Jim Harbaugh had three-word response to NCAA’s sign-stealing sanctions

Jim Harbaugh had a short, concise response to the latest NCAA sanctions this weekend, offering up a familiar response.

“Like I told you last year, I’m not engaging,” Harbaugh told reporters in Los Angeles late Saturday, after his Chargers lost a preseason game, 23-22, to the Los Angeles Rams.

The question was the last one posed to Harbaugh during his postgame news conference at SoFi Stadium, where he remained stoic and without facial expression during his nine-word response.

On Friday, Harbaugh was issued a 10-year show-cause penalty by the NCAA as part of the Michigan advance scouting case. The governing body for college athletics found Harbaugh in violation of monitoring his program and failing to cooperate with investigators, both Level I violations.

Harbaugh is already serving a four-year show-cause penalty issued by the NCAA in 2024 for pandemic-era recruiting violations at Michigan and providing false or misleading statements to investigators. The show-cause bans run through August 2038, making it difficult for a member school to hire him in any athletics-related capacity until then.

Former Michigan staffer Connor Stalions, the mastermind behind the Wolverines’ extraordinary sign-stealing operation, was issued an 8-year show-cause penalty. Current Michigan head coach Sherrone Moore, who deleted a chain of 52 text messages with Stalions from his phone, received a two-year show-cause penalty and three-game suspension.

As an institution, Michigan also received four years of probation, fines that could top $35 million and recruiting restrictions as punishment.

Harbaugh is now in the second of a five-year contract as head coach of the NFL’s Los Angeles Chargers. He led the Chargers to an 11-6 record and playoff appearance in his first season.

On Friday, prominent attorney Tom Mars, who represented Harbaugh during the sign-stealing probe, took issue with portions of the NCAA’s 74-page report on the Michigan advance scouting case. In a series of public posts on social media platform X, Mars rebuked claims that he and the NCAA had communication about retrieving images from Harbaugh’s phone and missed an issued deadline of Jan. 31, 2024, to turn over the records.

“There were no communications with me from the NCAA enforcement staff about trying to collect cell phone images, about a deadline, or about interviewing Coach Harbaugh,” Mars wrote. “I received no emails or other correspondence.”

Mars later added: “What’s more, the NCAA enforcement staff never once contacted me about anything related to the sign-stealing investigation until after they issued the NOA (notice of allegations).”