College Football's Weirdest Man is Gone

Good morning and welcome to 4th & Forever, Rand & Tate’s College Football Newsletter. We’ve got a short newsletter for you here today as we wind down the coaching and player movement craziness for a little while. But because there can never be a truly dull week in college football, the head coach of the literal defending national champions is leaving his school and we have to reflect on the past nine years of his life, so without further ado, let’s get to it!

Farewell, Jim

We’re sure you’ve all heard the news by now, but in case you’ve spent the past week in North Korea, Jim Harbaugh announced last week that he’d be headed back to the NFL as head coach of the LA Chargers. Harbaugh capped off his nine-year run at his Alma Mater with Michigan’s first title since 1997, and while a national championship-winning head coach leaving his school would typically spawn an immediate “what’s next?” conversation for that school, this seems to us to be much more about Harbaugh and what he was able to accomplish over the past decade than it is about the future of Michigan Football. This is truly the end of an era, a unique period of time not only for Michigan and the Big Ten, but for college football as a whole.

Harbaugh left the San Francisco 49ers, where he made three consecutive NFC Championship games and a Super Bowl, only due to disagreements with front office management and his lack of influence and power on personnel decisions. Michigan had been in a rough, rough place for years, so when Harbaugh decided it was up to him to bring his old school back to glory, it seemed like an absolutely perfect match. But things didn’t get off to the hottest start. Harbaugh’s first couple of seasons with the Wolverines were marginally successful - Michigan went 10-3 in both 2015 and 2016, but was often talked about more for its shortcomings than its successes. Whether it was the Michigan State “Trouble With the Snap” fiasco in 2015 (Tate was at this game, by the way), Harbaugh’s weird public statements and actions, or Michigan’s complete and utter lack of competent quarterback play, Harbaugh’s honeymoon phase as the savior of Michigan Football was quickly fading away. After Michigan dropped to 8-5 in 2017, questions about Harbaugh’s commitment to recruit and work at the level it would take to bring the Wolverines back to national relevance started to creep in. 2019 saw Michigan lose its 4th consecutive bowl game and 5th consecutive Ohio State game, and after a disastrous COVID season in 2020 that saw Michigan go 2-4 and look absolutely inept doing it, it really looked like Michigan was going to fire him. Harbaugh’s shtick of riling other coaches up and just his overall posture of being the strangest guy in the sport was starting to rub people the wrong way - losing has a way of doing that.

But to Michigan’s credit, they didn’t fire him. They stuck with their guy and let him prove that he was worth all of the strange actions and controversial public statements. To Harbaugh’s credit, he quieted down the antics and agreed to entirely restructure his contract that significantly decreased his base salary, but provided incentives if he and his team hit certain goals. And hit them they did, finally claiming a monumental victory over Ohio State and winning the Big Ten for the first time since he arrived and making it to the College Football Playoff in 2021. Then, despite openly hunting for NFL jobs that offseason, he did all of those things again in 2022. While those first two CFP appearances were abject failures, there was no question that Michigan was now in a much better place than Harbaugh had found it.

And then he did the whole damn thing. Michigan just went 15-0, beating Ohio State for the third straight time and winning its third consecutive Big Ten Championship in the process. Harbaugh won his first playoff game (against Nick Saban’s Alabama, no less) and went on to win Michigan’s first national title in over 25 years. He did it. Through all of the crazy off the field nonsense including an entire cheating scandal this season, the inexcusable losses that marred his first several years in Ann Arbor, five consecutive losses to Ohio State and a 2-4 shortened 2020 season, he did exactly what he set out to do - he brought Michigan back to national relevance, back to glory. 

Michigan is set to hire offensive coordinator Sherrone Moore - who actually acted as Michigan’s head coach four separate times this season due to Harbaugh’s multiple suspensions - and while we have no doubt he is equipped for the job and will keep this Michigan roster much more intact than what has happened at Alabama in recent weeks, it’s a bit hard to see a reality where Michigan continues to dominate Ohio State and the changing Big Ten in perpetuity without Harbaugh. But frankly, nobody in Ann Arbor seems to give a damn about all of that right now. The Harbaugh experience was a resounding success, and his return to the NFL was a known goal of his, an inevitability. He won a national championship and undoubtedly left this Michigan program in a far better place than he found it.

Farewell, Jim. College Football will miss you.

Quick Hitters

After losing head coach Jedd Fisch to Washington just last week, Arizona announced it is parting ways with Athletic Director Dave Heeke following a pretty insane report that Arizona had miscalculated some budgeting figures resulting in a loss of approximately $240 million in expected revenue. This has understandably thrown the financial health of the Arizona athletic department into major question, which is not exactly the position you want to be in as the financial gap between the haves (the SEC and the Big Ten) and the have-nots (literally everybody else) is set to rapidly expand via TV revenue over the next decade. We aren’t experts in athletic department financial business, but our advice to the next Arizona AD is to try to avoid 240 million dollar oopsies moving forward.

Former LSU wide receiver Kayshon Boutte was also in the news for certain financial dealings this week, as he was arrested amid an investigation into his gambling habits while he was in Baton Rouge. A report came out late last week that Boutte placed over 8,900 illegal bets (!!) while at LSU that resulted in over $500,000 in winnings (!!!!). Boutte was even allegedly wagering on his own personal prop bets and individual LSU games, though it appears he never bet against LSU in any way - he is not under investigation for any sort of game-throwing or point shaving. What sort of message does this send to the youth? That if you have self confidence, if you bet on yourself, you’ll be arrested?? Outrageous. In all seriousness, this is an absolutely insane story filled with pure comedy, and we’ll be sure to keep you updated if any more absurdity comes out of it.

Speaking of college sports gambling, following the state of Iowa’s massive investigation into the gambling habits of athletes at Iowa and Iowa State last year that saw dozens of athletes suspended from competition, a story came out last week that one of the lead investigators is being accused of improper investigative techniques, including conducting warrentless searches, and being dishonest in deposition hearings. This is not only an interesting development for the state of Iowa’s investigations, but adds a new wrinkle to investigations into player-gambling across the country, which have rapidly grown over the past two seasons. Casino/gambling institutions and their investigative arms are not universally known to be the most by-the-book, trustworthy institutions, and state laws around gambling and possible punishments vary - often significantly - across the country. It becomes clearer by the day that the NCAA has to do more in terms of its messaging to athletes around what is acceptable, what is against the NCAA rules, and what is against the law. The kids are the ones making the mistakes, yes, but considering the rapidly growing popularity of sports gambling across the country and even partnerships between schools, conferences, pro sports leagues and teams with gambling institutions, the adults in the room need to step up and provide clear and consistent guidance. You can’t have it both ways and make eight-figure deals with casinos, not share any of that revenue with the athletes, and then throw them under the bus when sh*t hits the fan. As more and more investigations come out, the blatant actions of some of these athletes makes it clear that a lot of them don’t seem to have any idea how much trouble they could be getting themselves into if it was all found out. This needs to be a focus of the NCAA’s this offseason, because these young athletes aren’t just getting suspended for a game or two, they’re having criminal charges brought against them.

Hope you have a great day and we will talk to you again soon.

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Rand Fisher & Tate Smillie met a few years ago through their good buddy Dave Peljovich who went to college with Rand and high school with Tate. Tate went to Georgia and has spent the last two years collecting championship rings while traveling to watch the Dawgs. Rand went to known CFB powerhouse Wake Forest and currently pays rent in Atlanta but is rarely found there with all the work & CFB travel he does.