How culpable is Jim Harbaugh if Connor Stalions acted alone?
Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh came out strong when the illegal, on-site scouting and sign stealing allegations emerged, proclaiming his innocence. He issued a statement, in fact, the day it came out.
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“I want to make it clear that I, and my staff, will fully cooperate with the investigation into this matter,” Harbaugh said. “I do not have any knowledge or information regarding the University of Michigan football program illegally stealing signals, nor have I directed staff members or others to participate in an off-campus scouting assignment. I have no awareness of anyone on our staff having done that or having directed that action.
“I do not condone or tolerate anyone doing anything illegal or against the NCAA rules. No matter what program or organization that I have led throughout my career, my instructions and awareness of how we scout opponents have always been firmly within the rules. Pursuant to NCAA rules, I will not be able to comment further while this investigation takes place.”
However — as Dan Wetzel said on 97.1 The Ticket Detroit with Doug Karsch yesterday, the NCAA doesn’t distinguish between the actions of an assistant and a head coach anymore. If something happened on Harbaugh’s watch, the coach could be deemed just as responsible. In this case, it’s allegedly analyst Connor Stalions buying tickets to games and having them film sidelines, possibly more.
“One thing is they changed the liability rules for head coaches. They’re supposed to know what’s going on in that department now,” Wetzel said. “There are exceptions [of things] you don’t have to know. They use the term ‘gold standard compliance.’ So, you can be literally be compliant, complaint, compliant and if somebody does something that how would you reasonably know …
“It’s easier in basketball than football because football staffs are so big. It can be 50 to 70 people in a football office or more. You get into all the assistants and administrators, a lot of people working, not just football coaches. There are reasons all operations that big have HR departments. Jim Harbaugh is a boss … but not the [only] boss. There are always people above him.”
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As reported yesterday, the NCAA is expected in town this week. Michigan has yet to receive a notice of investigation for this and has yet to even get a notice of allegations for the illegal contact with recruits dating back to the 2020 season. There’s belief they may tie the two together now in one case.
“They can throw it on. It would be naïve to think they would not throw this on there and say, ‘another compliance issue,’ all that,” Wetzel said. “But the NCAA penalty here is the reputational damage, and does it chase Jim Harbaugh to the Bears or Chargers, something like that? I think those are the biggest issues here. They’re just not going to live this down. There’s not an escape hatch here. Maybe the escape hatch is, ‘look — one guy was doing this … how were you supposed to know? That probably is the best case.
“My guess is, if more than one person is involved in this, at any level, and there’s a plot … why put the tickets in your own name? That’s clumsiness, not well thought out … that’s kind of swung it more to just his guys being dumb. You would pay cash to some guy standing by the interstate [selling tickets] if you were really doing this [covertly and organizationally].”
Regardless, there could be punishment if Michigan is deemed to have broken any rules. And while some in the court of public opinion are roasting them, Wetzel noted yesterday there are gray areas in poorly written rules. How far U-M goes to defend its case, we’ll have to see.
