Was Jim Harbaugh Suspension A Fair Punishment?
Was Jim Harbaugh Suspension A Fair Punishment?
Michigan HC Jim Harbough has been suspended for the rest of the regular season as Michigan football faces its toughest competition yet in the next three games.
For those who don’t keep up with college football, this will probably be foreign to you. Michigan has been at the center of controversy for the past month or so for allegedly stealing signs from other teams and basically knowing their plays. Here is the timeline:
October 18 is when the NCAA notified the Big Ten and Michigan of the allegations they received of the Wolverines being involved in a sign-stealing scheme. In the the paperwork it alleges that Michigan had been sending people to scout teams they had matchups with that season. There have been rules in place to prevent this from happening since 1994.
The next day a report came from ESPN that the person behind this whole thing allegedly was Connor Stalions, who was the Wolverines off-field analyst. With this information, Michigan suspends Stalions with pay while they wait for the investigation to be over.
On October 23 it came out that Stalions had purchased his tickets for more than 30 games under his own name at 12 different Big Ten schools. he would forward the tickets to at least three different people across the country. The next day more information about this comes out. That Stalions had purchased more tickets for teams who weren’t in the same conference but were in playoff contention. October 26 the FBI is involved.
On October 27 a former player and assistant coach told ESPN that Stalions paid him a couple hundred dollars and gave him a ticket to a Michigan home game to record future opponents. the man alleges he attended three Big Ten games these past two seasons and would upload the footage to a shared album with Stalions.
Four days later on October 27, Central Michigan joined the investigation and announced they are now investigating photographs of what appeared to be Stalions standing on its sidelines during their game vs Michigan State.
November 1st all Big Ten coaches and the Big Ten commissioner have a meeting. Once that topic comes up Jim Harbough hangs up the call as the coaches start discussing the allegations. Most of the coaches in the call want Michigan to get punished. The commissioner didn’t make a decision at the time.
Stalions resigns on November 3rd. On November 6th the Big Ten sent a letter to Michigan notifying them they could get punished soon in some capacity. Then today, the Big Ten suspended Jim Harbough for the remainder of the regular season.
With all the information we know, I feel it doesn’t make sense to suspend Harbough considering they found no evidence of him being linked to the sign-stealing. It feels like the commissioner chose this punishment because they just felt like something had to be done so they didn’t look as bad.
If you’ve watched a lot of college football like I have, you’d see that most teams have signs they use on the sidelines for their plays. You probably don’t need to go to the actual games to be able to steal the signals and play calls. However, it is suspicious why a staff member of a team would have to go to that many games. it can’t be for absolutely no reason. Stalions resignation makes them look like he did it, which doesn’t help their case in the investigation.
As a die-hard Ohio State fan, you’d think I’d have a bias toward this situation considering Michigan is our bigg when a team is being treated unfairly. investigations like this usually take a while, and there’s no way they should be punished until the investigation is over, which will most likely be after the college football season. If anything, this is just adding more fuel to the team even without Harbough. They have a tough matchup versus Penn State this week and then the matchup of the year versus Ohio State in a few weeks. Even without Harbough, those two matchups will be two of the best games of the season
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