Did Jim Harbaugh vs. the NCAA really start with a burger? Our quest for answers at Michigan

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — At the Brown Jug, a popular campus haunt, customers can order Jim Harbaugh’s 10 oz. Sirloin Steak or his father Jack’s Famous Brown Jug Burger in a sports bar that shares its name with the symbol of Michigan’s rivalry against Minnesota.

Like its namesake, a five-gallon Red Wing Pottery jug allegedly purchased in 1903 because Michigan feared someone might tamper with its water supply, the Brown Jug restaurant has become embellished in its own piece of Michigan lore. The story has all the features of a classic college football caper: a lightning-rod coach, a whiff of espionage and conspiracy theories galore, all set against the backdrop of Michigan’s march to three consecutive Big Ten championships and the 2023 national championship.

In January 2023, months before Connor Stalions’ name became known to college football in a sign-stealing scandal and a year before the Wolverines hoisted the championship trophy in Houston, news broke that Jim Harbaugh and Michigan were being investigated for recruiting violations that occurred during the NCAA’s COVID-19 dead period. A reporter posted on a message board that Harbaugh’s transgression was buying a “Jug burger” for two committed recruits who made an impromptu stop in Ann Arbor during the dead period, then denying it when confronted by the NCAA.

The story of the cheeseburger at the Brown Jug gained widespread traction publicly, playing into a well-established narrative about the arbitrary NCAA rulebook. In response, Derrick Crawford, NCAA vice president for hearing operations, took the rare step of commenting on an ongoing case after the NCAA’s Committee on Infractions rejected a negotiated resolution in August 2023.

“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,” Crawford said.

For the past three years, Harbaugh and Michigan have been caught up in the NCAA’s maze of investigations, appeals, negotiated resolutions and bifurcated rulings that would make any college football fan’s eyes glaze over. Harbaugh versus the NCAA is the story everybody knows and almost no one understands.

More than six months after Harbaugh left Michigan to coach the Los Angeles Chargers, details are filtering into public view. On Wednesday, the NCAA gave Harbaugh a four-year show-cause order and a one-season suspension in connection with the case known as “Burgergate.” It followed Michigan receiving a draft notice of allegations on Sunday in the case involving Stalions, a former staffer who allegedly coordinated a scheme to collect video footage of opponents’ signals.

But with Harbaugh back in the NFL, the NCAA no longer has jurisdiction to punish him, and he has no intention of coaching college football anytime soon.

“Today’s COI decision is like being in college and getting a letter from your high school saying you’ve been suspended because you didn’t sign the yearbook,” Harbaugh’s lawyer, Tom Mars, wrote in part on X. “If I were in Coach Harbaugh’s shoes and had an $80 million contract as head coach of the Chargers, I wouldn’t pay any attention to the findings of a kangaroo court.”

Harbaugh has maintained his innocence and did so again this week when asked about the allegations in the Stalions case. But the NCAA’s ruling in the COVID-19 case, combined with documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests and conversations with sources involved in the process, tell a different story than the version that was widely known.

According to the ruling released Wednesday by the NCAA, Harbaugh met a recruit and his father for breakfast at a local diner in February 2021, when in-person recruiting was prohibited as a health and safety measure, and arranged for them to visit Michigan’s football facility. Harbaugh met another prospect and his father at the same diner the following month. When confronted by the NCAA, Harbaugh denied having any memory of the meetings. He went a step further in a subsequent interview, according to the ruling, “unequivocally disputing that either meeting happened.”

The NCAA had evidence to the contrary, including receipts, expense reports and testimony from the players, their fathers and other football staffers. While the COI ruling fills in many details, it leaves some out.

Yes, there was a burger involved. But not at the Brown Jug.

In spring 2021, Michigan was in the midst of a massive self-improvement project. The Wolverines finished 2-4 during a miserable pandemic-shortened season in 2020.

