ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER VIOLATION: HARBAUGH SHOULD QUIT MICHIGAN NOW

Allegations against the coach, who has missed six games this season because of suspensions, have reached the gruesome point where the school is best off if he resigns before Saban and the Rose Bowl

     The azure blue Michigan hat, with the maize M, already is damp in a southern California rainstorm. A Rose Bowl showdown with Alabama is 11 days away, yet the climate to win a national championship only grows worse for Jim (Woe Is Me) Harbaugh, who faces yet another violation in his world of neglect.

     This one is rated Level I from the NCAA, not as strenuous as a death penalty but beginning to veer in that direction — an allegation of providing false or misleading information to investigators about COVID-19 recruiting lawlessness. And if any of those hat-wearers dismiss it as more repetitive nonsense, they are reminded of a brutal comment from the NCAA’s vice president of hearing operations.

     “The Michigan infractions case is related to impermissible on- and off-campus recruiting during the COVID-19 dead period and impermissible coaching activities — not a cheeseburger,” Derrick Crawford said.

     The infractions police hardly are treating Harbaugh like a Double-Double at In-N-Out Burger, compiling his ugliest details and serving it as Nick Saban grins. This menu has reached the gruesome point that the coach — after missing six of 13 games due to suspensions — is insulting the university, the players and the traveling fans if he shows up on New Year’s Day in Pasadena. Did I also mention college football, or hasn’t he trashed it already? The Wolverines were 3-0 in late season, including a win over Ohio State, with Sherrone Moore as the acting head coach. First Harbaugh served three self-imposed games for the recruiting punishment, then served three for the program’s sign-stealing consequences in other stadiums. Now, the NCAA is sending notice that he failed to cooperate when probed about his COVID behavior.

     Why would Michigan people want to keep defending a coach who does so much wrong in one timeframe? At this stage, they’re better off letting Harbaugh take an immediate gig in the NFL — assuming those teams still want him — and handing the reins to Moore in the national semifinal. Once Harbaugh arrives in Los Angeles, the latest news verifies him as the only storyline of his operation. Will anyone care about Blake Corum or J.J. McCarthy? Meanwhile, Saban continues to gleam as the greatest on-campus coach in the sport’s history. The task already is daunting for Harbaugh, who is 0-2 in the College Football Playoff after a blowout loss against Georgia and an upset blindspot to TCU.

     Does anyone think the players will carry his personal load and beat an Alabama team that eliminated Georgia, preventing the Bulldogs from a possible three-peat? Can Michigan really upend the Southeastern Conference’s record of 14-3 against non-conference teams in the CFP? Harbaugh will keep urging his kids to fight for the school, using the same statement: “We're going to do it or die trying.”

     They will die, facing Saban amid his most precious recipe of in-season, change-the-culture coaching. Looking for his seventh national championship at Alabama, he was asked about the signal-stealing scandal. He dismissed it in two words.

     “Not really,” Saban said. “We always change things up a little bit, but we're focused on what we have to do to try to get good execution and we're not really concerned about any of that stuff.  It's a great opportunity for our players. It's a great challenge. But you're not really owed anything when you play in these games. It's like a one-game season when you're playing in the playoffs, so we've got to put everything into it we can. And everybody's working hard to try to do that.”

     The latest NCAA news brings us to Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti, who should have suspended Harbaugh for the entire season instead of three games. Didn’t he ponder the same hassles on the first day of a new year? And what if Harbaugh wins the tournament — can you imagine giving the guy a trophy that might be vacated? At the least, he would receive a show-cause penalty for 2024, which cannot happen in Ann Arbor, where the Fab Five’s sins live.

     Let’s see if the next level reacts to Harbaugh’s violations on the college level. The NFL might be as tired of his dirtballishness as the rest of us. Clearly, teams that need quarterbacking help like Ben Johnson, who is 37 and has done wonders with Jared Goff in Detroit. Would the Los Angeles Chargers break down and hire Harbaugh to maximize Justin Herbert, pay him more than the $11 million a season that he reportedly has negotiated at Michigan? Doesn’t he make way too much to excite the Chicago Bears? Maybe David Tepper, an owner who must win and might ignore college transgressions, bites with the Carolina Panthers.

     But Wednesday’s lead headline on ESPN, which is televising the semifinal, isn’t the path the University of Michigan should take regarding Auld Lang Syne. The blue hats are intended to be proud, but every time I notice one, I want to reach out and ask: “Why are you coached by a crook?”

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     Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.