Go Buckeyes! Michigan deserves a suspension and an asterisk.

            Michigan, it’s time to come clean.

            Did you really beat the Buckeyes fair and square those last two years?

            I think not.

My g

            Full disclaimer: I was born a Buckeye. I have lived in Ohio my entire life. Six of my 10 siblings graduated from The Ohio State University. Two lived in stadium dorms. One might have helped take down a goal post after a victory over Michigan.

            I’m biased for the Buckeyes.

            I’m also against cheating to win.

It appears to the world that for three seasons – the current season and those two that the Wolverines allegedly beat the Buckeyes -- Connor Stalions, a low-level analyst employed by the University of Michigan – engaged in illegal sign stealing.  

Michigan hired him in May 2022 but before that he was a volunteer assistant. Sports Illustrated reported that in 2021, “Stalions boasted of sign-stealing and close relations with the Wolverines’ ‘whole staff.’ He said he envisioned leading Michigan football one day and to prepare was creating a hundreds-page-long document he called ‘the Michigan Manifesto.’”

            Check the records: Ohio State beat Michigan every single year from 2012 to 2019. Covid cancelled the 2020 game. Then Michigan beat Ohio State in 2021 and 2022.

The years Connor Stalions started boasting of stealing signs.

            There’s even video of Stalions on the sidelines near the Michigan coaching staff, including Harbaugh. Stalions has resigned.

Purdue coach Ryan Walters said this during his weekly radio show: “What’s crazy is they aren’t allegations. It happened. There’s video evidence. There’s ticket purchase and sales that you can track back. We know for a fact that they were at a number of our games.”

            ESPN reported that over the last three seasons Stalions is believed to have bought tickets to more than 30 games at 12 Big Ten schools, plus four other games involving College Football Playoff contenders.

            To everyone outside of Ann Arbor, it’s clear a Michigan staff member “participated in and coordinated a vast off campus, in-person advance scouting scheme involving a network of individuals,” to quote what the NCAA told Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti. 

            The NCAA rules say you can steal signs in person by watching arm and hand signals, but it violates the rules to go out and scout future opponents. It’s also a violation to use recording devices to steal signs, which it appears Stalions did.

The Wolverines are No. 2 in the college playoff rankings. Five teams have 10-0 records: Georgia, Michigan, Ohio State, Florida State and Washington. Four teams have 9-1 records: Oregon, Alabama, Texas, Louisville.

The sign stealing scheme should disqualify Michigan from competing for a national championship. We’re not talking about someone reading lips as a coach clarifies a play. We’re talking about a systematic complex plan to take down teams.

Take the 2017 Astros. Please, take their World Series Rings back. They stole signs by banging on a trash can, which is about as low-tech as you can get, but it worked.  

The Michigan Astros, oops, Wolverines, did sooo much more. Stalions even disguised himself as a Central Michigan staffer to hang out near their bench during a game.

The Big Ten gave Michigan a yawn of a penalty. Harbaugh misses three games, but he can still coach the team at practice. Big whoop. Michigan is trying to block the suspension. The school issued a 10-page document to get a temporary restraining order.

Then we get the acting head coach shedding tears of love for Harbaugh after the team beat Penn State. Harbaugh doesn’t deserve tears. He’s not dying of cancer, he got suspended because it appears his team cheated their way to a 10-1 record.

If Harbaugh didn’t know, what kind of control does he have over his team and coaching staff? The NCAA would call that “lack of institutional control.”

            To be fair, Michigan might have been this good without the cheating, but we will never know. How unfair to every player on that team, to realize your coaches didn’t believe enough in your sheer talent and grit to win, so they stole your opponents’ signs.

The NCAA is still investigating. It could take months. The Big Ten said its punishment was for “conducting an impermissible, in-person scouting operation over multiple years, resulting in an unfair competitive advantage that compromised the integrity of competition.” Petitti said the violations cast doubt over the integrity of future competitions.

How about the doubt cast over the integrity of past competitions?

I say they strip away those two Ohio State losses to Michigan. At least put a big fat asterisk next to them. Call them alleged wins.     

            And don’t allow Michigan in the playoffs. They would be taking the place of a team that didn’t cheat to get ahead. There are only four finalist slots in the playoffs. A team that cheated shouldn’t be in one of them.

No matter how stellar Michigan’s winning record looks on paper, we all know better.

            And when you know better, you’re supposed to do better.

#Buckeyes #OhioState