Harbaugh was under pressure to deliver results. Many people around the program would credit the changes he made that spring for all of the success that followed: a 40-3 record over three seasons and the program’s first national title in 26 years.

In April of that year, Michigan contacted the NCAA to self-report potential low-level violations involving analysts performing coaching duties. After a nine-month investigation, the NCAA sent Michigan a draft of minor infractions, some of which would no longer apply under new rules approved in June 2024 that allow an unlimited number of staffers to perform coaching duties.

In other words, small potatoes. But two days after issuing the draft allegations, the NCAA informed Michigan it was reopening its investigation after receiving new information. That new information included evidence that Michigan violated recruiting rules put in place during the COVID-19 dead period.

Several schools have been punished for having recruits on campus during that time. The most notable was Arizona State, which was hit with four years of NCAA probation, a fine, a one-year bowl ban and recruiting restrictions for violations that occurred under former coach Herm Edwards and assistant Antonio Pierce, now Harbaugh’s division rival as the head coach of the Las Vegas Raiders.

The NCAA’s notice of allegations said Michigan had “impermissible recruiting contact with and/or provided impermissible inducements to three then football prospective student-athletes and their fathers” during the COVID-19 dead period. The recruit identified as Player 1 met with members of the football facility and was given access to the weight room. Player 2 and his father met staff members for a discounted meal at a local restaurant, then met Harbaugh for a free meal at another restaurant and were given access to Michigan’s football facilities. Player 3 and his father also met Harbaugh at a local restaurant and met staff members at Michigan’s football facility.

A former recruiting director who spoke to the NCAA said Harbaugh urged him to “get guys to campus” and stated that Michigan had no protocols in place to avoid in-person contact during the dead period. According to the ruling, the former recruiting director told the NCAA, “The culture (in the football program) wasn’t to be safe, the culture was to go to the line and cross it if you had to.”

Sherrone Moore led Michigan to its third straight win over Ohio State while Jim Harbaugh was suspended. (Ezra Shaw / Getty Images)

In July 2022, Harbaugh told the NCAA he had no memory of meeting with Player 2 or his father at the diner and said he did not remember the player at all. In a follow-up interview several weeks later, Harbaugh acknowledged that the player had visited but denied meeting with the recruit and his father. The COI quoted a portion of Harbaugh’s answer in its ruling.

“I used to have a mind like a steel trap, now it’s more of an aluminum trap but I would — I would believe in my — in my state that I would remember having breakfast at (the diner),” Harbaugh said.

In July 2023, not long before Harbaugh went to Big Ten media days and declared he had “nothing to be ashamed of,” news broke that Michigan and the NCAA were attempting to settle “Burgergate” with a negotiated resolution that included a four-game suspension for Harbaugh. The NCAA accepted portions of the negotiated resolution pertaining to two assistant coaches, a graduate assistant and the former recruiting director but rejected the portions pertaining to Harbaugh and Michigan as an institution.

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According to a person involved in the process, the sticking point was whether Harbaugh intentionally misled investigators or provided inaccurate information because he didn’t remember what happened. Harbaugh maintained that when he denied meeting with recruits during the dead period, it was because he had no memory of it. But the NCAA had evidence that it happened, including a photo taken in Michigan’s football facility and a breakfast receipt that showed someone ordering a bacon cheeseburger for breakfast.

When presented with the receipt, Harbaugh changed his tune.

“I had to be there, because somebody ordered a hamburger for breakfast,” he said, according to a person involved in the process. “Who else orders a hamburger for breakfast besides me? Nobody.”

The negotiated resolution fell apart. Michigan instead self-imposed a three-game suspension for Harbaugh.

Before the first game, Harbaugh stood inside Schembechler Hall with a typewritten statement and lambasted the NCAA’s status quo. It was neither the first nor the last time he would criticize schools for hoarding the massive revenues generated by college football, but his comments had a particular bite given his looming suspension.

