Sherrone Moore will miss two games in the upcoming season after Michigan self-imposed the suspension. / Junfu Han / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

The Michigan Wolverines have pushed back strenuously against the NCAA and the Big Ten in defending their honor in the great Connor Stalions caper. Yet they keep having head coaches suspended. Funny how the pugnacious stances of the last 18 months have worked out.

ESPN reported Monday that Michigan is suspending Sherrone Moore for two games this upcoming season. That’s an apparent backtrack from the combative, “grossly overreaching” and “wildly overcharging” tenor of the school’s January response to the NCAA’s notice of allegations against the program, which charged the Wolverines with major violations. Makes you wonder what was in the NCAA’s response to the Michigan response, which marked the final step before a Committee on Infractions hearing that sources tell Sports Illustrated is scheduled for June 6–7 in Indianapolis.

But even if Michigan is at least partially acquiescing to the COI’s likely insistence that Moore face significant punishment, the Wolverines still possess a flippancy that is impossible to ignore. The school is suspending him for the third and fourth games of the season, against Central Michigan and at Nebraska, while clearing him to coach the first two, against New Mexico and at Oklahoma.

That is, to say the least, unusual. Unless suspensions are specifically tied to conference games (this one isn’t), they almost always occur at the beginning of the season.

Both the Oklahoma and Nebraska games are big deals, but ESPN noted in its story that Moore is an Oklahoma alum. Apparently that’s supposed to matter in terms of administering a suspension? Like, the school can’t derail the nostalgia tour and hurt his feelings by making him miss that game? Is this middle school or high-stakes, semi-professional football?

Or could it be that the last thing the Wolverines want to do is play their opening road game of the season, against an SEC opponent, with a true freshman quarterback (if Bryce Underwood wins the job) and an interim head coach?

Moore is making in the neighborhood of $6 million a year, and if returning to his alma mater is important to him, he could pay his own way during the offseason, rather than Michigan manipulating his suspension around that game. This seems like one last attempt by the university, while retreating from a previously entrenched position, to engage in some rear-guard action. The Wolverines seem to remain unserious about the Stalions saga and only grudgingly accept major sanctions.

This was, of course, also the case when Jim Harbaugh was staring down the barrel of a Big Ten suspension during the 2023 season, after L’affaire Stalions erupted. The former Michigan staffer and a cohort of helpers engaged in impermissible, in-person advance scouting of opponents, purchasing tickets and recording their signals from the stands. Stalions resigned, while an investigation was launched to determine the extent of Stalions’s covert operations—and which Michigan staffers knew what he was doing. The logical suspects were the play-callers: offensive coordinator Moore and defensive coordinator Jesse Minter.

The Stalions flash fire led to Harbaugh being suspended for three games during the Wolverines’ national championship season. But that only came after Michigan dropped a lawsuit against the conference. Harbaugh was granted virtual martyr status by the school and its fans during his timeout.

Harbaugh then beat the NCAA posse out of town, returning to the NFL and taking Minter with him as his DC. Moore, who performed ably as the game-day coach during Harbaugh’s suspension, was promoted to head coach. Michigan whistled past the investigative graveyard last year, not imposing any sanctions on Moore as he led the Wolverines to an 8–5 record. The season started poorly but ended with a flourish: a stunning upset of the eventual national champion Ohio State Buckeyes, and a bowl victory over the Alabama Crimson Tide.

But among the 11 charges in the NCAA’s notice of allegations was this: Moore deleted a string of 52 text messages with Stalions immediately after the signal-stealing scandal blew up. Moore explained it away as anger toward Stalions and not an admission of guilt. He later produced the texts for the NCAA via device imaging. According to Yahoo Sports, some of the texts were innocuous, while others pertained to Stalions’s knowledge of opponents’ signals. (Which, in and of itself, is not an admission that the signals were acquired against NCAA rules.)

Before Moore gets his day in NCAA court next month, the school has already set its own suspension. That wouldn’t happen if Michigan believed it had an airtight defense of its coach, especially since those suspensions have additional weight now—coaches not only cannot work on game day, they are suspended for the entire week of those games.

And that self-imposed sanction might not be all that Moore or the school are facing. The Committee on Infractions has the latitude to add to it, if it chooses—and let’s just say that relations between Michigan and the NCAA have been contentious for years. 

There were penalties and suspensions handed down for a previous investigation, when Harbaugh met with recruits during the COVID-19 dead period and then lied about it, among other violations. Harbaugh himself, and the school, fought back vigorously during that probe—and that was before Stalions doubled Michigan’s trouble.

In this instance, Michigan is answering to six Level I allegations, the most serious at NCAA Enforcement’s disposal. The NCAA’s “repeat violator” rules could come into play and enhance the sanctions. That could include a postseason ban, although many people in the college sports space doubt the NCAA’s resolve to administer that penalty in an era when a billion-dollar, 12-team College Football Playoff increases championship access geometrically.

So the stakes remain very high for this meeting in Indy next month, culminating years of entrenched bickering. But Michigan has already backed down in one key area, suspending another head coach after initially standing behind him. Everyone in maize and blue who confidently declared that nothing would come of the great Connor Stalions caper now have an interim head coach to cheer for in (at least) two games this season.