With MIchigan sanctions, NCAA sells what's left of soul to join college football money grab
The long-awaited penalties for Michigan's illegal advanced scouting scheme were announced Friday, Aug. 15, and the NCAA made clear what's important.
Get yours.
Everyone else is cashing in on college football's new world, why shouldn't the NCAA?
Look at the bright side: the NCAA can use Michigan's unprecedented fine for cheating – it could reach upwards of $35 million – to help pay the $2.8 billion in House case back pay owed to athletes for, you know, cheating them.
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Hey, 1.25 percent of $2.8 billion is a start.
If this is all confusing, it shouldn't be. There was zero chance the NCAA – which once famously sanctioned Boise State for allowing a recruit to sleep on a couch in the dorms – was laying down the law on one of its prized television properties.
Even one that just last year was sanctioned for an entirely separate case of infractions within the football program, thus making Michigan a repeat offender. The worst kind of offender.
A you've got to be kidding me, you can't be that stupid to try and break rules again offender.
But instead of a postseason ban and/or scholarship/roster spot losses (see: real meat on the enforcement bone), the NCAA chose to reach into Michigan's deep and expansive cash war chest and grab a handful. And why not?
If players are making billions from revenue sharing and private NIL deals, if coaches are making the same with fat, guaranteed contracts (some fired and paid to not coach), why can't the NCAA get in on the action? It's all fungible, anyway.
Billions in money is changing hands at an alarming rate, and the four principle actors involved barely see it long enough to care. Universities, television partners, coaches, players, and now all the way back to universities with the NCAA's latest capitulation.
What's worse, the sport's governing body just threw open the barn doors to (more) rampant cheating. The cost of a national title is now upwards of $35 million.
Who wants some?
It doesn't matter if you cheat, because the NCAA has no idea how to manage enforcement. It says so right there in the release from the committee on infractions:
The NCAA is blaming the "new world of college athletics' for not taking the more significant road of scholarship reductions and postseason bans. The same 'world' the NCAA created in 2021 by approving NIL deals and free player movement nearly simultaneously — without any guardrails in place.
By blaming the current 'world,' the NCAA conveniently allows itself a pass from making the difficult yet prudent decision of significant, meaningful penalties to one of its prized pupils. Or as the great Jerry Tarkanian once said, "The NCAA was so made at Kentucky, they gave Cleveland State two more years probation."
The NCAA says players were not part of the advanced scouting scheme concocted by Michigan's former low level staffer Connor Stalions, and shouldn't be retroactively punished for it with scholarship reductions and postseason bans. Stalions isn't the villain here, everyone.
Jim Harbaugh is.
The same Harbaugh who allowed Stalions to infiltrate his program, and approved his illegal scheme. I'm going to say this one more time: there's no chance in hell Harbaugh – the most meticulously organized megalomaniac of a coach this side of Nick Saban – allows anything to happen within his program without full knowledge and approval.
He's not allowing some flunky hanging around the program to stand right next to his coordinators on game day, and yell out play calls – so his coordinators could then switch play calls to the corresponding play against Ohio flipping State – without knowing everything about the scheme.
Harbaugh is the Michigan football team, and Michigan gaining a competitive advantage because of the scheme is exactly why the Wolverines should've been fined and had scholarships/roster spots eliminated and been given a postseason ban.
To say nothing of vacating wins — including those in the 2023 national championship season.
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But the committee on infractions pointed to Harbaugh's three-game suspension in 2023, stating it was penalty enough for his part in the scheme. There's not a person on that committee who believes that, but it's good cover.
Instead, Michigan will pay a $35 million bounty while nearly everyone in power either lied, obfuscated, or destroyed evidence about an illegal scheme that most certainly played a role in Michigan winning the 2023 national title.
Money talks, everyone. It's the new world of NCAA enforcement.
Who wants some?
Matt Hayes is the senior national college football writer for USA TODAY Sports Network. Follow him on X at @MattHayesCFB.
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