The dumpster fire in Ann Arbor rages on. In recent days, their school president left for Florida, and their head football coach got a self-imposed suspension of two cherry-picked games. The dominoes continue to fall in the epic cheating saga of that team up north. This suspension for Sherrone Moore is essentially for deleting texts about the cheating, not the actual cheating done by him, Jim Harbaugh, Connor Stalions, Matt Weiss, and everything else that program has done and is doing.
College football fans hope the NCAA will do the right thing and strip the Wolverines of their ill-gotten gains. Don’t count on it, though. The NCAA allows the records of those whose wrongs go beyond the game of football to stand and punishes those who earned money for themselves with their athletic ability. So, I won’t hold my breath that they will do the right thing here.
The NCAA is all about two things. Money and power. It’s one of the many reasons why the NIL era, despite all its chaos, is better than the system that was in place before. It takes a lot of both money and power away from the NCAA and puts it in the hands of players and teams. Recognizing that the Wolverines cheated is a further threat to both that they can’t afford. They keep hoping these little things, like showcause penalties and minor suspensions of meaningless games, will satisfy people. And that the waters will be sufficiently muddied enough that they don’t have to do their job officially, but that people will feel they’ve seen enough to know that the maize and blue cheated.
Karam is finally catching up to the Michigan Wolverines for their cheating
So, don’t count on the NCAA to drop a hammer or massive penalties on the worst cheating in college football history. It’s up to everyone else to hold the Ann Arbor Astros accountable. When Harbaugh, his coaches, his players, their fans, the media, or anyone else refers to what they’ve been doing up there since 2021, it needs to be taken as seriously as Lance Armstrong bragging about all the races he won. When they talk about their record against the Big Ten and Ohio State, they are immediately likened to Rosie Ruiz. When their 2023 ‘championship’ is mentioned, it is along with what the likes about the 2000 Spanish Paralympic Basketball Team or a Ben Johnson Gold Medal.
When they scream at you to not believe your own eyes, to ignore the easily seen facts, and that nothing official has been done, realize that deep down, no one is more aware of their phoniness than they are. They know that their fortune is in fool’s gold. They know they’re pretending and that everything about their triumph is empty. That’s what it means to be a “Michigan Man.” It’s pure Michigan.