The NCAA penalized the defending national champions Michigan Wolverines football team on Tuesday, accusing the program and non-coaches of impermissible contacts with student-athletes during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The NCAA has reached an agreement on the recruiting violations and coaching activities with the university and five people who work or worked for the football program, it said in a statement. The penalties include three years of probation, a fine, recruiting restrictions and one-year "show-cause orders" for the five participants, the NCAA said.
“The negotiated resolution also involved the school’s agreement that the underlying violations demonstrated a head coach responsibility violation and the former football head coach failed to meet his responsibility to cooperate with the investigation,” the NCAA said, presumably about former head coach Jim Harbaugh, who is now the coach of the NFL's Los Angeles Chargers.
"The committee will not discuss further details in the case to protect the integrity of the ongoing process, as the committee’s final decision — including potential violations and penalties for the former coach — is pending," the NCAA said.
Representatives for Harbaugh could not immediately be reached for comment Tuesday afternoon. University representatives also could not immediately be reached.
The NCAA statement did not name any of the five people who work or worked for the football program.
The violations occurred during the Covid-19 "dead period," the NCAA said, when contact with recruits and athletes was not permitted. The violations included “impermissible tryouts, and the program exceeding the number of allowed countable coaches when noncoaching staff members engaged in on- and off-field coaching activities” that included technical and tactical skills instruction.
Harbaugh, who coached the Wolverines for nine years, led his team to its first national championship since 1997 in January, when they defeated the Washington Huskies 34-13.
Weeks later, he accepted a job with the Chargers. Harbaugh, a former quarterback who played at Michigan and suited up in the NFL for the Chicago Bears, the Indianapolis Colts and the Baltimore Ravens, also coached the San Francisco 49ers from 2011 to 2014, reaching the 2013 Super Bowl, which the 49ers lost to the Baltimore Ravens, coached by Harbaugh's brother, John.
Although this past season in Ann Arbor was his best on the gridiron, with the Wolverines going 15-0, it was not without drama for Harbaugh.
Harbaugh was suspended for half of the regular season in two separate investigations.
The Big 10 conference suspended him for the last three games of the regular season after he was caught in the middle of a sign stealing scandal. He had already sat out the first three games after he accepted the university’s decision to suspend him over accusations that he made false statements to NCAA investigators who were looking into allegations of recruiting violations during the coronavirus pandemic.
CORRECTION (April 16, 2024, 11:20 p.m. ET): A headline on a previous version of this article misstated who was Michigan’s coach at the time of the violations. It was Jim Harbaugh, not John Harbaugh.