Did you believe the NCAA was going to drop a hammer with its ruling on Michigan for the sign stealing and in-person scouting scandal involving former staffer Connor Stalions?
No hammer. No bowl ban. No asterisks on the 2023 College Football Playoff championship run.
Are you outraged? Surprised by the outcome? You can be simultaneously outraged and surprised. Just don't be that naive. It is about money.
On Friday, ESPN's Pete Thamel first reported the penalties Michigan received from the investigation concerning Michigan's violation of NCAA bylaw 11.6.1, which prohibits off-campus, in-person scouting of future opponents. From the NCAA Committee on Infractions report:
"The panel determined that a postseason ban would unfairly penalize student-athletes for the actions of coaches and staff who are no longer associated with the Michigan football program."
Michigan will receive a fine which is "expected to be more than $20 million" from the loss of postseason football revenue for the next two years. Michigan coach Sherrone Moore faces another one-game suspension – which will reportedly occur in 2026 according to the Detroit Free Press. Moore is serving a two-game suspension this season and will miss games against Central Michigan on Sept. 13 and Nebraska on Sept. 20.
This became the dominant storyline the 2023 season – in which former Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh served a Big Ten-mandated three-game suspension and missed late-season games against Penn State, Maryland and Ohio State. The Wolverines still finished 15-0 and won the College Football Playoff championship. Harbaugh left for the NFL.
It's nowhere near the predicted hammer, but more of a test to see whether a hefty fine is the best the NCAA can do in the super-conference, NIL-infused, 12-team College Football Playoff era. Will that hurt Michigan more than a postseason ban or vacated victories? Actually, yes.
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Who did NCAA punish in Michigan sign-stealing scandal?
Through the whole controversy, the most-flagrant offense was Stalions being on the Central Michigan sideline during a game against Michigan State on Sept. 21, 2023. Think about it. Imagine if an Alabama staffer was on the South Alabama sideline when they face Auburn on Sept. 13. This was the worst of the offenses.
Stalions received a 10-year show-cause penalty, and he deserves it. A cynic might say he fell on the sword for Michigan, and that is probably true, too.
Harbaugh was given a four-year show-cause from a separate NCAA investigation involving impermissible contact with recruits during COVID-19 before the reported eight-year show-cause penalty in this scandal. Harbaugh – who is in his second year with the Los Angeles Chargers – will not return to college football, so the penalties really don't matter. Harbaugh was openly combative against the NCAA during his tenure with Michigan – and you can expect a defiant denial of some sort in the next 24 hours.
Moore will feel the most heat now. He will serve a two-game suspension during the 2025 season, and he will miss games against Central Michigan and Nebraska. Moore faced a Level 2 violation for allegations that he deleted 52 texts in a thread with Stalions in October, 2023. Moore still is associated with the in-person scouting scandal – and his seat would be much hotter had the Wolverines not pulled off an improbable 13-10 upset against Ohio State on Nov. 30, 2024.
Former Michigan assistant Denard Robinson also received a three-year show cause.
MORE: Timeline of Michigan sign-stealing scandal
Perhaps the most embarrassing part for Michigan's coaches is that Harbaugh missed six games in 2023 and Moore – who also missed a game as an assistant that season – will miss at least three games through the next two seasons. It's just not a good look.
The NCAA just does not have the power to levy heavy punishments in the current college football environment . This is a Level 1 violation. This is a Level 2 violation. Schools probably look at that now and say, "gold jacket, green jacket … "
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Why did Michigan not vacate wins, national title?
The sign-stealing scandal remains a stain on that run – but this one is easy to remove given the lack of real punishment from the NCAA. Why did this happen?
Following the money is one theory. Did Michigan really get preferential treatment because it is a blue blood? Or is hitting a school with a $20 million fine a more effective play than it looks?
On July 25, The Athletic ranked every Power 4 program by their valuation. Michigan – which has an average football revenue of $141 million per year – had a valuation of $1.83 billion. Michigan is one of 13 billion-dollar programs on that scale. Seven of those schools – Alabama, Auburn, Florida, Ohio State, Oklahoma Penn State and USC – have served bowl bans in the past. Yet none of those have occurred since the inception of the College Football Playoff.