“What I don’t understand is how the NCAA, the television networks, the conferences, the universities and coaches can continue to pull in millions and in some cases billions of dollars of revenue off the efforts of college student-athletes across the country without providing enough opportunities to share in the ever-increasing revenues,” he said.

Harbaugh spent the first three Saturdays last season in school-imposed exile, mowing his lawn, working the chains for his son’s youth football team and attending a funeral for one of his former players at Stanford.

Upon returning, Harbaugh promised to institute policies that would make Michigan the “gold standard” for NCAA rules compliance. Little did anyone know that another suspension was around the corner.

The instructions said to enter an unmarked door in the alley behind an Ann Arbor steakhouse. The restaurant was closed, but Jim Stapleton would be waiting in the downstairs lounge.

Convinced someone was out to get Harbaugh in the wake of the Stalions revelations, a segment of the Michigan fan base focused its attention on Stapleton, a lawyer, Michigan booster and former Detroit Tigers executive who happened to serve on the Committee on Infractions. Some fans believed he was leaking information about the Stalions case in an effort to harm Harbaugh.

The news that the NCAA was investigating the alleged sign-stealing operation broke less than a month after Harbaugh returned from suspension. Stalions, a previously anonymous staffer earning $55,000 per year, was identified as the ringleader of a scheme to buy tickets for dozens of games involving Michigan’s opponents and collect video footage of opponents’ signals.

The story prompted an uproar from fans of Michigan’s Big Ten opponents, who saw Harbaugh as a cheater and Michigan’s holier-than-thou image as a fraud, and urged commissioner Tony Petitti to take action. He ultimately did, suspending Harbaugh for the final three regular-season games for violations of the league’s sportsmanship policy.

In the eyes of many Michigan fans, Harbaugh was being persecuted for the equivalent of jaywalking, possibly because he had the nerve to call out NCAA hypocrisy. The NCAA’s investigation reportedly originated with an outside investigative firm, spawning the wild theories and paranoia among Michigan fans and school administrators that enveloped Stapleton, among others.

Stapleton, who previously served on the board of regents at Eastern Michigan, had been accused of trying to undermine Harbaugh in the past because of bitterness about former coach Brady Hoke’s firing and the process of Harbaugh’s hiring.

He sent a lengthy email to members of Michigan’s campus community in January denying allegations of spreading information about the sign-stealing investigation, outlining legal steps he’d taken to clear his name and documenting a personal toll, including “numerous death threats and character assassinations against me posted online.”

Stapleton then agreed to an on-the-record interview with The Athletic and provided instructions for where to meet clandestinely.

From the steakhouse lounge, he laid out the reasons why he couldn’t have accessed privileged information about the NCAA’s investigations into Harbaugh’s program, including the COI’s recusal procedures and the wall of separation between the NCAA’s enforcement staff and COI members who rule on cases. He also denied that anyone at the NCAA had it out for Harbaugh or Michigan.

“The NCAA will investigate anything that’s credible, no matter where it comes from,” Stapleton said. “Rumors come every day. But if something’s credible, it’s their job to investigate it. This notion that it was done to ‘get Michigan’ or ‘get Harbaugh,’ that wasn’t the NCAA’s intent. Maybe it was someone else’s.”

If the allegations were intended to disrupt Michigan’s dream season, the plot failed.

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Sherrone Moore, now Michigan’s head coach, led the Wolverines to three victories in Harbaugh’s absence, including a dramatic 30-24 win against unbeaten Ohio State. Harbaugh returned for the postseason, twice-suspended but as defiant as ever.

“We stood strong and tall because we knew we were innocent,” Harbaugh said after Michigan’s 34-13 victory against Washington in the championship game. “And I’d like to point that out. These guys are innocent.”

Harbaugh made his long-awaited return to the NFL two weeks later, leaving Michigan to celebrate a national championship and unwind a tangle of NCAA allegations.

