If these rumors about Ohio State end up having legs and the NCAA is in fact investigating OSU for this, then the Big Ten Joint Group Executive Committee and the commissioner Tony Petitti have already just recently created a precedent for this very situation when they suspended Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh for 3 games without an investigation.
In fact, Harbaugh was suspended on a Friday afternoon while he and the UM football team and the UM AD were flying to Happy Valley for the road game against (no opt outs) Penn State.
This was a super-expedited suspension without any B1G conference due process. In other words, it was a decision that was premature AND a decision that did not need to be made because the NCAA was already investigating the allegations against Michigan.
That completely unnecessary B1G suspension lacking any due process created a dangerous precedent for ADs, athletic departments, and coaches in the B1G that should not have been created. And we all know that Michigan won all 3 games during that suspension (on the road against no opt outs Penn State, on the road against Maryland (Terps just walloped Auburn), and at home again Ohio State (whose defense dominated Mizzou's highly touted offensive holding them scoreless for more than 3 quarters while getting no help from OSU's offense that crumbled with its 3rd-string QB behind center). And now the question becomes will that precedent end up applying to OSU.
And on top of that head-scratching reactionary move from the B1G leadership we still know next to nothing about the person at the center of the UM sign-stealing allegations; Connor Stalions. We do know that Stalions issued a statement with his lawyer saying that neither Harbaugh nor anyone on the UM staff were aware of Station's alleged improper advanced scouting behavior. But that is about all we know about or from Mr. Stalions. The UM staff were investigated, and they all deny any knowledge of Stalions' seemingly rogue and wildly naive alleged advanced scouting conduct.
Will we ever find out what Stalions was thinking? There has been little written or spoken about Stalions' possible motivations here. And to me the obvious motivation (especially if he told no one on the UM staff including Harbaugh about his alleged advanced scouting) is that Stalions is ambitious and he wanted to get ahead in the coaching profession and he was willing to cheat to get ahead. Stalions kept it secret because it was wrong. And he also kept it secret because it would have corrupted the image of himself that he wanted to sell which was that he had some kind of special skill when it comes to stealing signs from other teams. And stealing signs itself is not against the rules. The alleged rules violation would have kicked in when Stalions bought tickets to opponents games and used proxies to record games/signs from the stands using mobile phones.
We need to know more about Stalions. If it turns out that Stalions told no one on the UM staff including Harbaugh, and Stalions' behavior was rooted in his ambition getting the best of him, then that is without a doubt a mitigating factor in UM's culpability and Harbaugh's culpability.
That scenario reminds me somewhat of the 9-year investigation of SU athletics and legendary coach Jim Boeheim who were punished back in 2015. After more than 9 years of investigation the NCAA found that the SU athletics department committed no major violations, but the NCAA did find that the culture in the athletics department was lacking enough focus on compliance. The NCAA punished legendary coach Jim Boeheim and vacated 109 of JB's wins for failing to monitor and control compliance enough. That is, JB and the AD department did monitor compliance but over 9 years they didn't monitor compliance enough.
And so we had then and continue to have now a massive organization like the NCAA without any oversight carrying out prolonged (sometimes lasting 9 years or more) investigations into athletic departments which employ less people than the local Wegmans and punishing coaches and ADs for poor management. And by the way, as far as I know neither JB nor Harbaugh went to business school. Both guys played ball and then went directly into coaching and very quickly became head coaches. They both have been wildly successful as coaches, but no one would ever think to say that they are skilled accountants, lawyers, or HR compliance experts. And sometimes even the best trained managers, executives, or even Power 5 commissioners or executive committees make mistakes. That is a fact.
And nothing has seemingly changed with the NCAA in the past 8 years or so. That is to say that the NCAA can still do whatever it wants. The rules and regulations are vast, voluminous, and overwhelming and in many instances are written broadly or with vague terms which allow great discretion in the way the NCAA both investigates and the way it rules and decides to punish or not to punish. And this one very important reason why for so many college sports fans it feels like college athletics have lost their way.
Unless it turns out that Harbaugh knew about Stalions' alleged behavior, then Harbuagh's mistake was to hire Stalions who it has been reported attended the US Naval Academy, was a captain in the US Marine Corps., and whose parents both attended Michigan. Stalions reportedly has said in the past that he grew up his entire life with a vision to coach football at Michigan.
There is also a question about whether Harbaugh should have known what his low-level staff member Stalions was up to privately and online buying tickets to opponents's games etc., but based on the reporting so far there doesn't appear to be any link to Harbaugh or anyone else on the UM staff. Without that link it has hard to hold a coach or any hiring manager for that matter to task for failing to know about an employee's private online behavior.
Based on what little we know about Stalions, I can see why Harbaugh hired the 28-year old a few years back. Sure, it turned out to be a bad hire, but I don't know anyone who has hired people who hasn't made various types of hiring mistakes. And you can be sure that the NCAA makes its own hiring mistakes (with impunity).
Go Cuse!!
www.si.com
