The only slight uncertainty heading into Saturday’s game between Maryland and second-ranked Michigan was whether the Wolverines would have head coach Jim Harbaugh available on the sideline. After initially battling last week’s Big Ten’s ruling of a three-game suspension, Michigan and Harbaugh officially dropped the complaint on Thursday morning with Harbaugh set to miss his second consecutive game.
“Coach Harbaugh, with the university’s support, decided to accept this sanction to return the focus to our student-athletes and their performance on the field,” Michigan said in a statement. “The conference has confirmed that it is not aware of any information suggesting Coach Harbaugh’s involvement in the allegations. The university continues to cooperate fully with the NCAA’s investigation.”
Harbaugh’s suspension was announced last Friday as he was sidelined from the game, despite last-minute legal efforts to have the Wolverines’ head coach available. With Harbaugh unavailable, Michigan will likely turn to Sherrone Moore as the interim head coach again, but Maryland head coach Mike Locksley downplayed the impact of Harbaugh’s availability.
“Whether he’s able to coach or not. The fact that he’s able to work throughout the week with his team. As we learned in COVID, gameday is a byproduct of what you do Monday through Friday so I see no impact in how we approach it or how we coach from our end,” Locksley said during Thursday’s availability.
Maryland also addressed their own signs in light of the Wolverines scandal.
“Once we heard that two, three weeks ago, we made a lot of the necessary adjustments because if one has them, as you read and hear, anybody can have them and so we’ve taken necessary precautions to just make sure that again, what we can control,” Locksley added. “On offense, defense, we’ve definitely mixed up our communications and how we’re able to do it and so we don’t feel like that will have any effect on our game.”
“Usually when I when I do checks too on the field, I’ve got [to] signal to the receivers the play and stuff like that. So obviously things like that is on film,” quarterback Taulia Tagovailoa added. “I think the biggest thing for us is, it’s a matter of just executing whatever plays given to us, regardless if they got the signal or not. We got to go and execute. They have to stop it. We got to try our best to execute the play that coaches that coach calls. All the other stuff, I don’t really know too much about it.”
Kickoff is set for noon EST on FOX.
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