his attorney’s fees.

You already signed an indemnification agreement, Mars fired back. “This isn’t negotiable, Tom,” Lynch repeated, according to Mars. “If you screw up this deal or Jim Harbaugh screws this up, we will rain fire down on Jim Harbaugh.”

“When do you need answer?” Mars asked. “Right (expletive) now,” he was told.

“Tim,” said Mars, “we’re both lawyers. I need to get my client’s consent. I can’t consent to dismiss the lawsuit.”

“Well, you better (expletive) hurry up and get it.”

“How much time do I have?”

“Eighteen minutes.”

At 1:15 p.m., eighteen minutes later on the dot, Mars called back. He had spoken with Harbaugh, who had provided his consent, reluctantly.

“Not because he agrees with it,” Mars told Lynch, “but because you said he doesn’t have any choice.”

To add one more icy layer to an already frosted cake, that same afternoon the university formally announced it had ended its pending legal dispute with the Big Ten, and here’s the frosting: the language of the statement made it appear the decision was Harbaugh’s idea—not Michigan’s.

“The Conference agreed to close its investigation, and the University and Coach Harbaugh agreed to accept the three-game suspension,” the pivotal paragraph began. “Coach Harbaugh, with the University’s support, decided to accept this sanction to return the focus to our student-athletes and their performance on the field.”

“Big (expletive) lie,” said Mars.

If anything marked the beginning of the end of Jim Harbaugh’s time in Ann Arbor, one would be hard-pressed to find a more salient moment. (Lynch did not respond to multiple requests for comments about his exchange with Mars.)

Two long days later Michigan outlasted Maryland on the road 31–24 for football win one thousand, the most by any program. Then, a week later the Wolverines first overpowered then sealed a 30–24 win over Ohio State with a last-minute interception for the third straight win over their bitter rivals. If one word described that victory it might well have been “resilient.” All day the brotherhood made plays when they were needed the most. No less a Michigan authority than John U. Bacon called it the “most important win in The Game, ever — and the ripples will run for years.”

Mobbed by joyous fans after the game, senior running back Blake Corum celebrated his twenty-third birthday by shouting, “This is what we came back for!”

Corum, who ran for 88 tough yards and two touchdowns, could well have been speaking for Harbaugh, starting right guard Zak Zinter, who suffered a gruesome leg injury during the game (broken tibia and fibula, requiring surgery), and a half dozen of his teammates who had returned to A2 for one more year, one last shot at redemption.

“This being my last game in the Big House, my last four years,” Corum said. “I will look back and just pray I left a legacy. I stamped my mark here. I made a difference on and off the field. But looking back at this game, I feel like this is why I came back.”

As the postseason playoffs loomed, the big question around the Big House was this: after a scandal- and suspension-soaked regular season, would the only Big Ten coach to win three straight conference titles outright come back? Would the Michigan Man return?

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Inside Jim Harbaugh’s years-long fight with the NCAA – and Michigan