Michigan football’s 2021 violations detailed by NCAA, but when will other shoe drop?

The second shoe has yet to drop in the NCAA’s investigation of Michigan football, but the first one has officially touched ground. And Jim Harbaugh was caught wearing the smelly cleat.

The NCAA’s Notice of Allegations against the Wolverines recently went public, and while the basics of UM’s football follies already had been reported, the devil in the details finally has emerged. And he wears khaki pants.

Before the NCAA reveals what it plans to do about the Michigan spying scandal involving former staffer Connor Stalions, the governing body had to deal with unrelated football violations, including impermissible contact during a COVID-19 recruiting dead period in 2021 and Harbaugh misleading NCAA investigators along the way.

The 11-page NOA was obtained Friday by multiple media outlets through an open-records request made shortly after the document was received by the university on Dec. 18, 2023. According to the response from Michigan’s Freedom of Information office, some information was redacted to prevent an unwarranted invasion of privacy.

What wasn’t redacted? Harbaugh’s name. No other individual coach or staffer was identified, but the NOA found that Harbaugh engaged in “unethical or dishonest conduct and failure to cooperate” in the 2021 recruiting cases. Clearly, the NCAA wanted it known that Harbaugh was complicit in any wrongdoing. He received a three-game suspension early last season as part of a negotiated settlement between the school and NCAA, then another three-game suspension from the Big Ten related to the impermissible in-person advanced scouting linked to Stalions.

Harbaugh left Michigan for the NFL’s Los Angeles Chargers after the Wolverines won the 2023 national championship. That’s called skipping town before the authorities close in. Expect him also to be named in the in-person scouting…


Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/michigan-footballs-2021-violations-detailed-161347917.html

Author : The Columbus Dispatch

Publish date : 2024-07-30 16:13:47

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