Former Michigan football coach Jim Harbaugh was suspended one year and given a four-year hearing order by the NCAA on Wednesday for the Wolverines’ recruiting violations during the COVID-19 pause.
It is the first of two investigations the NCAA is conducting into the Wolverines program after it went 15-0 last season and won the College Football Playoff along the way, the Detroit Free Press noted.
The NCAA’s detailed report concluded that the current Los Angeles Chargers coach engaged in “unethical behavior” during that period and failed to create “an atmosphere of compliance” – similar to former Volunteers football coach Jeremy Pruitt, who was ordered by the NCAA to face a six-year hearing in 2023.
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And so, after the sentence was imposed for Harbaugh’s hearing, curiosity has been piqued about what exactly a hearing order is and what its consequences are. Here’s what you need to know about a hearing order, including a re-look at the hearing order Pruitt was issued against him:
What is a hearing order?
A show-cause order is an NCAA penalty that only applies to college sports. It does not apply to a professional sport like the NFL or the high school ranks if a coach leaves the college ranks for one of those sports.
This means that a school that wants to hire a coach who has received a penalty for a hearing and is currently serving his “penalty time” must get the NCAA’s approval for that hire. In other words, it means that the school that wants to make that hire must show the NCAA why it should not also be disciplined for that hire.
The penalties Harbaugh and Pruitt received as a result of the hearing order included a one-year suspension from all team-related activities, from practices to travel to recruiting to team meetings, etc.
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Jeremy Pruitt’s show-cause order
Pruitt, who coached the Volunteers from 2018 to 2020, received a six-year restraining order from the NCAA in July of last year after the program was investigated in connection with a recruiting scandal.
The six-year waiver, which includes a one-year suspension if Pruitt returns to the university in his freshman year, came after the NCAA imposed a five-year probation on the Volunteers program after Pruitt and his staff were previously found to have violated more than 200 NCAA rules – 18 of which were Level I violations.
