The final tally from the Jim Harbaugh era at Michigan includes four straight wins over Ohio State, three Big Ten titles and of course a national championship.
It also includes an NCAA investigation into recruiting violations during COVID, an illegal scouting scandal, and an assistant coach who was indicted on 24 federal charges of hacking into private information and images from the phones of female athletes.
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And now, it includes his former offensive coordinator and successor — Sherrone Moore — being fired and detained by police after a university investigation into an inappropriate relationship with a staff member.
Thanks for the memories, Jimbo. But as Michigan sorts through its latest crisis to reset the football program once again, the school needs to draw a line in the sand.
No more Harbaugh-adjacent coaches. It’s time to cut ties to that era.
For good.
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Is all that stuff Harbaugh’s fault? Of course not. In particular, you can’t blame the current coach of the Los Angeles Chargers for the Michigan coach making a risky play call on or off the field.
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But the overwhelming theme of the Harbaugh era, extended by surrogate through Moore, was a coaching staff that habitually worked in the gray area and sometimes stepped over the line.
It was part of the culture there. That’s undeniable. And Michigan tolerated one embarrassing headline after another because Harbaugh is a one-of-one genius.
Moore is not.
Sherrone Moore was 16-8 as head coach of the Michigan Wolverines. (Luke Hales/Getty Images)
(Luke Hales via Getty Images)
That’s not to suggest Michigan would have overlooked Moore’s transgressions if he had gotten the Wolverines to the College Football Playoff. There are only a handful of things you just can’t do as a college football coach, and it appears he allegedly did one of them.
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It’s also true that, as Michigan completed its 2023 championship season knowing that Harbaugh was setting up his escape route to the NFL, the school gave the benefit of the doubt to its then-37-year-old assistant who probably wasn’t ready to lead a program of that magnitude. But emotions being what they are, Michigan chose continuity to the Harbaugh era over the risk of a clean sweep.
Now, a mere two years later, it’s blown up in the school’s face.
But in a way, Michigan should be thankful that Moore imploded so quickly rather than watch a multi-year slide into irrelevance. Though the Wolverines finished 9-3 this season, they lost decisively to the only three good teams on their schedule.
Maybe Moore would have learned, adjusted and gotten the program back on track to another title. Young coaches have growing pains, and they are magnified at a place like Michigan. But deep down, as Michigan fans watched this team, it would have been much easier to imagine him in two or three years getting fired for a mediocre on-field product than leading them back to championship glory.
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Obviously, the timing here isn’t ideal. National Signing Day has passed. Most of the coaches whose names popped up in the job carousel either signed extensions or took new jobs. (One wonders what Matt Campbell, who spent a good chunk of his career an hour from Ann Arbor at Toledo, thought when he saw the news just a few days after taking the Penn State job.)
Still, Michigan is an elite job that will attract a good coach. The candidate pool may be smaller than it would have been a month ago, but with all the resources at their disposal, Wolverine fans should not be too concerned. It’ll almost certainly be someone with a longer tracker track record than Moore.
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But it would be a mistake for Michigan to, once again, reach back for more Harbaugh-by-association magic.
Yes, it was a successful era in so many ways. It was also an embarrassment.
At various times, the school’s fans and administration struggled to be clear-eyed about that reality. They blamed the NCAA, they excused Connor Stalions, they invented enemies instead of taking accountability for egregious behavior by their coaches.
They did it in service of Harbaugh, whose immense ability to coach football made everything seem OK. But he’s not coming back, and nobody in his orbit during those Michigan years has a fraction of his talent or juice.
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Moore’s misstep is one scandal too many for a program that needs to reinvent itself once more. It starts with sweeping out the last vestige of the Harbaugh era, turning the page and finding a coach who isn’t going to be a moral, ethical or human resources disaster.
