The NCAA are Spineless Cowards and the Michigan Wolverines are Inveterate Cheaters. Let's Move On.

I didn't really want to write on this topic. The wonderful dozens of you that frequent this place have better things to read, like Thump's breakdown of teams that shatter the 10-win barrier or Kind Of...'s history deep-dives. You know, fun stuff! Sports stuff! Our current and cursed timeline has enough talk of scandal and lawbreaking and injunctions and justice, both delayed and denied. But hey, you get what you pay for, so here we go.

Let's acknowledge that many things can be true at the same time. Such as:

1. The NCAA as an institution, as a governing body, as the self-appointed arbiter of all that is good in the college sports world, is bankrupt. Not literally (especially after that multi-million dollar check from Michigan cashes), but the institution has lost all of its moral and literal authority long before the Michigan sign-stealing scandal broke open in October 2023. They clung to a dead system of amateurism long after it was reasonable, ethical, or legal, all while pocketing vast sums of cash from their corporate sponsors. And when their structure fell apart and the transfer portal and NIL world opened up, they acted as innocent bystanders, begging the power conferences and the U.S. Congress to please fix this mess for them.
2. Michigan cheated. By the letter of the law, they cheated. It does not matter if it had no impact on the field (which is debatable) or if it was an anachronistic regulation (which, yeah, probably). They cheated by filming the opposing sideline and analyzing those signs for their future benefit. And pretending that Connor Stalions was some rogue agent or separate party that somehow caused pure Michigan to break the rules is patently false. He was originally an enthusiastic volunteer primarily focused on stealing signs; he was so respected in that role that he was later hired to the Michigan staff as a full-time analyst. He was not an unknown to Harbaugh or the other coaches. And he was so central to the scheme and so personally invested that he personally attended the Michigan State-Central Michigan game under cover (which the NCAA report finally confirmed.)
3. After Michigan's cheating became public, they tried to cover it up. Connor Stalions chucked his shattered phone into a goddamn pond. Now-head coach Sherrone Moore deleted at least 57 texts between himself, the then-OC, and Stalions. Stalions instructed staffers to delete correspondence and collect files, hard drives, and other items from his desk before they could be confiscated. Harbaugh refused to provide his phone or other documents to the Michigan compliance office or the NCAA. There was an explicit cover-up.
4. Stalions put an immense amount of work into stealing signs. His work was praised by Harbaugh and the staff. They believed that there was value in this project, enough for Stalions to spend $35,000 out of his own pocket to record signals in-person. If it were not valuable to the on-field results, why do it? If it were not illegally conducted, why cover it up so blatantly?
5. Regardless of whether it did or didn't change any game results, they won the title. They were an immensely talented team that ran the fuck over their opponents (can confirm, as I was at Ohio Stadium in 2022). The NCAA was never going to consider a revocation of the title or an expunging of games, but that's not because they found the matter to be baseless. It's because the NCAA can't ever vacate a national title in football (after 2005 USC) without the entire edifice crashing down around it. Sure, they'll vacate Notre Dame's BCS loss in 2011. They'll chuck out some Les Miles wins at LSU, or a couple of random Herm Edwards wins at Arizona State. But to actually pull back a title and to live with that massive asterisk on their own record books? The violations could have been egregious and they still wouldn't have had the balls to do it.
6. So here we are. Michigan won the title, Harbaugh fled for the professionals, the Go Blue boosters will happily pay up to cover the penalty cost, and most Michigan fans would do it all again every day and twice on Sunday. Sure, they'll feel aggrieved at the perceived slight, but they know that it was worth it in the end. And for those of us that are non-Wolverine fans, we kind of need to let it go. Yeah, we should still throw an asterisk after any reference of 15-0*, and we should continue to laugh at the sheer absurdity and all-encompassing nature of the scandal back in October 2023 (do you remember the Connor Stalions vacuum repair story?!), but it's over (except for whatever CMU will get hammered with). This isn't a court of law and even in those, the bad folks sometimes just get a slap on the wrist. You get exactly the level of due process and justice that can cover your attorney fees, and for Michigan's lawyers: cousin, business is a boomin'.