The curtain has been pulled back in Ann Arbor, and one of the nation’s most respected institutions of higher education has reduced itself to a childish defense of its embattled football program.
The NCAA: We know you cheated and how you cheated, and how it gave your football program a competitive advantage.
How embarrassing for hoity-toity Michigan, once the gold standard for all that was pure and holy in college athletics.
How embarrassing for the university and storied football program, and all the proud Michigan Men of the past – the leaders and best, no less – to stand behind this legal pretzel response to NCAA allegations of scouting future opponents.
Have they no shame?
Michigan’s formal response to the NCAA’s official allegations of illegal advanced scouting and sign stealing was obtained by Yahoo Sports earlier this week, and it’s remarkably stunning in its abject disdain and mockery of the investigation.
The Michigan response obfuscates, argues semantics, and degrades the investigatory process. All signs, any prosecutor worth his weight in all-nighters will tell you, of those who are guilty.
In the response, the university says it respects confidential sources, but the NCAA can only present evidence and infractions from former staffer Connor Stalions’ scouting scheme based on “information that can be attributed to individuals who are willing to be identified.”
At one point in the response, Michigan says Moore’s reason for deleting 52 texts – fifty-two – between himself and Stalions on the day the scouting scheme was uncovered by Yahoo in October of 2023, was that Moore was “angry” because he didn’t want one person (Stalions) credited for “all the work” put into the 2023 season.
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The university also claims the texts, which were recovered once Moore handed over his phone to NCAA investigators, were “innocuous and not material” to the investigation.
It’s here where I need to remind everyone that the Big Ten, in unprecedented cooperation with the NCAA during the investigation of a member institution, suspended former Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh three games for the scouting scheme during the 2023 season.
The Big Ten decided that Michigan conducted ‘an impermissible, in-person scouting operation over multiple years, resulting in an unfair competitive advantage that compromised the integrity of competition.’ Such activities, it said, compromised sportsmanship and affected the ‘integrity of the competition.”
The 13-page Big Ten report, which used information from NCAA investigators – pictures, video, electronic money trails – called the Michigan penalties, “A sanction against the University that, under the extraordinary circumstance presented by this offensive conduct, best fits the violation.”
Less than a year later, Michigan – 2023 national championship in hand – has moved into deny, deny, deny mode.
Because We’re Morally Better Than You Michigan can’t have an NCAA cheat as head coach. Can’t have a national championship stained by NCAA violations, or a former coach and beloved alum run out of town by the NCAA sheriff — only to take refuge in the NFL.
Here’s all you need to know about Michigan’s impermissible future scouting scheme: Stalions allegedly use his minions — he sent friends to future opponents to film games from the stands (which Michigan denies) — to allegedly scout Georgia during the 2023 season.
That’s two-time defending national champion Georgia, which beat Michigan by 23 points in the College Football Playoff during the 2021 season. That’s Georgia, the 2023 playoff favorite — and Michigan’s biggest obstacle to winning its first national championship since 1997.
Georgia wasn’t even on Michigan’s 2023 regular-season schedule.
If that doesn’t do it for you, think about what Michigan is truly trying to sell with this utterly comical response to the NCAA.
We’re supposed to believe that Harbaugh, an obsessively organized and detailed coach, who controlled everything in nine seasons and more than 100 games at Ann Arbor, didn’t ever think to ask what in the blue blazes Stalions was doing in coaches meetings, and on the field during game day.
Harbaugh isn’t going to stand on the sideline against Ohio State – the team he famously said Michigan would finally beat or die trying – and allow some flunky with an advance scouting scheme on his sideline without knowing everything about that system.
You say system, I say scheme.
Harbaugh isn’t going to accept, willy-nilly, where that scheme came from, how it operates, and if it wasn’t double- and triple-checked, before even contemplating changing a call mid-game in the biggest moment of every single season. There’s a level of trust that’s undeniable on the field of play.
You’re not simply relying on word of mouth, or an understanding of generalities. Nothing is left to guess.
Not when you’re playing Ohio State. Not when you’re trying to win it all.
If you think Harbaugh – and by proxy, the rest of the coaching staff – didn’t know exactly how Stalions received his information and what it took to get it, your blood runs Maize and Blue.
No coach at any program allows anyone on the sideline – within the inner sanctum of the coaches and players box – without knowing exactly why they’re inside, and what they do to contribute to winning. Period.
Because that’s all it’s about in big-time college football: winning. And there’s nothing wrong with that.
Just don’t try to sell it as something else when you’re caught cheating.
Matt Hayes is the senior national college football writer for USA TODAY Sports Network. Follow him on X at @MattHayesCFB.
