Michigan football allegations of cheating stand to stain Jim Harbaugh, team's legacy

Whatever else you think about the allegations levied against Michigan football for illegal, in-person scouting, whether you dismiss them outright or lean into whataboutism or quote the most quoted man in college football these days, Deion Sanders, who said earlier this week that a team could mail you their entire game plan and it wouldn’t matter because “you’ve still got to stop it,” remember that the Big Ten thought enough of the allegations that it told its schools what U-M had allegedly been up to.

The conference did this for a reason. Because knowing what’s coming helps.

Now, maybe it didn’t when Sanders roamed the secondary in the 80s and 90s — it’s not an accident that he said a school could “mail” their game plan instead of email it — but coaches wouldn’t dare let scouts into their meetings.

Or in their film sessions. Or onto their practice fields.

And neither would Sanders.

So, yes, it matters.

In fact, it matters enough that the NCAA prohibited in-person scouting some three decades ago because smaller schools couldn’t afford the expense, and in the spirit of fair competition, a rule was made to prohibit anyone from doing it since not everyone could.

Connor Stalions, an analyst with U-M's program, allegedly broke the spirit of fair competition — U-M suspended him with pay pending an NCAA investigation.

This is the central issue. Not that other teams do it or that it isn’t a big deal or that there is a conspiracy against “the leaders and the best.”

Is Jim Harbaugh right that some folks simply don’t like other folks’ success, as he suggested last Saturday night after his Wolverines thumped Michigan State in East Lansing?

Sure, in a vacuum. But the pettier side of our nature doesn’t exonerate U-M for allegedly trying to gain an illicit advantage in a very specific way.

Yes, schadenfreude is absolutely at play here. It’s a byproduct of competition, especially when one side holds itself up as a high-falutin' model of all things moral and pure; just listen to the fight song.

Telling everyone you’re a leader is one thing, telling them you’re the best is another. That’s a lot to live up to. And if we are to believe the allegations, Harbaugh’s program has not, even if it turns out Stalions acted alone.

He was still employed by the program.

Program is the relevant word here, because on Wednesday, the Washington Post reported that Stalions didn’t act alone, that other coaches were involved in a scheme to scout in person in order to decode the signs and signals teams use to coordinate their attack from one play to the next.

No evidence suggests Harbaugh is part of the alleged scheme. The U-M coach denied any knowledge of it in a statement last week.

But if the NCAA finds that the scheme is true, it won’t matter if Harbaugh knew or not. He will be held responsible, both from NCAA bylaw and from the laws of public opinion, and those laws have a way of turning opinion into fact, regardless of whether something is factual.

Even if it turns out Stalions acted alone, U-M will still carry the psychic weight that goes with the perception of cheating, that it couldn’t win without it.

And unless it's proven Stalions didn’t share his code-breaking results with anyone else on staff, the “cheater” label won’t go away anytime soon. In other words, whatever success happens this season will carry an asterisk, whether that is ultimately fair or not.

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That’s a shame for the players, and for the coaches and staff who weren’t part of the alleged spying. As for the school’s students and alums and fans?

It must be exhausting, all these allegations, on top of allegations earlier this year that U-M broke recruiting rules during the pandemic, which led to another on-going investigation. If nothing else, it’s a dent in the reputation.

If Michigan can’t hold itself up as among the leaders and the best while its finally winning, then how is the school any different from any of the other programs for which it’s historically held so much contempt?

But, but … everyone does it! Everyone is looking for an edge!

That last part may be true. And even if everyone reportedly spends $15,000 to scout opponents in an attempt to film their sidelines and decode their signs, no other program is being investigated for it.

Nor has any program been found guilty of such a scheme before.

Which means if U-M is found guilty, it’s hard to know what sort of penalties the NCAA would apply. A suspension for Harbaugh for violating its bylaw that stipulates a coach is responsible for their program? Perhaps. Vacated wins? Maybe.

Whatever happens, it likely won’t happen for a while, the NCAA often takes up to a year to finish a report for infractions cases. When it gives U-M its report, the school has 90 days to respond. That could possibly push any consequences into next season.

Now, the Big Ten could act, though that would take an act of the heavens to interrupt the season of one of its cash cows; the TV networks wouldn’t like that either.

This leaves the school’s athletic department and/or president, and do Warde Manuel or Santa Ono really want to punish Harbaugh or the program before the NCAA concludes its probe? Likely not, though it did suspend Harbaugh for three games before the conclusion of the recruiting violations investigation earlier this season, presumably to offer the NCAA a peace offering.

Still, allegations of minor recruiting violations don’t land the same in the public consciousness as allegations of a vast cheating network to gain an advantage during games, and if U-M were to offer up preventive punishments again it would be acknowledging guilt, and it’s hard to imagine the school is ready to do that before due process.

And so, the season for U-M's football team is likely to go on in this state of purgatory, with rivals assuming the worst, Wolverine fans hoping for the best, and just about everyone else wondering if Harbaugh’s run of dominance is tainted.

That all of this comes amid a potentially historic season surely makes the news worse.

Partly because of the glee so many are expressing that U-M's character is being questioned, a program led by a coach who has been happy to point out other programs’ flaws; hypocrisy is so often a precursor to schadenfreude. And partly because loving a college football team means letting that love define part of your identity, and to have that identity questioned is painful.

Back in the mid-aughts, Bill Belichick and the New England Patriots were caught videotaping signs during a game against the New York Jets, a no-no in the NFL. The league fined the legendary coach $500,000, the team another $250,000 and stripped the franchise of its first-round pick the next draft.

Spygate hung around the neck of the franchise for a while but eventually faded as the Patriots kept winning. At this point, it’s a footnote in the career of Belichick and, to a lesser degree, Tom Brady.

And while the fans in New England didn’t enjoy the negative national attention that accompanied the scandal, they didn’t mind that an organization that's existential purpose is to win (and make money) did whatever it thought best to win.

The Wolverines aren't suppose to operate in such cold calculus. They are part of a much larger institution that’s responsible for 50,000 students and thousands more in faculty and staff, an institution with a different mission than a football team.

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The identity of the block “M” is also in play here for the hundreds of thousands who love and are attached, in some way, to the school. What the football team is accused of isn’t so different than a student breaking a professor’s rules on a test.

It wouldn’t be tolerated in the classroom, and it shouldn’t be tolerated on the field.

Contact Shawn Windsor: 313-222-6487 or swindsor@freepress.com. Follow him @shawnwindsor.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan football allegations have stained Jim Harbaugh's legacy