Jim Harbaugh will miss Saturday’s game against Ohio State due to a Big Ten–issued suspension. Yet his impact—on the sign-stealing scandal that’s defined the season, on the College Football Playoff race, and on how Michigan views itself—will be at the center of everything.

The first Saturday of the fall in Ann Arbor was emotional not because of who was there, but because of who wasn’t. On September 2, Michigan broke the huddle for its first offensive play against East Carolina in a straight line, a tactic the team had sometimes deployed in years prior as a formational diversion. All 11 players held four fingers toward the sky in tribute to someone unseen, someone revered, someone who had worn the no. 4 during his playing days. The crowd roared, and the teams got on with their game.

Just over two months later, Michigan again paid tribute to the same unseen figure. After a marquee 24-15 win against Penn State, the man who coached the Wolverines that day broke into tears, looked into Fox’s camera lens, and spoke to the person on everybody’s mind. “I fucking love you, man. I love the shit out of you, man,” Sherrone Moore said. “This is for you.” Later, Michigan president Santa Ono acknowledged how hard times had been. “Countless members of the University of Michigan family have reached out to me over the weekend and I wanted to express my appreciation,” Ono tweeted. “Like any community, we face our share of challenges and adversity. There have been many such moments in our history.”

If you observed just these scenes, you could be forgiven for thinking that Michigan was honoring a fallen hero. But in fact, the Wolverines were honoring Jim Harbaugh, the head coach who has missed half of this season due to a pair of unrelated suspensions. The first one, in September, saw Harbaugh sit out three games—a self-imposed punishment Michigan levied in hopes of depressurizing an NCAA investigation into prospect visits that the association believes were held in violation of pandemic restrictions. Ultimately, that absence was small potatoes: Harbaugh missed matchups against ECU, UNLV, and Bowling Green, and the Wolverines won each game by between 25 and 28 points.