Michigan announces unusual plan for coaches during Jim Harbaugh suspension

Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh will miss the first three games of the season due to a university-imposed suspension and the Wolverines are going about replacing him for those games in a very unusual way.

Harbaugh and the Wolverines announced Thursday that four different assistants will take charge of the team during Harbaugh’s three-game absence. Defensive coordinator Jesse Minter will serve as the coach for the season-opener against East Carolina on Sept. 2, while offensive coordinator Sherrone Moore will handle the third game of the season against Bowling Green. Michigan’s Week 2 game against UNLV will be split in two, with special teams coordinator Jay Harbaugh getting the first half and running game coordinator Mike Hart taking charge of the second half.

Most expected Michigan to simply name one interim coach to handle Harbaugh’s duties while he was serving his suspension. Nobody would have predicted that a different assistant coach would get each game, with one of the games even split between two of them. It is a very strange division of labor, but it seems unlikely to actually harm Michigan given the caliber of their opponents in these games.

Harbaugh originally had a deal with the NCAA that would have seen him accept a four-game suspension over recruiting violations, but it fell apart when the NCAA declined to approve it. One has to wonder if the original plan was to give each of the four coaches one of those games, with this setup being an awkward compromise. Then again, they did something similar with their quarterbacks last year, so maybe this is just how the program wanted to handle things.