Back in the good old days, when Jim Harbaugh was provoking someone in college football on a near-daily basis, nothing could get him rolling on social media faster than an allegation of cheating. 

“If the Georgia coach is implying any intent on our part to break rules, he is barking up the wrong tree,” Harbaugh tweeted on Feb. 24, 2016, after Kirby Smart suggested the NCAA would be forced to step in after Michigan held spring practice at IMG Academy. 

The following year, when ESPN’s Paul Finebaum suggested that Michigan hiring the father of a top recruit to his coaching staff was unsavory (albeit allowed), Harbaugh fired back with a Tweet calling him “Pete Finebaum, the unabashed SEC water carrier.” 

But when you play in the gray area of the NCAA rulebook while walking around like you’ve just been blessed by the Pope, you tend to make a lot of enemies. 

And now that Michigan is residing near the top of college football again, all the fangs are coming out. 

For the second time this year, Harbaugh is in the middle of a snit with the NCAA over potential rules violations that were petty, completely avoidable and ultimately quite stupid if they indeed took place. 

Harbaugh served a self-imposed three-game suspension at the beginning of this season for misleading or not cooperating with NCAA investigators during an investigation into impermissible contact with recruits and coaching activities during the COVID-19 dead period. 

Now, in a story reported first Thursday by Yahoo! Sports and confirmed by the Big Ten, Michigan is under another inquiry for in-person scouting of opponents, which has been against the rules for nearly 30 years and is quite unnecessary these days, unless the goal is to glean extra information about an opponent's play-calls that teams often try to disguise on the sideline.

Now I know what you, the well-informed college sports fan, is thinking. If the NCAA couldn’t pin anything on Kansas basketball coach Bill Self just last week for having Adidas help him recruit players despite years of investigative work and loads of evidence pointing toward a significant punishment, how in the world is Harbaugh going to get popped for relatively petty crimes?

The answer is because NCAA enforcement is a lot like traffic cops. They’re not going to catch everybody. They may pick one speeding car to turn the siren on for over another for biased reasons. But when they have you on the radar gun going 90 miles per hour on the highway, they’re going to write you a ticket — especially if you act difficult and indignant when they pull you over. 

If all of this stuff is proven true, Harbaugh made it easy on them. And given his proclivity toward Michigan Man self-righteousness, the rest of college football is snickering away. 

Selective enforcement? Maybe. 

But the rules Michigan allegedly violated are so clear and straightforward — and ultimately offer so little upside — that all suspicions about the way Harbaugh conducts his program are now completely fair game. 

Back in 2020, when the world was figuring out COVID-19 one day at a time, NCAA schools agreed that it was better for everyone to just take a pause on recruiting and other normal offseason activities.

Is it a huge deal if Harbaugh went to a restaurant with a couple of recruits who were in town during that time? Not really, but it is a willful violation in order to gain a competitive advantage. And then to not be truthful or forthcoming about it with the NCAA? That’s another bright red line that the NCAA has used many times to penalize coaches, because catching them in a lie is one of the few hammers they actually have.

This alleged scouting violation is even sillier. Michigan is 7-0 and has won its games by 27, 28, 25, 24, 38, 42 and 45 points. 

If, as The Athletic reported Thursday, the Big Ten has evidence of a “vast network” being used to steal signs, it's the most comical use of espionage since Dan Aykroyd and Chevy Chase paired up in “Spies Like Us.”

If you need to steal signs to beat Nebraska and Rutgers, you’re more con man than Michigan Man.

Much of the focus now will turn to whether these dual investigations end up chasing Harbaugh back to the NFL, especially if the Wolverines -- who might really be the best team in the country -- end up winning a national title. 

It’s an interesting topic, but honestly, trying to predict Harbaugh’s mindset or his next move is a lost cause. Before this story dropped, there was talk of another extension in the works. But Harbaugh has said before he’s staying at Michigan one week, interviewed with an NFL team the next and then come back to say it was a one-time thing (at least until the next one-time thing). 

When you're that slippery, aloofness is a helpful trait -- and Harbaugh uses it to his advantage time and time again. 

But the more interesting part of the story is really how this comeuppance has been kind of in the works ever since Harbaugh got back into college football. 

You can stand up and say you do things by the book and take great offense to accusations that you’re shading the rules, but make no mistake: Harbaugh at Michigan has absolutely made a home in the gray area while tacitly accusing everyone else in the sport of being cheaters. 

In 2019, author John Bacon — someone who is closely tied to the Michigan program and wrote a book on Harbaugh — claimed that Rashan Gary was offered $300,000 by another school during his recruitment before choosing the Wolverines (this is before name, image and likeness would have allowed for similar arrangements).

Most people in college sports would look at that claim skeptically — not about the offer itself but the idea that somebody would choose to play for a school offering nothing but the standard scholarship when they could have pocketed $300,000 somewhere else, even if it was against the rules. 

Why even put that out there other than to glorify Mr. “Do it the right way” while casting aspersions on competitors? It’s not just unseemly, it’s phony. Because another huge part of the story in the Gary recruitment was that Harbaugh in 2015 hired Chris Partridge as director of player personnel and recruiting. Who is Chris Partridge? Well, he was the head coach at Paramus Catholic High School in New Jersey, where Gary played until enrolling at Michigan in 2016. 

Again, just like the example that got Harbaugh crossways with Finebaum, it’s not against the rules. Partridge was qualified for the job and is now in his second stint on the Michigan staff after working as the co-defensive coordinator and safeties coach the last three seasons. 

But hiring the high school coach of the No. 1 prospect in the country and then landing that prospect from several states away is a gray-area move. Just like Harbaugh holding so-called “satellite camps” for recruits in Southern states, sleeping over at a recruit’s house or even this summer, when former tight end Jake Butt told a story via X (formerly Twitter) about how Harbaugh exploited a loophole in the practice time limits to get more reps in the spring.

“Harbaugh is great at taking advantage of Grey areas,” Butt wrote.

How long of a leap is it from the gray to outright rule-breaking — even if the rules are picayune? Maybe not that long.

But it's worth harkening back to the prescient words of Kirby Smart from seven years ago, when his little spat with Harbaugh got started over the IMG trip. 

“They're obviously trying to gain a competitive advantage, and that’s their right,” he said. "But I think the NCAA in due time will have to step in. I don’t know how it’s going to go down. It’s going to be interesting too see, though.” 

It sure is.