The Brown Jug is a Michigan campus institution located on University Avenue in Ann Arbor, and each of its menu items is named after a Wolverines legend. The restaurant’s walls are covered with Michigan memorabilia. Apparently, this place has one of the best burgers you can find in the Midwest. If you’re watching your carbs, you can opt for the Jim Harbaugh 10-ounce sirloin steak.
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So here’s the supposed scenario: Jim Harbaugh went to The Brown Jug to meet some recruits and bought them hamburgers with his own money.
That is the root of this entire Michigan-NCAA situation, which took another step forward Tuesday with news that Harbaugh is working toward a four-game suspension to start the 2023 season. Assistant coaches Sherrone Moore and Grant Newsome are facing one-game suspensions.
In January, Michigan received a draft Notice of Allegations from the NCAA, which outlined potential rules violations by Harbaugh. Michigan faced four Level II violations and one Level I violation, which is the more serious scenario because it involves Harbaugh potentially providing misleading information or straight-out lying to the NCAA.
This is a two-pronged issue:
Issue A: Do we really have to care about this stuff anymore? We’re talking about a hamburger here.
Issue B: A coach broke NCAA rules and is being accused of misleading the investigation, so shouldn’t he be punished?
That’s why the news Tuesday, which appropriately landed the day before Big Ten media days kick off in Indianapolis, is the perfect resolution to this annoying matter.
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What would a Jim Harbaugh suspension mean? Very little for a loaded Michigan team
The penalty Harbaugh received — or what we expect he will receive — is a glorified slap on the wrist that isn’t going to impact Michigan and its goals. And this proves that we’ve graduated to a point as college football consumers where we don’t have to concern ourselves with small potatoes anymore. That’s the perfect threading of the needle as this sport continues to change and our priorities of what to care about shift. Harbaugh was rightfully suspended for breaking the rules, and more importantly, lying about it, but the man isn’t going to lose his job — or face any significant penalty — over a basket of burgers.
Consider Michigan’s first four games, all of which are at home: East Carolina, UNLV, Bowling Green and Rutgers. Some are mocking the suspension because this isn’t much of a penalty given Michigan would win all of those games by 20 points if Peter Griffin were on the sidelines coaching. When Harbaugh returns, Michigan will be 4-0 and can continue its quest for a third straight Big Ten title and maybe more.
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But we can also say he was punished. Rules are put in place for a reason. They are to be followed by the coaches in the sport. If rules are broken, there needs to be ramifications for those actions.
Now we’re close to the point where we no longer have to care about this — not that we really ever cared about it.
The truth is this isn’t 2009 anymore, where situations like this make the cover of Sports Illustrated and dominate the discourse for months.
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Wasserman: Jim Harbaugh, Jim Tressel and NCAA nonsense
There are a lot of Ohio State fans who are bitter about what happened at the end of the Jim Tressel era. Yes, Tressel’s tenure at Ohio State came to an end not because his players sold their own memorabilia for money, but because he wasn’t forthright with the NCAA when questioned about it.
We may have been brainwashed enough by the NCAA and didn’t realize how out of touch we all were at that point. I was a reporter fresh out of college at the time, and covering Tattoo-Gate gave me enough anxiety that it felt as though I was covering a murder trial. An Ohio State legend lost his job over that stuff, and now — with a decade of context — it seems ridiculous.
And if we now realize how absurd the Tressel situation was, then it’s good Harbaugh’s penalty for similar actions is met with an eye roll.
That’s progress.
College football has gone through significant growth in the past 15 years. Of course, we’re in the age of the transfer portal and NIL — which makes athletes being compensated no longer feel like a first-degree felony — but we’ve also seen some pretty significant scandals during that time period, scandals that are worth our attention. There’s one happening at Northwestern right now. Many of these involve real-life issues, some of which have included actual felonies and human safety concerns. When you live through those, it puts into perspective how inconsequential the little stuff is.
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But good for Harbaugh for getting through this with a slap on the wrist. The penalty is a joke because the crime was a joke. All is right in the world.
It’s about time this sport gets to a place where we don’t have to give a crap about whether a coach bought a 17-year-old kid a freakin’ hamburger.
And, hopefully, we’re one step closer to getting to a place where the coach doesn’t feel the need to lie about it, either.
(Photo: Gregory Shamus / Getty Images)
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