No longer obligated to defend its former coach, Michigan reached a negotiated resolution with the NCAA in April that included three years of probation and an acknowledgment that Harbaugh “failed to meet his responsibility to cooperate” with the investigation into COVID-19 recruiting violations.

“I can almost hear the wheels of the bus going, ‘whomp, whomp,’” Mars wrote in a statement.

Jim Harbaugh’s final year at Michigan ended with a national title parade. (Nic Antaya / Getty Images)

Sunday, Michigan received a draft of the NCAA’s allegations in the Stalions case, including a potential Level II charge against Moore for allegedly deleting a chain of text messages with Stalions shortly after news of the scandal broke. Moore was among the coaches who reached negotiated resolutions with the NCAA in the COVID-19 case and served a one-game suspension last season. Michigan could also face penalties if the NCAA finds that the new allegations constitute a pattern of noncompliance.

Stalions, who hasn’t spoken publicly since the scandal broke, is set to tell his side of the story in a Netflix documentary scheduled for release Aug. 27. Harbaugh reiterated to reporters this week that he “did not participate, was not aware, nor complicit” in Stalions’ alleged scheme, but he faces further NCAA penalties for not fully complying with an NCAA request to turn over emails and messages from a personal device. There’s no telling when punishment will ultimately be handed down.

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And though “Burgergate” has been resolved, one key question remains: Did the whole thing really start with a cheeseburger at the Brown Jug? According to one person familiar with the case, the answer was no.

“(Harbaugh) was never at the Brown Jug,” the person said. “His whole deal was Denny’s.”

Denny’s? Home of the Grand Slam and Moons Over My Hammy? That wouldn’t be out of character for Harbaugh, a professed Cracker Barrel aficionado, but the story had a few problems. A quick Google search revealed only one Denny’s in Ann Arbor, located along a busy stretch of Washtenaw Avenue next to a pet supply store. Not the most appealing place to take a prospective recruit. Also, the restaurant closed in 2022, meaning the Denny’s and its secrets might be sealed forever.

There was one person who could settle the question once and for all: the father of the recruit identified as Player 2. When reached by The Athletic, he confirmed that the infamous meal took place, but it wasn’t at Denny’s or the Brown Jug. They met Harbaugh at some local place, he said, a diner not far from Michigan Stadium …

“Was it Benny’s?”

“Yeah. Benny’s.”

That would be Benny’s Family Dining, an Ann Arbor institution where swimmer Michael Phelps famously loaded up on carbs while training for the Olympics. According to the father of Player 2, who agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity due to the confidential nature of the NCAA investigation, they had come to Ann Arbor for a self-guided tour. At other stops, coaches told them where to pick up a campus map but had no in-person contact. At Michigan, there was a meal the day they arrived, breakfast the next morning, then a tour of the football facility. None of which was permitted.

“It was completely, 100 percent different than everywhere else,” the recruit’s father said. “Even SEC schools that you thought in the past would have bent rules did it by the books.”

The player, who was not committed to any school at the time, did not sign with Michigan. The player’s father eventually had to hire a lawyer to deal with the NCAA fallout. He said he realized at the time Michigan was breaking the dead-period rules but didn’t feel he was in a position to say anything.

“I thought, ‘Wow, this is Harbaugh. It’s a big-time program,’” he said. “You don’t want to say no.”

On a recent Monday morning, the early crowd was starting to thin out at Benny’s, where photos of Michigan stars adorn the walls. The day’s specials, written on a dry-erase board, included a bacon cheeseburger and fries for $12.99. Yes, the waitress confirmed, you can order it for breakfast.

For months, Michigan fans had been going to the Brown Jug, scanning the menu in search of the famous cheeseburger. It turned out it was here all along, waiting for someone to order it. As the NCAA said, the real story of “Burgergate” was about impermissible recruiting contact and violations of the dead period rules, not a cheeseburger.

For the record, it was delicious. A bit heavy for 9 in the morning, but well worth the wait.

(Top illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; photo: Gregory Shamus / Getty Images)