Jim Harbaugh: Michigan football ‘innocent’ in sign-stealing scandal
After his team’s convincing 34-13 win over Washington in the national championship, Michigan football coach Jim Harbaugh took a firm stance when asked about the two major off-the-field incidents surrounding the Wolverines this season: “We’re innocent.”
Michigan dominated the season from start to finish and completed the perfect 15-0 season, securing the school’s 12th national championship on Monday. However, the season was not without controversy, as head coach Jim Harbaugh had to serve two separate three-game suspensions during the regular season.
Harbaugh first served a self-imposed three games of the season after an agreed-upon punishment fell through with the NCAA regarding alleged violations related to recruiting during the NCAA-mandated COVID-19 dead period and misleading investigators. He returned to coach the six games in the middle of Michigan’s schedule, before picking up another three-game suspension, this time for the Wolverines’ alleged sign-stealing scandal. Former Michigan staffer Connor Stalions allegedly ran a scouting scheme to film future opponents in person, a violation of NCAA rules, and Harbaugh was suspended because the alleged sign-stealing broke the conference’s sportsmanship policy.
At the postgame press conference following the national championship, players on the podium were asked about the off-thefield issues Michigan had to deal with throughout the season, and Harbaugh jumped in to reply instead.
He emphatically said his team did nothing wrong and was innocent. He finished the statement by cracking a grin and repeating that Michigan’s season went exactly as the team envisioned.
“(The season) couldn’t have gone better, it went exactly how we wanted it to go — to win every game,” Harbaugh said. “Off-the-field issues — we are innocent. We stood strong and tall because we knew we were innocent and I’d just like to point that out. These guys are innocent. (To) overcome that, it wasn’t that hard because we knew we were innocent. So, that’s really what I wanted to say, it went exactly as we wanted it to go. It went exactly as we wanted it to go.”
Michigan officially received a draft notice of allegations for the first NCAA investigation regarding recruiting during the COVID-19 dead period in December. The sign-stealing scandal is still under NCAA investigation.
Bonus time!
Harbaugh outdoing himself, college football head coaches at Bowl Subdivision public schools this season claimed just over $15.5 million in bonuses, according to tracking by USA TODAY Sports based on contracts acquired through open-records requests.
In addition, 14 coaches reached goals this season that were set to result in automatic contract extensions scheduled to be worth a combined $58.7 million. Three of those coaches have ended up moving to new jobs: Jonathan Smith to Michigan State from Oregon State; Curt Cignetti to Indiana from James Madison; and Jon Sumrall to Tulane from Troy.
Harbaugh led the bonus totals with $3 million — by far the largest single-season haul since USA TODAY Sports began tracking these amounts in 2019. Harbaugh claimed $2.225 million in 2021, although he redirected about $1.5 million of his bonus money to members of the Michigan athletics department who had taken pandemic-related pay cuts during an 11month stretch of 2020 and 2021 and had remained on the payroll. He picked up $2.2 million last season.
The next-highest season total is the $1.775 million that Ed Orgeron attained when LSU won the CFP title in 2019.
The coaches’ combined total of just over $15.5 million also establishes a new benchmark. To give that number some perspective, there were 46 Division I public schools that spent less than that on their entire athletics programs in fiscal 2022, the last year for which the schools’ annual financial reports to the NCAA are available. USA TODAY collects those documents in partnership with the Knight-Newhouse Data project at Syracuse.
Harbaugh’s basic pay from Michigan for this season is $8.2 million.
He picked up $1 million for the Wolverines’ win in Monday night’s CFP title game after getting $500,000 for the team playing in the Big Ten Conference championship game, $1 million for winning the Big Ten title and $500,000 for being selected to play in the CFP semifinals.
This set of bonuses was introduced into Harbaugh’s contract with Michigan after the 2020 season, when he took a roughly 50% cut in his basic annual pay from the school to $4 million after the Wolverines had gone 9-4 in 2019 and 2-4 in the pandemic-affected 2020 season.
The bonuses remained intact when the parties renegotiated again after the 2021 season and moved his basic pay back above $8 million.
If he remains at Michigan, he could get up to $150,000 more at athletics director Warde Manuel’s discretion depending on the team’s NCAA Academic Progress Rate scores. (Harbaugh is contractually eligible to get bonuses for coach-of-the-year awards, but the Big Ten honor went to Northwestern’s David Braun, and it seems unlikely that Harbaugh will win a national award.)