Jim Harbaugh was with Michigan for about a decade before taking a second chance at the big league. He left after the 2023 season, in which his undefeated Wolverines won their first National Championship since 1997. However, those good times and accolades were slightly overshadowed by an investigation into a sign-stealing scandal centered on Michigan and its brain trust, which included Harbaugh — before he scooted off to the NFL’s Los Angeles Chargers.
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For two years, the NCAA investigated, and they recently wrapped up that probe. The result was a boatload of fines for the program, expected to exceed $20 million. Current coach Sherrone Moore was handed a one-game suspension that he will serve to start the 2026 season. He is already serving a school-imposed two-game suspension to start this season.
Harbaugh, for his part, was slapped with a massive 10-year “show cause” order. That means any college program hiring Harbaugh over that period would need to show cause for why they shouldn’t be sanctioned. Essentially, Harbaugh is done in the NCAA. But Harbaugh’s former rival Urban Meyer believes the NFL should punish the Chargers’ head coach as well.
“There’s an elephant in the room here that no one’s talking about. When Tressel was fired by Ohio State and he was given a suspension. Roger Goodell, commissioner of the National Football League, came out and said that we’re going to honor that suspension,” Meyer said on his podcast, The Triple Option.
“[Tressel] went to the Indianapolis Colts to work in the replay room. The Colts, because of the respect they had for the NCAA and the suspension, suspended Jim Tressel, so he was unable to perform his duties for the first six games of the year,” he added.
Meyer is kind of right, but not quite. The Colts, knowing about Tressel’s six-game suspension, simply waited until those six games were up before having him start his replay duties. They didn’t actually suspend him. However, commissioner Roger Goodell did support that decision back then, saying that he would have had to take “appropriate action” had they not.
The NFL also suspended Terrelle Pryor for NCAA infractions as a rookie in 2011. So there is real precedent here.
It seems like this thing is not quite over for the 61-year-old Harbaugh. He could certainly still see punishment from Goodell and the NFL. But we can’t imagine it being more than what Moore got from the NCAA, which was just a one-game suspension.
However, fans on Reddit were still unimpressed with Meyer’s seemingly salty comments. “I have to say that I kind of love how tone deaf this idiot is,” said one.
“He’s only a raging Twitter account and a few new lawsuits away from running for public office,” another replied jokingly.
“The NFL should suspend the Jacksonville Jaguars for hiring Urban Meyer,” said a third. “Urban Meyer is the last person who should suggest discipline for anything,” said yet another, referring to Meyer’s chequered disciplinary history.
Urban Meyer was chided and chastised for various violations over the course of his career. It’s no wonder he’s a little salty. He was suspended for three games in 2018 for not acting on reports of domestic violence by one of his staff.
Meyer was also fined $100k by the NFL for violating practice rules and, after a scandal during his second month at the helm of the Jacksonville Jaguars in 2021, he was fired without completing the season.
