Michigan accepting Jim Harbaugh's suspension leaves more questions than answers

A week ago, Jim Harbaugh’s suspension was “insulting,” not to mention “unethical.”

Those were the words of Michigan’s athletic director Warde Manuel, and they mirrored the mood on campus and wherever Wolverines congregated, including New York on Monday night.

There, in Madison Square Garden, as U-M's basketball team throttled St. John's, the maize and blue faithful serenaded the maize and blue football coach, Jim Harbaugh.

“Free Harbaugh,” they chanted, as if he were a political prisoner, or at least a man wronged by a cabal out to get him and, for that matter, everyone else with an affinity for the university. Michigan vs. Everybody, right?

Well how does the T-shirt look now? Now that the university dropped its court case against the Big Ten and suddenly accepted Harbaugh’s three-game suspension?

Is it still insulting? Unethical? Unfair? A conspiracy?

Cognitive dissonance being what it is for human beings — like flies to sugar water — the rationalizations will commence. Never mind that not once through all of this has U-M disputed an employee of the football program schemed for two-plus years to steal signs of opposing football teams by in-person scouting.

That’s a no-no, whether Connor Stalions’ rule-breaking recon mission helped the Wolverines win games or not.

U-M had the chance again Thursday to push back on what Stalions did when it released a statement announcing it had pulled its request for a temporary restraining order to stop Harbaugh’s suspension. It did not.

Instead, the university focused on Harbaugh, parroting that the Big Ten didn’t find a link between U-M's head football coach and Stalions’ alleged cheating.

“The Conference has confirmed that it is not aware of any information suggesting Coach Harbaugh’s involvement in the allegations,” the statement read. “The University continues to cooperate fully with the NCAA’s investigation.”

As for the Big Ten’s investigation? U-M said it agreed to table it, though it was unclear if the conference felt the same way.

“The Big Ten Conference’s commitment to student-athletes, sportsmanship and the Commissioner’s duty to protect the integrity of competition will never waver," the league’s statement began. "Today’s decision by the University of Michigan to withdraw its legal challenge against the Conference’s November 10th Notice of Disciplinary Action is indicative of the high standards and values that the Conference and the University seek to uphold.”

The Big Ten then added, as if it were in doubt, that “the University of Michigan is a valued member of the Big Ten Conference, and the Conference will continue to work cooperatively with the University and the NCAA during this process."

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U-M spun the move as a resolution between the university, Harbaugh and the conference, and suggested that the decision was meant to flip the spotlight from the coach to the players.

That may well be true, but it does beg a question:

Why now?

Why, six days after rebuking the league's ruling, after filing a motion to stop the conference’s punishment, did it pull its legal missive?

Why is it suddenly copacetic with the suspension?

U-M didn’t say.

Did the school hear something uncomfortable about the NCAA’s investigation? Did it figure out something internally? Was there a public relations shift?

Perhaps Thursday's decision had something to do with Friday's latest news revelation that a booster — with an "Uncle T" moniker — reportedly helped bankroll the sign-stealing scheme. And that an assistant coach was caught trying destroy evidence after the scandal was first reported. That assistant, Chris Partridge, was fired on Friday.

The last one is hard to figure considering how well the messaging had been going within the Wolverine universe.

Not only were T-shirts emblazoned with “Michigan vs. Everybody” flying off the rack but almost the entire maize and blue community seemed to be in lock step that it had been wronged, and that the university was doing the right thing, the noble thing, by fighting the Big Ten. So, to change course as a matter of spin doesn’t make much sense.

Still this will still be a story as long as Harbaugh isn’t on the sideline, but his absence from a settled suspension reads differently than his absence pending a judge’s decision.

By making nice with the Big Ten, some of the attention should shift back to the team as it tries to beat Maryland on Saturday in College Park, which means maybe the school’s motivation was that simple.

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Then again, the lack of explanation leaves the kind of vacuum in which speculation thrives. At the very least, the timing is odd. Another oddity is the inconsistency between the statements. U-M wrote that the Big Ten had "agreed to close its investigation, and the University and Coach Harbaugh agreed to accept the three-game suspension.”

The Big Ten wrote no such thing. If anything, the league doubled down on its initial ruling, using the phrase “never waver” to describe its aim to keep integrity a part of competition, and then wrote that the school's choice to withdraw litigation was “indicative of the high standards that the conference and the University seek to uphold." That's not quite I-told-you-so but it is the conference arguing it was right from the start.

We may never know all the reasons U-M pulled its case as the school isn't likely to start talking. In the end, though, it may not matter as long as no connection is found between Stalions and others employed by the football program. Besides, pulling the case said plenty.

As for all the things still unsaid? Others will continue to fill in the blanks. And no amount of public relations will change that.

Contact Shawn Windsor: 313-222-6487 or swindsor@freepress.com. Follow him @shawnwindsor.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan accepting Jim Harbaugh suspension raises more questions