Andy & Ari On3 - Michigan Football Under Fire! | Big Ten Hands Down Punishment to Jim Harbaugh and Wolverines

Episode Date: November 10, 2023

Michigan Football Under Fire! | Big Ten Hands Down Punishment to Jim Harbaugh and WolverinesSubscribe to On3! ⬇️youtube.com/on3sports/?sub_confirmation=1Welcome to On3 | The best of college football and recruitinghttps://www.on3.com/Follow J.D. PicKell on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jdpickellFollow J.D. PicKell on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jdpickell/Listen to The Hard Count on podcast!Spotify 🎧 : https://open.spotify.com/show/5Muz6cWNF4Dunh3QOcint6Apple🍎: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-hard-count-with-j-d-pickell/id1634039449Follow us on Twitterhttps://twitter.com/on3sportsFollow us on Instagramhttps://www.instagram.com/on3/?hl=enLike/Follow us on Facebookhttps://www.facebook.com/On3Sports/The Big Ten announced Friday that it has suspended Michigan football coach Jim Harbaugh for the remainder of the regular season. This announcement came while Michigan's team plane was in the air en route to State College for Saturday's game at Penn State.In a statement, Michigan promised to fight the suspension in court. What will happen next? We'll have to wait and see as one of the wildest stories in college football takes more twists.

Welcome to the edition of Andy Staples on three. That's right. You hear the horns. You hear the horns. Greetings from Happy Valley where the people just landed in Happy Valley are not very happy. That's right. Michigan, while in the air, receives word, or I don't know if they receive word, because they were in the air, but the Big Ten released a statement saying that Jim Harbaugh will be suspended for the next three

games as a result of the investigation into the sign-sealing accusations. What a Friday News dump. What an unbelievable Friday news dump. Michigan is playing Penn State in that stadium tomorrow at noon. It's absolutely wild that this has happened the way it's happened. And by the way, Michigan is prepared to fight and it's not lost on Michigan that this all was brought down on a Friday that happened to be a federal holiday when the courts weren't open. Now, apparently that, you know, there's always a judge on call. So we'll see what happens as Michigan tries to fight this. But basically, the Big Ten is saying, you violated our sportsmanship policy. We are punishing the institution.

That is the lawyerly wording they're using. But the punishment of the institution is a punishment of Jim Harbaugh. And so he can coach them during the week, but he's not allowed to be on the sideline for the Penn State game, the Maryland game, or the Ohio State game. Penn State and Ohio State being top 10 teams. This is unprecedented.

We've never seen anything like this in college football before. And obviously the Michigan folks are furious. The rest of the Big Ten celebrating because they wanted punishment handed down the rest of college football going, huh? What the sec would never, the big 12 would never. It is, it is absolutely wild. When that news came out, I was on the phone with somebody from Michigan. And I just hung up.

And I texted them back. I said, the plane is still in the air, correct? And they said, yeah, still in the air. And I happened to have just gotten to State College, so I drove to the airport. And sure enough, by the time I got there, the plane had landed, and the Michigan folks were getting off the plane, loading their buses and headed to the hotel. And I see a statement pop into my phone from Michigan. You ready for this one? Like all members of the Big Ten Conference, we were entitled to a fair, deliberate, and thoughtful process to determine the full set of facts before a judgment is rendered.

Today's action by Commissioner Tony Petitti disregards the conference's own handbook, violates basic tenets of due process, and sets an untenable precedent of assessing penalties before an investigation has been completed. We are dismayed at the Commissioner's rust of judgment when there's an ongoing NCAA investigation, one in which we are fully cooperating. Commissioner Petitti's hasty action today suggests that there is more about reacting to pressure from other conference members than a desire to apply the rules fairly and impartially. By taking action at this hour, the commissioner is personally inserting himself onto the sidelines and altering the level playing field that he is claiming to preserve. And doing so on Veterans Day, a court holiday to try to thwart the university from seeking immediate judicial relief is hardly a profile in impartiality. This is and it goes on to ensure fairness in the process. We intend to seek a court order together with Coach Harbaugh preventing this disciplinary action from taking effect. In other words, they are trying to get a court order right now that would allow Jim Harbaugh

to coach in that stadium tomorrow. Reminder, the game, I'm bad at math, but I'm pretty sure the game kicks off in less than 19 hours. This is going to be something. And this is something. All of this is something. Because rarely do we have the NCAA-type scandal that affects what happens on the field of play.

