STEALING SINATRA not SIGNALS
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December 13, 2023
IN 2021, Michigan football began dominating the Big Ten. Because Harbaugh caught Sinatra, not signs.
The program is not a paragon of virtue. Former players Cade McNamara and Erick All transferred out complaining that Michigan failed to diagnose medical problems. Chris Partridge, linebackers coach, was let go for discussing an ongoing NCAA investigation with players, a requirement he found at odds with his loyalty to the players. Running a top flight athletic program is messy and highly competitive. No one is going to excel at this without some missteps.
But suddenly start reading tea leaves three years ago? When you have been coaching since 2002? Including an appearance in a Superbowl?
It is undeniable that Wolverines’ football found another gear in 2021. Before then, under Harbaugh they had finished every regular season with at least two losses. In 2021, they started a streak with only one loss total in 36 regular season games. Each year during that streak they have earned one of the four coveted berths in the college playoffs. It is valid to ask what changed. It was that, when the university amped up pressure on Harbaugh to produce, he took Frank Sinatra’s advice to do it My Way.
ULTIMATUM MOTIVATION
In 2021, Michigan cut Harbaugh’s guaranteed pay in half. The salary they had took away, they then offered as incentives: win key games, beat Ohio State, win the Big Ten Championship, receive big bonuses. They doubled down by including a buyout clause whose penalty decreased each year, making it cheaper each successive year to offload Harbaugh. The message was plain: deliver or go home.
Harbaugh got the ultimatum. As loyal as he had been to his defensive coordinator Don Brown, he replaced him in 2021 with Mike Macdonald. He also brought in four other new coaches, including former players Mike Hart to coach running backs and Ron Bellamy as wide receivers coach. Finally, he elevated Sherrone Moore to co-offensive coordinator along with Josh Gattis. He sought new blood, making his staff younger and more diverse.
Volpin Props on 
RUN THE DAMN BALL
But he did not comparably decide that he needed to play New. Instead, he recommitted to traditional Michigan football: the Wolverines would be a run first program – with toughness. Although they should want to win every week, they would fixate on one game of the year. Harbaugh renamed the traditional nine vs seven drill the ‘Beat Ohio Drill’. Signs that read “What are you doing today to beat Ohio State?” were posted in the weight room and throughout Schembechler Hall. They didn’t start testing binoculars to better watch the opponent’s sideline. 2021 lineman Trevor Keegan said “We’re blasting music, ya know…smelling salts, everything. It’s a pretty physical period, we love it.”
Had this failed, stealing signals would be on no one’s mind. Harbaugh would have been excised from Ann Arbor, and would be busy trying to reestablish his coaching credentials in some obscure place like the North South Ludington Community College, Canadian campus. He would be a footnote in coverage of Wolverine football, part of the win drought in the Ohio State rivalry that started with Rich Rodriguez.
New people running old-fashioned football worked. Asked in 2021 when he realized that the Wolverines would be able to run on the Buckeyes, Harbaugh explained: “Back in spring ball. That was something we thought we could do. And we wanted to get really good at it. … And we felt confident that our offensive line could move them, our receivers would block, and our running backs would be incredible.” usatoday.com
It has continued to work, even when opponents set out to stop the Wolverines run game. In 2022, when Ohio State crowded the line to stop Michigan’s run, J.J. McCarthy and Donavan Edwards were able to throw over and run past them for big plays. This year Penn State linebackers early on were flying to the ball, stifling the Wolverines ground game. Sheronne Moore didn’t need to read the Nitanny Lions’ play calls to figure out how to counter their speed and athleticism. Calling upon classic football strategy, he put in seven lineman to run right at their defense, to neutralize the Penn State front’s speed and create running room. In the next game, they persevered through a letdown against Maryland, then stuck to their guns against Ohio State. Some second half plays which featured 7 – 8 players blocking pushed both the Buckeyes and momentum back. They surrendered some inevitable big gains – Ohio State has talent – but dominated the line of scrimmage when it counted.
THREE TOUGH GAMES NO SIGNALS STOLEN
US Navy signalman practices. On Getarchive
Faced with an ultimatum, you could imagine that Harbaugh would reach for any tactic that might help him keep his job. The last three games of this season rebut the case that Wolverines’ football turned to an illegal advantage to gain their edge. With cheating allegations leading college football news, no one even remotely affiliated to the University of Michigan dared show up at a prior Maryland, Penn State, or Ohio State game. Were I in charge of signs for those opponents, I would have had my players gesticulate messages such as ‘Hide in burrow, cousin of weasel’ and ‘Lions EAT Wolverines.’ There was no chance that their last three foes weren’t going to change their signals for their game against Michigan.
