Before the Michigan football team played East Carolina Saturday afternoon, players donned T-shirts spoofing a Jim Harbaugh No. 4 jersey. “Head ball coach,” they called him, referencing his role as foundation of the Wolverines program. Junior quarterback JJ McCarthy even added white tape with big block letters that made the statement loud and clear:
Free Harbaugh.
Harbaugh, of course, couldn’t be there because of a three-game suspension levied by Michigan Athletics for recruiting violations. Alongside offensive coordinator Sherrone Moore — himself suspended for one game by the NCAA — Harbaugh could only watch his team mimic mourning.
But what exactly should he be freed from? The overall NCAA investigation that has clouded his program since January? A three-game suspension made up by his own athletic department?
It doesn’t really matter, because all these gimmicks are meant to do is paint Harbaugh as a saint, and the NCAA as the devil. They ignore the essential fact that Harbaugh allegedly violated NCAA recruiting regulations — including contacting recruits during a COVID-19 dead period. They also ignore that Harbaugh allegedly lied to investigators about those violations. Harbaugh tried to gain an edge on other programs, and he got caught.
Harbaugh isn’t a martyr.
Don’t paint me as an NCAA fanboy just yet — I’m certainly not biased toward an institution that profits off of arbitrary rules levied against student athletes. I’m not arguing for a system that exploits those athletes for ever-increasing revenues. In fact, I think the NCAA is the maker of its own mess on so many issues.
But rules are rules, and member institutions have to follow them — or accept the consequences of disobedience. That’s what every school agrees to when it plays under the NCAA banner, or competes for its elusive national championships that bring prestige and paychecks.
Like it or not, Harbaugh broke those rules, and the NCAA is still trying to conduct subsequent discipline — a verdict it delayed to 2024. But Michigan jumped the gun to get ahead of the allegations, thus putting Harbaugh in this situation itself.
Sure, the consistent gaffeing by the NCAA makes it out to be a fool. The NCAA dragged out the investigation process until nearly the beginning of the 2023 season, exploring a four-game suspension as part of a negotiated resolution with Michigan Athletics. Then it relented, opting to re-explore the matter in 2024. No delay for Michigan, though, as it stepped in to issue its own decree:
“While the ongoing NCAA matter continues through the NCAA process, today’s announcement is our way of addressing mistakes that our department has agreed to in an attempt to further that process,” Wolverines athletics director Warde Manuel said when he announced Harbaugh’s suspension Aug. 21.
In layman’s terms, Manuel meant, “We messed up, and we’re trying to get the NCAA off our back.” And that only further illustrates the silliness of the “Free Harbaugh” demonstration. Players are protesting their own school, for god’s sake.
At its root, the suspension aims to appease the NCAA, or at least give Harbaugh an out the next time it considers suspending him. To be frank, there’s minimal punishment in a school-issued suspension for three of the easiest games on his schedule and not a single Big Ten bout. There’s also no guarantee that works — the NCAA could tack on more games in the future.
But to players, fans and other supporters, Harbaugh is revered for his willingness to stand up to the big, bad NCAA. That’s all reinforced by the posturing of Harbaugh’s supporters.
When Harbaugh started his post-suspension press conference by lambasting the NCAA’s lack of student athlete compensation (which, by the way, he’s absolutely right about), he completely dominated the narrative. When he made the unheard of decision to split interim coaching duties between four coaches and named his dad as an assistant coach, Harbaugh made the NCAA look even more incompetent.
And on Saturday, when players wore Harbaugh shirts, or lined up on the field flashing four fingers in a reference to his old jersey number, they tried to trick the public into thinking their coach is a helpless victim. They portrayed him as someone unfairly punished by the NCAA — forget that his own AD laid down the suspension.
More than players are getting involved. Fans and even some members of the media have continuously alluded to the infamous “cheeseburger,” an alleged meal at The Brown Jug that Harbaugh might’ve bought for a recruit.
Armed with the cheeseburger story in hand, Harbaugh supporters’ martyr-making has gotten so bad that NCAA executives have been forced to debunk it themselves.
“The Michigan infractions case is related to impermissible on and off-campus recruiting during the COVID-19 dead period and impermissible coaching activities — not a cheeseburger,” NCAA vice president of hearing operations Derrick Crawford told multiple outlets when the original NCAA negotiations broke down.
Essentially, Crawford was so sick and tired of seeing the Harbaugh saga spun into a cheeseburger fable that he included it in the NCAA’s uncharacteristic and rule-breaking statement on an active investigation.
So what did Harbaugh’s supporters do when Crawford spoke out? They complained that Harbaugh is gagged by the NCAA’s suspension process. Thus, they turned the lone moment of clarity from the NCAA into another nail hanging Harbaugh from the cross.
But while Harbaugh and his supporters try to paint him as the unfortunate victim of an NCAA attack job, don’t forget why he’s in this situation:
Harbaugh broke rules he should be aware of to give his team a competitive advantage, and the NCAA got wise. That’s why his own AD suspended him. That doesn’t sound like a victim to me. That sounds like an athletic department trying to save face.
So while it might be funny — even vindicating — to see players wear Harbaugh merch or pay tribute to their coach, let’s be real for a second. It’s corny, overplayed and outright wrong.
Because Jim Harbaugh is no martyr, so don’t paint him as one.
Managing Sports Editor Connor Earegood can be reached at earegood@umich.edu or on Twitter @ConnorEaregood.