I’ve been planning on writing this post for quite a while. While some of it was self-inflicted, I don’t know any college football team that has had to overcome as much adversity as the University of Michigan players did this year. I’ll cover the games and the controversies of Michigan’s magical season, and the return to their place as one of the preeminent teams in CFB. This first post will be about the controversies, before diving into the games. Why do I care about all this? Because even though I am originally from Washington state, I went to school at Michigan and I love their program. If you just want to skip to the games themselves, feel free to jump to part 2.
The last two seasons of Michigan football had been wonderful: two straight victories over Ohio State, two straight Big 10 championships, two straight playoff seasons. The chatter about Michigan in 2023 started before the season began. The talk was “their schedule is too easy.” Don’t ask me how the schedule is determined, all I know is that a combination of conference scheduling, non-conference scheduling and TV broadcasting determines college football schedules. Michigan State is usually a good mid-season game, but this year all of our tougher games were toward the end of the season. This is not significantly easier than the other elite football teams’ schedules this year.
The NCAA then investigated our head coach, Jim Harbaugh, who would not coach the first three games, voluntarily taking himself out because of the so-called “cheeseburger suspension.” Back in 2020 Harbaugh was accused of meeting with recruits during the “dead period”, as well as having too many coaches on the field during some practices during COVID restrictions. What happened was two recruits–who had already committed to Michigan–allegedly stopped by for an impromptu visit and while there Harbaugh bought them cheeseburgers. The NCAA found a receipt and said Harbaugh lied about it. Harbaugh stuck to his guns saying he did not recall the meetings with recruits on that date when speaking to investigators, and that he was never knowingly and purposefully dishonest. The NCAA and Michigan had agreed to a four-game suspension for Harbaugh, however the NCAA later rejected the plan and said the investigation was still ongoing when Harbaugh voluntarily took himself out. Why this came up this season instead of two or three years ago I don’t know, it’s ridiculous. It’s never been proven that he lied at any point.
None of this had anything to do with Michigan’s players, and with different coaches acting as interim head coach for these games we did just fine without him. Harbaugh came back in for week 4 and coached through the Purdue game in week 9, Michigan dominating in most games. Quarterback JJ McCarthy and running back Blake Corum were outstanding, and along with defensive stars like Mike Sainristil, the excellent wide receiver Roman Wilson, and Michigan’s famous offensive line headed by Zak Zinter opponents rarely had much of a chance. No team scored more than 13 points against the Wolverines during the first nine games of the season, and we shut rival Michigan State completely out, 49-0, in their own stadium.
That leads us to the famous–or infamous–“sign stealing” controversy, which was the biggest headline in college sports for months. In October of last year Yahoo Sports reported the NCAA was investigating allegations that Michigan had engaged in in-person scouting in an effort to steal signs. Teams are allowed to steal signs in college football — it is actually really common — however, it is against the rules to send personnel to scout future opponents and they are not allowed to use electronics to assist in stealing signs.
At the center of the investigation was Michigan off-field analyst, Connor Stalions, who is alleged to have created a network where he would buy tickets for games of future opponents and send people to those games, where they would film the opposing sidelines and review them to break down the signals. Multiple games were found to have tickets purchased by Stalions. He was investigated, and resigned in early November.
Interestingly two schools, Ohio State and Rutgers University, were found to have stolen Michigan’s signals in 2022 by the folks who were hired to do the stealing. They then shared the signs with Purdue ahead of the Big Ten Championship last year. No disciplinary action was ever taken. More recently, just before the Rose Bowl game this year Ohio State was the target of a cheating scandal for alleged “unauthorized access to practice videos.” Here is the link.
Did Jim Harbaugh know anything about the sign-stealing scheme? Attorneys have ordered him not to talk during the investigation, but he gave a statement: “I do not have any knowledge or information regarding the University of Michigan football program illegally stealing signals, nor have I directed any staff member or others to participate in an off-campus scouting assignment. I have no awareness of anyone on our staff having done that or having directed that action.”
It was widely reported that Big Ten coaches pressured new commissioner Tony Pettiti to discipline Michigan during the 2023 season, while Michigan argued in a letter to the commissioner that the conference needs to wait for the NCAA investigation to conclude and for Michigan to have the benefit of due process before a punishment is handed down. Pettiti folded under the pressure, perhaps not wanting to be seen as “soft.”
Pettiti announced a three-game suspension for Harbaugh on the day before the Wolverines were scheduled to play Penn State on the road, even though the NCAA investigation was not complete. As a result Harbaugh was out again as Michigan played Penn State, Maryland and most importantly of all, Ohio State. The press release noted that the Big 10 Conference has not received any “information indicating that Head Football Coach Harbaugh was aware of the impermissible nature of the sign-stealing scheme.” However, it described the punishment as a sanction against Michigan rather than Harbaugh. It said the punishment allows the student-athletes to continue competing while indicating Harbaugh’s position as embodying the “University for purposes of its football program.”
I want to give my opinion on all this as I’ve given it a lot of thought. I could not care less about the cheeseburger suspension, it’s ridiculous and incidental stuff like that happens all the time. I am embarrassed by this sign-stealing scandal, because it’s a breach of integrity. Did Harbaugh know about it? I don’t know, I don’t think so, football is a huge program at Michigan–we may never know. It certainly has not been proven. Everyone involved has been fired or resigned. Sign-stealing is going on legally all over the country. That doesn’t make it right, and my hope is this will mean it stops for every team, as Michigan had its signs stolen (and shared) as well. The timing seems awfully suspect, between the cheeseburger suspension at the beginning of the season and the sign-stealing suspension at the end of it. Do I think Harbaugh is being targeted? Yes, I do. Fortunately it doesn’t matter because we kept winning.
In part two I’ll discuss the games themselves, which will be a lot more fun.
Saga of the Jasonite 