By Kyle Golik
It should come to no surprise of Michigan’s intent to fight the NCAA in regards to the Connor Stalions espionage scandal that dominated storylines through Michigan’s 15-0 national championship season during 2023.
At the end of the day, we all get it. Michigan not only wants to protect what it earned on the field that season but more importantly it would like to avoid disenfranchising future Wolverines’ opportunities for championship glory. NIL can only go so far in this approach.
While the NCAA recognizes Michigan’s rebuttal to the allegations. Michigan feels Stalions espionage offered “minimal relevance to the competition,” and that many of the allegations have “numerous factually unsupported infractions, exaggerates aggravating factors and ignores mitigating facts.”
Regardless of the result, whether Michigan can salvage public perception of their 2023 national championship team, access to the playoffs for future Wolverine teams, the behavior of Michigan’s staff during the Jim Harbaugh regime was enough for someone internally to get the NCAA involved.
Whether the informant was “Uncle T” or under another alias, Michigan’s “Deep Throat,” harkening back to Watergate scandal, demonstrates the flippant behavior Harbaugh enabled couldn’t continue.
Think about the past transgressions during the Harbaugh regime that aren’t being adjudicated here. Whether it was the FBI showing up because offensive coordinator Matt Weiss had access, a former Michigan staffer soliciting a minor, or the various rules that former Harbaugh broke that led to a four-year show-cause penalty.
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If there is a reason to fight, it may be to protect current head coach Sherrone Moore.
Moore is on the hook currently for destroying evidence in the Stalions case.
This is what led to linebacker coach Chris Partridge’s termination. The NCAA has yet to prove that Partridge knew anything about the sign-stealing scheme as of today his name is still clear in that. NCAA investigators believed Partridge helped destroy evidence by destroying evidence on a computer.
For Moore, his admission to destroying 52 text messages that he had with Stalions is what has him in hot water.
“So, [I] deleted all the information — all Connor, on my personal phone,” Moore said in Michigan’s response. “And it wasn’t to hide anything, it was just that — I was just extremely angry of, you know, the type of person that would do that to this program and these kids.”
Michigan’s defense of Moore was that the subject of these messages were “innocuous and not material to the investigation.”
Moore alleges the subjects of these messages were about recruits’ birthdays and various signs of opponents. The latter Moore is adamant about, along with Michigan defenders, that there is no information Stalions provided Moore in these messages that contain no intimate knowledge of the advanced scouting that is impermissible.
While there was interesting exchanges between Moore and Stalions that bring up cause, an example being former Central Michigan assistant coach Jake Kostner planned to visit Moore. Central Michigan opened the 2023 season with Michigan State where Stalions is believed to have attended that game in disguise.
The negative publicity behind this ordeal may have led Central Michigan to relieve Kostner of his duties last fall as the NCAA investigated the matter of Stalions’ alleged appearance on the sideline of the game.
While Michigan has every right to fight for their program, the illiteracy behind Michigan’s defense was this whole saga that has handcuffed and distracted the program. The signs the NCAA is trying to convey is the behavior in which the program operated is beneath the standard of the NCAA, let alone Michigan itself. If you buy into the Michigan Man bravado that the Wolverines boast about, this should have never happened or even got to this level.
At the end of the day, Michigan will hope that Harbaugh, Partridge, and others were the sacrificial lambs and will work its defense to do so. All is for not if the program itself isn’t clean. I get this new world of major college football with tampering and technology to be able to create an elaborate sign-stealing scheme like Stalions is alleged to doing, NIL, and so much more.
No one is lillywhite but at the same time you cannot have a program that operates with no boundaries, this is where Michigan needs to gain literacy.