Maybe affects the gambling line. That sort of thing. And that was the reason everyone rushed to say, you got to punish Michigan. But here's the thing. I don't know that the big 10 has considered, maybe they have and just aren't worried about it, but the precedent this sets, and this is something that obviously Michigan was arguing because Michigan does not want to be punished, but this is pretty unheard of in college sports. It's actually happened a couple of times before where you've had an organization go outside its normal disciplinary process. Now, you can say this is in the Big Ten handbook, You can do this, but it says you can punish the institution. They're punishing the institution by punishing the coach, which is, I guess, kind of extending the NCAA's strict liability

that says the head coach should be responsible for everything that happens in the program, which is a fairly recent development. I guess that's an extension of that. But remember, when the NCAA went out of its way, and everybody in this town remembers, when the NCAA went out of its way to punish Penn State and didn't use its normal course of disciplinary procedure, that got taken to court,

and essentially the NCAA had to walk it back. So we'll see what happens with this one, because this feels like they are, I don't know if they're circumventing their procedure, but they are certainly doing something that hasn't been done before. And, you know, I've talked to people from around the country, and the thought is among school administrators that don't have a dog in this particular hunt, well, okay, if you're another Big Ten school, you may be happy that you're getting the action you wanted,

what you pressed Tony Petitti to do, but what happens when the crosshairs are on your school next time? Are you going to be so happy when you get swift action? Now, the Big Ten did have some of the stuff the NCAA has gathered in its investigation, which we know how long NCAA investigations take. It's going to take a while. But in a letter to Michigan dated November 4th, the Big Ten said, hey, we've seen spreadsheets that had the entire 2023 season laid out, that had names of people who were supposed to go to games to scout them,

that had dollar figures associated with this. That's a paper trail that you can work with if you're investigating. But again, is it enough right now to do this? And I don't know that I know the answer to that. I think it's a pretty complicated question because again, if you're Michigan, you're saying the NCAA has not said we did this. If the Big Ten is comfortable saying you did this, that's fine. But does the Big Ten have the authority to say that? The Big Ten doesn't have an investigative arm. The SEC used to. Remember the Albert Means case? The SEC had a private investigator they used. They stopped doing that stuff. And also,

there's a reason Mike Slive, when he was the commissioner of the SEC, he was the commissioner before Greg Sankey. He basically made it where if you had something going on and you were an SEC school that was mad at another SEC school or thought they had violated NCAA rules, you don't turn them into the NCAA. You turn them into the conference and they handle that stuff in-house. That's another thing that I would imagine some of the schools might want to think about because this has gotten nasty and it's only going to get nastier now that Michigan feels very aggrieved. And I, you know, I see Michigan fans say, well, they should leave the conference. Look, Michigan is a massive brand. Every conference would love to have Michigan. Michigan could be an independent if it wanted to, but I don't think

that extreme is where you need to go. But if Michigan wanted to unload any dirt it has on the other schools, well, you've already seen a little bit of that. You saw the accusation of Rutgers and Ohio state conspiring to help Purdue have the signals for the big 10 championship game, have Michigan signals, which Ohio state is denied. Ryan day said that didn't happen. Greg Shiano from Rutgers said he wasn't going to dignify it with a response, which wasn't no, but also wasn't yes. So I'm not going to even hazard a guess as to what happens in a court of law. I would assume that Michigan files this in a fairly friendly venue,

and maybe they get what they want. Maybe they get Jim Harbaugh on the sideline. And maybe that's kind of what the Big Ten wants, so that they can say they did something, but then he ends up coaching. But this is a pretty thorough letter from the – 13 pages in the one they sent on Friday. They're not messing around on this thing. And it is just a crazy time. The Friday news dump of it all is amazing to me. It is a, just taking out all the other stuff. Horrible PR strategy. Horrendous PR strategy.

You have said nothing for three weeks, and then you dump this all on the Friday before their biggest game of the season so far with the team in the air. Like, if you want a judge to look favorably on Michigan's plea here, that's how you do it. So I don't know. It's amazing to me how this has just mushroomed. And it is one of the craziest stories.

Think about all this. You've got Connor Stallions, the Naval Academy grad, Michigan superfan, committee on infractions. They can tag this to Harbaugh as much as they want because they have what's they've added what's called strict liability, where the head coach is responsible for everything that happens in the program. And so they can say it doesn't matter if you knew or not. Big 10 doesn't necessarily have that. It's not written in the bylaws. So what does that mean? Can that be challenged in court?

It is going to be a wild next few weeks because if this thing holds, you have Jim Harbaugh not coaching against Penn state, not coaching his Maryland and not coaching against Ohio state, which if they win here tomorrow and beat Maryland, that game is for the Big Ten East title. It probably decides who goes to the playoff or not, because let's be real here. Whoever wins the East is going to smash whoever wins the West. So this is a just absolutely fascinating situation. Like if you don't have a rooting interest here, if you're not a Michigan fan or an Ohio state fan or a Purdue fan or Nebraska fan, like you're just looking at this from afar. Like this is the craziest college football story I've ever seen. And it just gets crazier. So we've got a game here tomorrow. Will Jim Harbaugh be on the

sideline? I guess we're going to have to find out. Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. Sunday through Thursday, 8 p.m. Eastern time. But you guys know when stuff goes down, we're going to be here for you. We'll talk to you again soon.