Michigan won those games strictly because they played with superior physicality and toughness. They brought equal or superior ability to the trenches in those games. This is not surprising given that this is what Harbaugh most looks for when recruiting.
“We’re looking for the guys who really like football, you know, who really want to get good at football,” Harbaugh said in his weekly news conference ahead of the Big Ten title game. “No matter what their star rating is, that’s fairly irrelevant to us.” foxsports.com Because he prizes character and enthusiasm over raw talent, Harbaugh’s recruiting classes are consistently ranked lower than those of Ohio State, Alabama, and Georgia on talent. What Harbaugh expects is that he can develop his type of player into a better competitor.
To do this, he turns them over to director of strength and conditioning, Ben Herbert. Players consistently credit Herbert with making them players they did not expect they could be: “He’s going to take you places you never thought you could go to,” defensive tackle Kris Jenkins said. Herbert takes before and after photos of players, photos used as motivation, even in recruiting. Even Jake Moody, the kicker drafted by San Francisco this year in the third round, benefited under Herbert’s guidance. He went from rail, skinny kid to muscle-chested young man with honest six pack abs. Equally important, Herbert significantly hardens the mental grittiness of players, both by example and drills. In one drill often cited in articles, at the end of practice Herbert randomly selects a player who must set a personal best in a lifting or playing drill before any player can be dismissed for the day. foxsports.com. When signed, Mike Sainristil was ranked 595th among recruits in 2019. foxsports.com. This year he was voted the MVP of the Big Ten Championship game against Iowa.
To my knowledge, Michigan has no ‘Director of Signal Interception’. I cannot prove that Michigan coaches did not access illegal scouting information. I’m a fan, not an investigative journalist. I am not privy to the hallway conversations that reporters constantly draw from. All I’ve done is collate opinions and facts that are readily available in media coverage to give a narrative of what I believe occurred. Regardless, even before the last three games of the Wolverines’ season, my sense was that Jim Harbaugh might be a sometimes difficult person to work for, but he doesn’t cheat. He deems that the players on his team will excel. He lets them know he has their back. His players, by extension, strongly believe that, when it counts, they play harder than the other guy. They respond to Harbaugh’s football leadership and win.
The number of players who postpone NFL careers to play one more season at Michigan attest to this. Blake Corum and ‘Mikey’ Sainristil both could have been drafted last Spring and playing in the NFL the weekend of November 25th. When Corum suffered a knee injury and missed the end of the 2022 season, Harbaugh advised him to enter the draft. “Coach Harbaugh, he said get the surgery,” Corum recalled. “He told me to go to the league.” si.com Corum returned because he wanted to play for a national championship. “I love Michigan, I love being here. And so you know, it was a tough decision. But I will be coming back for my senior year. And I’m willing to do whatever it takes to win it all.” si.com Next year, Corum should make a team in the NFL. Sainristil likewise elected to return out of affection for the team and a desire to succeed in the college football playoffs. si.com Reading adversaries’ play calls won’t be the skill that wins them playoff games or gets them drafted to an NFL team.
DID ENTHUSIAST GO TOO FAR?
The person in this story who took things too far might be Connor Stallions. “I’ve grown up my entire life with a vision to coach football at Michigan. … “. soldierstosidelines.org. While he attended the Naval academy, he volunteered relentlessly for both Navy football and at U of M football camps and clinics. He discovered that he deeply enjoyed mentoring players. After retiring from the Marines, he even reached the point where he slept in his car so he could shorten his commute to Michigan football program activities.
Volunteering finally paid off when he earned a salaried position as an offensive analyst for the Wolverines. soldierstosidelines.org. Along with a few other low level staff members, he maintained a document that was their “… long-term plan to run the Michigan football program.” sportingnews.com. Information about him reads like a man obsessed.
If Harbaugh should be faulted, it is for poor oversight. About Stallions, “(A) source said it was known in the building that he spent much of his time deciphering opponents’ signals, often watching television copies of opponents’ games.” espn.com. Sport Illustrated’s Christopher Breiller writes that Michigan has been portrayed as the bad guy “… while competitors who are largely guilty of the same conduct have been painted as “victims”.” si.com. Especially since, as the New Yorker magazine points out: This is the perfect college-football scandal, so different from the game’s many other scandals. No children have been harmed. No brains have been damaged. No families from disadvantaged communities have been exploited. No money has been stolen. No racial epithets have been used. No freshmen have been hazed. No women have been abused.” newyorker.com Nothing outside cheating to win games possibly has been done wrong. I don’t know how well Michigan will fair against Alabama.
The toughness that Harbaugh prizes has yet to translate to playoff games. But it would be a clarifying irony if Michigan manages to win it all right after the program supposedly lost the edge that allegedly allowed the program to dominate the Big Ten over the last three years.