Last year I compared the state of pitching in baseball to nuclear disarmament. Now I’m making another analogy between sports and history. Michigan got their “punishment” from the NCAA today. Let’s think about this as if it were the Watergate scandal, but slightly altered to make the analogy work.
Scenario 1: People who worked for Nixon committed crimes. The crimes had no impact on the election. Nixon was not involved and when he found out what happened, he immediately cooperated fully with the investigation.
Scenario 2: Nixon approved the Watergate break in. The crimes committed helped Nixon win the election. Nixon tried to cover up the crimes and destroyed evidence.
Of course, neither of those is exactly what happened with Watergate, but I am trying to make the analogy work. In which scenario should Nixon get the harsher punishment? Of course, it’s scenario 2. But if it was up to the NCAA, Nixon would have been removed from office and thrown in prison for scenario 1 and he would have had to pay a fine for scenario 2.
Scenario 1 is Notre Dame. There are examples with other schools also, but I’m most familiar with the Notre Dame frozen five scandal from 2012-2013. Notre Dame had some players who were cheating in their classes. When the university found out about it, the players were immediately suspended and Notre Dame cooperated with the investigation. This was an academic scandal. The team gained no competitive advantage on the football field. The players rightfully faced consequences from the university. Notre Dame handled the situation correctly. Notre Dame had to vacate two seasons of wins. You could argue over whether that was a fair punishment because we did use players who should have been ineligible, but this was an academic scandal where the university acted appropriately.
Scenario 2 is Michigan. They were cheating to win football games. Did they have to vacate any of those illegitimate wins? No. The NCAA said that there were grounds for a multiyear postseason ban, but they didn’t want to punish players who weren’t involved in the scandal. I can live with that (although the players could easily transfer these days). But if that’s the case, why not punish the team that actually benefited from the cheating? All those wins were tainted. Sure, Michigan would have won a lot of those games anyway, but that doesn’t change the fact that they cheated. Notre Dame didn’t say, “Well, those players probably would have passed their classes if they weren’t cheating so we’re not going to punish them.” It doesn’t matter what might have happened if the cheating didn’t happen. The cheating did happen and it taints everything. All the wins should be vacated. Instead, they got fines and punishments for coaches. Jim Harbaugh got a show-cause order for ten years, which doesn’t start until 2028 because he already had another show-cause order. Michigan is so dirty. Sherrone Moore got a three game suspension. I don’t really care how many games he got, but the structure of the suspension is a complete joke. Michigan had already suspended Moore for two games so the NCAA just added another game. But Michigan’s suspension was for weeks 3 and 4. Why weeks 3 and 4? Because they didn’t want to suspend him for the Oklahoma game in week 2. So he’s suspended for Central Michigan and Nebraska. The NCAA allowed that absurdity and added one extra game to the suspension. When is that game? The first game of 2026, which is Western Michigan. If three games is the right number, it should be the first three games of 2025, not three games whenever it’s convenient for Michigan.
Michigan’s national championship is as legitimate as the Houston Astros’ 2017 World Series championship. The Astros absolutely should have had that championship stripped. Of course, the Dodgers were the last team to be wronged in that cheating scandal, but not the only team. I didn’t want the championship to be given to the Dodgers, but the Astros definitely shouldn’t have been allowed to keep it. It should just have been that there was no World Series champion in 2017. And that’s the way it should have been for the 2023 college football season. Despite the uselessness of Rob Manfred and the NCAA, anybody who knows what happened knows that the Astros and Michigan do not deserve their championships.
Barry Bonds has the single season and all time home run records (at least Bonds had to pay the price of not making the Hall of Fame). The Astros won the 2017 World Series. Michigan won the national championship for the 2023 college football season. All of those “accomplishments” are completely meaningless.
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