The NCAA said that Jim Harbaugh didn't have any knowledge of what Connor Stalions was doing, or direct him to do what he did, at least according to the evidence it had.
Yet, that didn't stop the NCAA from leveling a 10-year show-cause penalty against the former Michigan football head coach, a penalty more severe than the one given to Stalions, the man at the heart of the scandal.
Harbaugh thumbed his nose at the NCAA for years, calling them out for their corruption. This was the result. A sham investigation and a sham punishment, just like punishing Michigan football for hamburgers and handing out sweatpants while turning a blind eye to the obvious pay-for-play that's happened in Columbus and the SEC for decades.
Ohio State fans can say the Jim Tressel scandal was about "tattoos." In truth, it was about impermissible benefits given to players. That made them ineligible, and Tressel knew it. Maurice Clarett also hasn't been shy about getting paid to play for the Buckeyes, just like you can just about guarantee every good player Urban Meyer got was paid under the table.
Yet, Meyer, like Nick Saban, wants to act like the morality police of college football. In a recent podcast, Meyer suggested that Harbaugh should be suspended by the NFL, as Jim Tressel was.
“There’s an elephant in the room here that no one’s talking about,” Meyersaid on The Triple Option podcast. “When Jim 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. [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.”
My response to that is that there is no way the NFL would follow suit. Jim Harbaugh doesn't need to be punished a third time. He was already published by the feckless NCAA and the Big Ten, without any actual evidence that he did anything wrong, even in the case of a minor violation.
Yet, we have been made to believe it was some grand scandal, even though in the fine print, the NCAA acknowledged that it didn't have an impact, especially since after Connor Stalions was fired, Michigan football beat Ohio State, Penn State, Iowa, Alabama, and Washington, plus an eight-win Maryland team on the road and only trailed once.
Unless you are a delusional Ohio State fan, which Meyer clearly is, based on his pick in "The Game" each year, you know Michigan was the better team and Jim Harbaugh was simply a better coach.
Harbaugh will deserve a trip to the Pro Football Hall of Fame someday. But as far as punishment from the NFL, that's not going to happen.