For Michigan, It’s National Title or Bust

A host of unpleasant bills could come due in Ann Arbor in 2024. And so the Wolverines are pushing in all their chips now.

Michigan has shoved everything it owns into the center of the College Football Playoff table. All its chips, its plans, its reputation, its near-term future. Winning the national championship is all that matters. They’ll figure everything else out later.

Two NCAA infractions cases remain ongoing. Sanctions almost certainly loom in 2024, potentially major ones, potentially leading to (another) suspension of the head coach. Of course, the head coach could be eyeing the NFL (again) and/or the NFL could be eyeing him (again). A large group of players who have been vital to the program renaissance are heading to the NFL.

Harbaugh pumped his fist after Michigan defeated Iowa in the Big Ten championship game. He hopes to celebrate on New Year’s Day after his Wolverines face Alabama in the Rose Bowl :: Junfu Han/USA TODAY NETWORK

It’s now or seemingly never for a program that hasn’t won it all since 1997, and has just that one title in the last 70 years. Natty or bust.

The ponderous churning process of NCAA investigations has granted Michigan this window in which it can chase a title. The Wolverines have been here the past two years, but not with a chance like this — there is no clearly superior opponent in this four-team playoff field Georgia in 2021 or ‘22. It’s there for the taking, before a lot of things might be taken away.

There are some similarities here to Auburn’s 2010 national championship run, and Kansas’s 2022 men’s basketball title — teams trying to keep playing through scandal while taking umbrage at anyone who holds it against them. The funny part of it is that this is Michigan, which has always put itself on a pedestal above the rogue rabble of college sports.

There are legions of Michigan alums who have looked down their noses at the Auburns of college football for decades. Now they have something in common. Michigan is piling up billable hours and NCAA Enforcement visits like the sketchiest Southeastern Conference programs.

Against that backdrop, the Wolverines have compensated by building their own fortress of victimhood and self-congratulation. “Michigan vs. Everybody” gear has proliferated, as have Ohio State-based conspiracy theories. Armchair NCAA rules experts within the fan base have been working overtime concocting arguments against major penalties. Jim Harbaugh, suspended for six of Michigan’s 13 games thus far — three early and three late, related to different infractions cases — declared in mid-November that this is “America's team.” His explanation: “America loves a team that beats the odds, beats the adversity, overcomes what the naysayers and critics, so-called experts think.”

America may differ.

The Michigan season has progressed along two tracks simultaneously: success and scandal. The Wolverines have spent the entirety of 2023 in the NCAA’s crosshairs.

On Jan. 6, news broke that the Wolverines were under investigation for allegedly hosting recruits during the COVID-19 dead period, using too many coaches at practice sessions and watching player workouts over a video feed. Those were all Level II violations, not the most severe, but coach Jim Harbaugh upped the ante by allegedly lying to NCAA investigators when questioned about the potential violations. That’s a Level I charge.

Months of negotiations followed, with a negotiated resolution between Michigan and the NCAA on the table — including a suspension of Harbaugh — but ultimately rejected by the Committee on Infractions. So Michigan imposed its own Harbaugh suspension that kept him out of the first three games of the season (it still allowed him to coach during the week, just not on Saturdays).

After that, it was just football for about a month, until the world (and NCAA Enforcement) was introduced to Connor Stalions. Here came a second investigation, stranger than the first one — stranger than about any in the baroque and bewildering annals of college sports crime and punishment. Stalions is alleged to have dispatched a network of associates to dozens of games to record play signals of future Michigan opponents.

This was a present-day scandal, stemming from alleged impermissible activity this season. The espionage allegedly included Stalions in disguise as a Central Michigan staffer, on the sidelines spying on Michigan State in those teams’ season opener, taking a wild scheme to another level of brazenness. Stalions was put on leave, then resigned. Meanwhile Michigan’s response has mostly been to let other entities take action — namely the NCAA and the Big Ten.

Michigan’s conference opponents were rightfully furious over the Stalions scheme. They expressed their anger to the league office, which responded with commissioner Tony Petitti handing down another suspension of Harbaugh — this one for the final three games of the regular season. (With the same caveat that he could coach the other six days of the week.)

This resulted in great furor from Michigan, including emails and statements from president Santa Ono and athletic director Warde Manuel. A legal challenge was mounted — until it was suddenly abandoned.

As is almost always the case in these sorts of NCAA cases, the initial party line was that Stalions acted alone, without approval and without the knowledge of anyone else on the Michigan coaching staff. We still don’t know how well that’s going to hold up over time, but the school did fire linebacker coach Chris Partridge in November and immediately drop its attempt to get a temporary restraining order that would have put Harbaugh back on game duty.

Partridge’s termination letter stated, in part, that Michigan “has received evidence that you have failed to abide by the University directive not to discuss an ongoing NCAA investigation with anyone associated with the Michigan Football Program or others and as a result has determined that you have failed to satisfactorily perform your duties.”

Led by quarterback J.J. McCarthy, Michigan has dominated on the field this season—but all the big headlines have come from off the field controversies :: Trevor Ruszkowski/USA TODAY Sports

Partridge later issued his own statement saying, in part: ”Unfortunately, the manner in which the termination of my employment and my role as a Coach at Michigan has been reported is inaccurate and has resulted in people speculating and making assumptions about my knowledge of, and connection to, the sign-stealing allegations. I want to be clear: I had no knowledge whatsoever of any in-person or illegal scouting, or illegal sign stealing. Additionally, at no point did I destroy any evidence related to an ongoing investigation.”

Next came the Uncle T Chapter. The NCAA reportedly identified a booster by that moniker as having allegedly helped fund Stalions’ far-flung spying plan — another indication that the Lone Looney Theory might not hold up over the long term. A booster named Tim Smith has denied that he is Uncle T, but his role with Michigan’s NIL collective, Champions Circle, was terminated. Whether there is a real Uncle T out there remains unconfirmed. But the possibility of a shady money man with a mafia-worthy nickname, predictably, overwhelmed the internet and drove the spectacle that is Michigan’s 2023 season to new levels of absurd.

Those developments pretty much ended Michigan’s Righteous Indignation Phase. Since then, it’s simply been about winning and advancing toward a national title. But the levels of suspicion about the Wolverines remain raised even as their Rose Bowl date with Alabama draws near.

AL.com reported Thursday that Crimson Tide players are not allowed to watch film on their individual iPads leading up to the game, only in groups. The inference is that this is an extra layer of security against the Wolverines potentially gathering information, although the method is not clear. The AL.com story says that receiver Isaiah Bond told the outlet that “the Catapult game and practice film storage system Alabama uses is at the center of the matter.”

If Michigan has hacked into opponents' film storage, that could represent yet another level of alleged espionage for the Wolverines—and Harbaugh—to answer for.

The NCAA’s strict liability rule means Harbaugh is on the hook for not only his own alleged violation from the first investigation, but Stalions’ shenanigans as well. There is a potential for enhanced institutional penalties as a repeat violator of NCAA rules. With a proposed big new contract in limbo, Harbaugh could assess the situation and beat the posse out of town for the NFL.

In other words, 2024 could be a mess at Michigan. Which is why the school is leveraging everything to win now.