There won’t be an asterisk on this Michigan season, but there will be a stain
You know what fuels the finest rivalries in college football? Not victory. Superiority. The unshakable, intractable belief that no matter what happens on the field, you know, deep down, that your school is simply better than their school.
Whether you’re talking white-column elites vs. land-grant blue-collars (see: Alabama vs. Auburn), jocks vs. nerds (see: Georgia vs. Georgia Tech) or a belief in divine favor (see: Notre Dame vs. everybody), the message is always the same: We’re right, and we’re better than you.
It’s all absurd, of course. Every college football program pushes the envelope or even tears it completely to shreds. “Everyone else is doing it!” isn’t much of a defense, but it’s a damn good explanation. No program has any real claim on moral superiority over its rival. (No, not even yours.) Michigan is learning that the hard way this season.
As Yahoo Sports first reported in October, Michigan executed a wide-ranging, if clumsy, off-campus sign-stealing operation over a period of years. In practical terms, the scheme wasn’t all that different from the usual exchange of information and intense observation that happens all the time in college football — coaches with a common opponent share their findings on that opponent; in games, coaches pay close attention to the signs used in the first half and trade on that information in the second half.
But by the letter of NCAA law, Michigan cheated. Plain and simple. When you’re attending opponents’ games in other stadiums — and actually getting onto the sidelines of other games dressed as a coach — it doesn’t much matter whether the information you’re getting is useful or not or whether the team needed that information to win games. A violation is a violation. The only question left is whether the punishment will fit the crime.
Between a recruiting scandal that cost Jim Harbaugh the first three games of the regular season and the sign-stealing debacle that cost him the last three, it has been a rough year for the Michigan-is-simply-better crowd. Lofty ideals can last only so long when confronted with cold, hard receipts.
Not that Michigan ever has any trouble with its self-image. Fielding Yost, the six-time national championship-winning coach of Michigan and the Nick Saban of his day — “his day” being the early 20th century — championed the ideals of Michigan in an oft-quoted speech in which he proclaimed,
“Let me reiterate the Spirit of Michigan. It is based on a deathless loyalty to Michigan and all her ways. An enthusiasm that makes it second nature for Michigan Men to spread the gospel of their university to the world’s distant outposts. And a conviction that nowhere is there a better university, in any way, than this Michigan of ours.”
Inspiring! Heartwarming! And also ridiculous! There are plenty of universities that are better in so many ways than Michigan! Starting with the ones that haven’t gotten caught clumsily trying to steal signs!
Look, this isn’t to pile on Michigan — which is, of course, both an outstanding university and an exceptionally good football team. But it’s a reminder that college football is a grimy, morally gray business in which there are no angels. The guiding ethos isn’t “Do no evil.” It’s “Don’t get caught.”
Remember the classic Jerry Tarkanian quote: “Nine out of 10 schools are cheating. The other one is in last place.” Remember, too, the old courtroom cliche that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence; just because your school hasn’t been caught breaking rules doesn’t mean its hands are sanitizer-clean.
Michigan got caught, plain and simple. Is the Wolverines’ crime worthy of all the handwringing and death-penalty calls? Of course not. Does the season deserve an asterisk? Nope. There will always be whispers, of course, and the hard-core Wolverine haters will never let a discussion of this season go without mentioning Connor Stalions, but that happens in every rivalry. Michigan was clumsy and got caught, and that will sting the program more than any NCAA wrist-slap.
The sad thing is, Michigan is now one of those teams that carries a stain it didn’t need to because it was so absurdly talented already. Tom Brady won multiple Super Bowls both before and after Deflategate. The Houston Astros won a World Series without banging on trash cans. Barry Bonds was on a Hall of Fame trajectory before he hulked out and started hitting pitches into orbit.
Similarly, it’s clear from the final games of the regular season and the Rose Bowl that this Michigan team didn’t need to pilfer anyone’s signs. Sign-stealing doesn’t help if both lines overwhelm the opposition. Sign-stealing doesn’t motivate the heart and soul to rally on fourth-and-the-season. The way Blake Corum is running these days, he could describe his planned route in detail to the defense, and they still couldn’t stop him.
Clouds swirl around Jim Harbaugh and the Michigan program — and not just because of sign-stealing. It’s entirely possible that Stalions was only the most visible element of something larger, in which case we’ll happily rewrite the previous 600 words. There’s always the outside chance that this entire season could be wiped from the record books. It wouldn’t be the first time that has happened to Michigan, as the Fab Five could tell you.
But even that unlikely event wouldn’t diminish the joy of this season, the exultation of beating Ohio State yet again, the delirium of outplaying Saban and Alabama, the thrill of reaching the national championship again at last. The NCAA can take down banners, but it can’t come for your maize-and-blue championship T-shirts.
Michigan has nearly summited the mountaintop, and if it closes the deal Monday, the Wolverines can celebrate a glorious, asterisk-free achievement. But they also have to concede that they’ve gotten here by the exact same path everyone else has always taken.
