Michigan stole a national championship, Paul Finebaum says

Paul Finebaum never seemed to care much for Jim Harbaugh, and now the veteran college football broadcaster thinks even less of the former Michigan head coach in the wake of the NCAA’s punishment for the school in the sign-stealing scandal.

Harbaugh was handed a historic 10-year show-cause penalty as part of the school’s extensive discipline, one he’s unlikely to experience after leaving for the NFL, an d the whole saga put a cloud over Michigan’s title run in Finebaum’s view.

“What Jim Harbaugh has done is highway robbery. He stole a national championship. It’s as simple as that,” Finebaum said on First Take.

“He used Connor Stalions and then he lied and obfuscated. He misled. It’s truly beyond hypocrisy,” he added.

Harbaugh’s stated ideals of competitive decency and honesty, all while his team was engaged in a scheme to steal opponents’ signals was a little too much for Finebaum to entertain after all the accusations the former Michigan seemed to deal out himself.

“This is the same guy who shot arrows at everybody a couple of years earlier,” Finebaum said. 

“He accused Nick Saban of cheating. He accused Kirby Smart. He just bla nketly accused everyone, and now look at him holding up a banner. As soon as he gets the bonus, he hightails it out of town with no penalty.”

Don’t expect the NFL to do anything against the now-Chargers coach.

“Of course not, but it would be nice if somebody acknowledged it. It’d be nice if Harbaugh even addressed the situation, which of course he has not and will not,” he said.

Finebaum was addressing comments made by former Ohio State head coach Urban Meyer, who appeared to suggest the NFL could discipline Harbaugh the way it did Jim Tressel, the former OSU coach and now Lt. Governor of Ohio.

Tressel was handed a six-game suspension in 2011 when hired by the Indianapolis Colts as a replay consultant over the NCAA violations arising from the “Tattoogate” affair in 2010 when he was with the Buckeyes.

Meyer’s first team at Ohio State was banned from playing a bowl game despite being undefeated, because of a penalty from the Tressel era.

No such punishment for Michigan, which avoided a postseason ban from the NCAA, despite the body even acknowledging that one was in order.

“This whole thing stinks, and I realize nothing is going to happen here because that’s the world we live in, but you act like Michigan has suffered here. They haven’t suffered,” Finebaum continued.

“They wrote a check. So what? This is a very wealthy university. And if you don’t believe me, just as k any Michigan graduate anywhere in the country. They’ll tell you how great they are.”

He then took a little shot at Michigan’s relative lack of success at football in recent years. Or decades, really.

“This is not a school that wins a lot of national championships, either,” he said.

“They’ve won two-and-a-half national championships in 70 years. I think Alabama won that many just walking down the street yesterday.”

Finebaum conceded he was being a little polemical in his claim that Michigan stole the national title.

“They didn’t really steal it. They didn’t go into a bank and steal the national championship,” he said.

“But it feels like they did something tawdry. They did something against a bunch of no-name schools that they didn’t need to. But that’s who Jim Harbaugh is.”

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