Does the NCAA have the power to drop the hammer on these money-making machines now? Tennessee – another one of those programs – had more than 200 recruiting violations under former coach Jeremy Pruitt, and they were hit with an $8 million fine. The Volunteers did vacate 11 wins from the 2019-20 season. LSU (2012-15) and Notre Dame (2012-13) also have vacated victories as a result of NCAA investigations.
That leaves Michigan, Texas and Georgia – three of the five richest programs in the FBS. But in the new age, where you have to pay players, losing $20 million on the football budget is significant if you are trying to keep up with the other billion-dollar programs. How significant? We will find out over the next few years with the Wolverines. The recruiting penalties, which include a 25% reduction in in-home visits, also will be telling.
This might turn out to be a more-effective punishment than the vacated victories and titles.
Who are biggest losers in Michigan sign-stealing scandal?
Michigan. The Wolverines were 40-3 on the field in Harbaugh's last three years with Stalions on staff. To what degree that sign-stealing and in-person scouting contributed to that success will always be a talking point when it comes to that three-year run. There was no way to exonerate Michigan – and that's not what happened – but now the overriding perception will always be that they got away with it. Stalions and Harbaugh got the most severe punishments.
Still, all this soured what should have been the next-best thing The Game has had since The Ten-Year War.
How much damage did Michigan do to the integrity of the game? There are polarizing views on sign stealing – how much does is it matter when multiple players are holding cardboard signs? – but the Wolverines clearly violated NCAA bylaw 11.6.1 when it comes to in-person scouting. It is an outdated bylaw – but teams steal signs. The Patriots didn’t give back a Super Bowl, and the Astros didn’t give back the World Series. If any good came out of the scandal, then it's that it brought helmet communication and iPads – much-needed 21st century technology – to the college football sidelines. That was way past overdue.
Ohio State supporters who were expecting the Wolverines to get "the hammer" also have to be disappointed given the investment level in the case. Michigan has a four-game winning streak against the Buckeyes. None of those victories will be vacated – and the NCAA ruling has to be seen as an unsatisfactory conclusion. But let’s be honest. Ohio State isn’t going to feel better until it beats Michigan on the field, and they were a three-TD favorite in 2024. The next chance is on Nov. 29, 2025 at the Big House.
Those same feelings will bubble up in East Lansing, Mich. The Spartans played Michigan the week the Stalions’ news broke. What about Knoxville, Tenn.? That's where former Vols such as Joe Milton – who played at Michigan before transferring – believe South Carolina had help in a late-season 63-38 victory that helped keep Tennessee out of the CFP. Even Fort Worth, Texas, where TCU coach Sonny Dykes was a strong critic of the Wolverines in the aftermath of the Stalions' scandal.
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The Horned Frogs beat the Wolverines 51-45 in the CFP semifinals on Dec. 31, 2022 despite allegations of sign stealing. The truth is those fan-bases wanted the asterisks and the vacated wins more than the hefty fines.
"We had some intel that (the sign stealing) was going on," Dykes said. "Look everybody does it to an extent, but we had some intel that it was kind of next level there."
You can blame the NCAA here, but the history of inconsistent punishment is so lengthy that that is a tired exercise. When they handed the SMU the "Death Penalty," the program was canceled for the 1987 season, could not field a team for 1988 and was still not allowed to be on live television in 1989. Can you imagine trying to take the Wolverines off TV? A total of 12.3 million people watched Ohio State-Michigan last year, second only to the 13.19 million that watched Georgia and Texas in the regular season. There are those three schools that haven’t been touched, right?
How big of a miss by the NCAA is this? That's subjective, and there is an in-between here. Were Michigan's violations the most-egregious scandal in the history of college football? Not close. Should the Wolverines have been punished more for the competitive edge Stalions obtained by committing NCAA violations? Sure.
Was this cheating? Michigan operated in gray areas and that turned to charcoal, and a reasonable punishment would have been a one-year postseason bowl ban. That would have made everybody angry – and that means the punishment is right. But can the NCAA do that to a billion-dollar program now?
If you need time to answer that question now, then you really are that naive.