The Michigan football program and NCAA enforcement staff have reached an agreement on recruiting violations and “coaching activities by noncoaching staff members that occurred within the football program” under former head coach Jim Harbaugh during the COVID-19 dead period.
The penalties include three years of probation, a fine and recruiting restrictions “in alignment with the Level I-Mitigated classification for the school.” Officials did not elaborate on what the recruiting restrictions include and the amount of the fine was not immediately disclosed.
The NCAA says the agreement was made between five current or former staff members, but one former coach did not participate in the agreement. That coach was not identified.
That portion of the case will be considered separately by the NCAA Committee on Infractions, after which the committee will release its full decision.
The violations “involve impermissible in-person recruiting contacts during a COVID-19 dead period, impermissible tryouts, and the program exceeding the number of allowed countable coaches when noncoaching staff members engaged in on- and off-field coaching activities (including providing technical and tactical skills instruction to student-athletes),” the NCAA said in a press release Tuesday.
The resolution announced Tuesday involved an agreement from the school that the violations “demonstrated a head coach responsibility violation and the former football head coach failed to meet his responsibility to cooperate with the investigation,” NCAA officials said.
The school also agreed that it “failed to deter and detect the impermissible recruiting contacts and did not ensure that the football program adhered to rules for noncoaching staff members.”
The NCAA said it 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 penalties announced Tuesday do not cover a separate NCAA investigation involving the alleged impermissible, in-person scouting and sign-stealing scandal that led to the dismissal of former staffer Connor Stalions last fall.
After winning the program's first national championship since 1997, Harbaugh left Ann Arbor to head back to the NFL, becoming the head coach of the Los Angeles Chargers. Michigan then hired former assistant Sherrone Moore.
Moore was acting head coach in one game early last season while Harbaugh served a self-imposed three-game suspension in connection to the recruiting violations. Moore then filled the role again for the last three regular season games as Harbaugh served his second suspension of the season, doled out by the Big Ten, in connection with the sign-stealing scandal.