The Jim Harbaugh Suspension Drama in Michigan Has Reached Embarrassing New Heights
The Wolverines coach received a three-game suspension, but judging by Michigan’s response on Saturday, you would have assumed he had far worse luck. In college football, where the firing season has already begun, forty names, matches, teams, and details are generating headlines:
The drama surrounding Jim Harbaugh’s suspension in Michigan has reached embarrassing new heights. The Wolverines coach received a three-game suspension, but judging by Michigan’s response on Saturday, you would have assumed he had far worse luck.
Second Quarter: Melodramatic Michigan
Michigan has already won a national title: the most melodramatic program in America, regardless of what occurs in the future. The Wolverines’ extreme reactions to Jim Harbaugh’s several suspensions are breaking records (11).
On national television on Saturday, Michigan’s temporary head coach Sherman Moore (12) alternated between crying and cursing as he put Penn State under duress. Moore gave a powerful homage to Harbaugh that bordered on satire. The coach appeared as though he was dying, was being kept captive, or was even stuck in a mine shaft. In actuality, he was suspended (again) and chose to watch the game from the State College, Pennsylvania team hotel.
The Big Ten suspended Harbaugh for the last three regular season games last week due to the alleged espionage ring of former staff member Connor Stalions, which conducted illegal in-person scouting of Michigan opponents. The temporary restraining order that Michigan and Harbaugh sought would permit him to continue as coach, but it won’t be heard until Friday. He was suspended by the school for three games to begin the season due to an additional pending NCAA investigation, so he missed the Penn State game.
Michigan responded in flamboyant way to the initial punishment. Before the season opener against East Carolina, quarterback J.J. McCarthy wore a “Free Harbaugh” shirt, maybe oblivious to the fact that this was a suspension from school. For their opening offensive play in that game, the Wolverines also lined up in the “centipede” formation that Harbaugh liked, starting with all 11 men in a row behind the center before switching to a more traditional formation.
Given that Harbaugh may really miss important games, it becomes sense that a program that handled the suspension as if it were a life sentence at San Quentin would be even more hysterical this time. The institutional outcry has undoubtedly been expressed; athletic director Warde Manuel (13) voiced his opinions during the penalty, and president Santa Ono wrote to Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti prior to it.
It would be easy to characterize Manuel’s remarks as a declaration of war against the meeting. Will Michigan continue to drag Purdue into the Big Ten title game as it did last week when Sports Illustrated and other media sources revealed that other Big Ten schools had sent Michigan play signals before to the game? We’ll see what comes up this week.
Amid the wailing and saber-rattling, SI colleague Michael Rosenberg disclosed that the Michigan regents had contemplated quitting the Big Ten in the event that Harbaugh was punished. That would raise the standard for institutional overreaction due to football to an unprecedented level.
(Along with Texas and Ohio State, Michigan is one of the few universities that could succeed as an independent in football. And Notre Dame, of course, which presently does it. The issue would be how to handle the remaining sports.)
That kind of Leave The League Power Play, even if it’s only spoken about and never implemented, highlights the unwavering dominance that Ohio State and Michigan have had inside the Big Ten for many years. More balance in terms of football achievement and institutional gravity would be greatly appreciated by the league. Things might become a little less tense with the entrance of four Pac-12 colleges the following year, but it might take years, if not decades, for that to happen.
And that gets us to Penn State (14), a team that has been in the conference for thirty years but still seems a little bit out of place and hasn’t made a lasting impact on the Big Ten’s gridiron hierarchy. The Nittany Lions appeared to have their greatest chance to accomplish so since 2016 this season, but they have blatantly failed to deliver.
On Sunday, coordinator Mike Yurcich (15) was fired by head coach James Franklin (15) after the team struggled offensively against both Ohio State and Michigan. It deserved to be. The Nittany Lions might not have had much of a Plan A, and they certainly didn’t seem to have a backup plan for formidable defenses. Penn State, which was already devoid of explosiveness in games against weaker opposition, was shown to be totally incapable of producing huge plays against the Buckeyes and Wolverines. They were completely insufficient versus Ohio State (49 rushing yards) and Michigan (74 passing yards).
Now that he’s the Penn State coach, Franklin will search for his sixth offensive coordinator since joining the team in 2014. Two of the prior five, Joe Moorhead at Akron and Ricky Rahne at Old Dominion, departed to take positions as head coaches. The other three, Kirk Ciarrocca, Yurcich, and John Donovan, have just fallen short. That brings us full round to Franklin, who still hasn’t figured out how to compete with Ohio State and Michigan.
Turnover Out West With More to Come?
Last Monday, USC fired Alex Grinch, its defensive coordinator, to kick off the firing celebration. Boise State (16) entered the conversation this week when they fired head coach Andy Avalos, a third-year hire. Avalos was moving against the established dynamic at Boise, which involved hiring coaches with great potential and then losing them to major conferences. In a season when the Mountain West Conference isn’t as strong as it once was, the Broncos had lost their position of dominance.
Under Dan Hawkins, Avalos played linebacker for Boise State. There are alternatives available to the institution if it wishes to remain in the family and return to the heyday of Chris Petersen’s explosive offensive.
The most prominent is Missouri’s offensive coordinator, Kirby Moore (18), a former wide receiver for Boise who passed on passes from his brother, Kellen, the greatest player in school history and the offensive coordinator for the Los Angeles Chargers at the moment. Additionally, there is 19-year-old Bryan Harsin, who took over for Petersen at Boise and won 78 percent of his games there before deciding to accept the position at Auburn, which proved to be a grave mistake.
Every season, Boise ought to be at the top of the Mountain West. The fact that it isn’t was sufficient justification for firing Avalos and starting the process of looking for someone who could restart the program.
In the West, efforts to rebuild have stalled. Chip Kelly (20) took longer than anticipated to get UCLA going, but his 17โ8 record in 2021 and 2022 suggested that things had turned around. However, the Bruins have underperformed this season; they are 6โ4, 3โ4 in the Pacโ12, and have not defeated any notable opponents. In their consecutive losses to Arizona and Arizona State, they had only managed 17 points in total.
A certain amount of this was predestined since Kelly was aiming for a strong 2022 campaign with a seasoned squad, so some regression was predicted. However, Kelly was hired with the goal of replicating the top-10 teams and Pac-12 titles he helped Oregon generate. That has not taken place.
Would something change at UCLA? Moving to the Big Ten adds even more pressure, and Kelly wasn’t hired by athletic director Martin Jarmond. Watch the Bruins closely as they play USC and California, two bitter rivals.