Less than two years after being fired from the Michigan football team, Matt Weiss’ history might have finally caught up with him. The former Baltimore Ravens and Wolverines offensive assistant has been the subject of a lengthy federal investigation that led to accusations of nearly a decade of hacking into female athletes’ personal accounts.
Weiss, who was fired from Michigan for computer access crimes, faces 24 federal charges of unauthorized access to computers and aggravated identity theft, ESPN reported. The longtime assistant coach is being accused by the FBI of illegally accessing the email, iCloud and social media accounts of over 3,000 “mostly female” college athletes. Weiss is pleading not guilty to the charges.
Weiss is accused of hacking into the accounts to access private and explicit images of the athletes. However, unlike most cases of a similar nature, Weiss has not been charged with blackmailing or attempting to extort his victims or publishing his findings. Instead, the investigation found that he conducted his business purely for personal use.
The actions allegedly began in 2015, when he was in his seventh year with the Ravens. Weiss apparently sporadically continued his under-the-radar activity until 2023, when he was fired from Michigan. He was initially suspended by the university while it investigated his allegedly accessing computer accounts that did not belong to him before being fired for not attending a meeting regarding the matter. The school did not publicly disclose the “evidence” found that caused an investigation into Weiss.
Weiss used emails from students and alumni of Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California, to conduct his hacking. The “suspicious” logins initially alerted the FBI. Investigators could not find what drew him to the school, though they found “at least five women” on Westmont’s athletic teams among Weiss’ victims.
Matt Weiss’ football coaching career with Ravens, Michigan
If Weiss is found guilty, ESPN reported he will receive “dozens of years” in prison along with “millions in fines.” Regardless, his 20-year-long football coaching career appears all but over.
Throughout his professional run, Weiss spent 18 of his 20 years on the sidelines working with one of the Harbaugh brothers. He began his career as a graduate assistant at Stanford under Jim Harbaugh before the older brother, John Harbaugh, hired him to work on his Ravens staff in 2009. Weiss remained with Baltimore until 2021 when he went back to college football to work with Jim at Michigan.
At Michigan, Weiss served as Jim Harbaugh’s quarterbacks coach and co-offensive coordinator. He worked in the latter role with Sherrone Moore, who has since become Michigan’s current head coach.
Weiss was one of a handful of assistants the Harbaugh brothers worked with in their joint coaching tree. Before he became the head coach of the Seattle Seahawks, Mike Macdonald also bounced back and forth between Michigan and the Ravens as a defensive coordinator.