Michigan Football Just Can’t Let Connor Stallions Go

It was Abraham Lincoln who famously said, “If you don’t cheat, you don’t try.” Or maybe it was Winston Churchill. It could have been Confucius.

Regardless, it’s a sentiment that rings truest in college football. NCAA oversight is essentially a joke, and there’s over 100 years of history that shows how profitable it is for everyone involved when a coach, player or program breaks a rule or two. The average infraction barely makes the national news, and some are even celebrated.

But for it all to work, there has to be an acceptance by the guilty party. A mindset of the ends justifying the means, and then the prospect of greetings of the loose ends. If that sounds too much like something out of a mafia movie, that’s no coincidence: the two organizations have a lot in common.

The University of Michigan football program should know this better than most. Their origin story is built on operating in the gray area, to say the least. And last season, despite TWO scandals, the program won the national championship in a dominating fashion. This should be a KMA moment. The haters of Columbus or East Lansing can call them cheaters all they want, but then they can kiss the ring.

The fact that there were some general irregularities around the season shouldn’t be a big deal. Especially considering what’s being said. No one was really harmed. In fact, all that happened was Jim Harbaugh paid for some hamburgers and an assistant coach wore a bad Halloween costume.

But Michigan simply refuses to adopt the attitude that the situation requires. The attitude that every other elite program in the game adopts. Instead, they play dumb games and win dumb prizes.

It was the second of those two issues that caused the most trouble. For those who haven’t been following the otherwise comical Connor Stalions saga, it was actually quite funny. A Michigan assistant coach was caught illegally scouting opposing teams and stealing signs from the opposing team’s sideline. Real crimes against humanity.

Michigan is far from the first school to break a strange rule like this. They were either unlucky or too brazen and got caught. They had a decision to make: bury the problem and keep winning games, or fight tooth and nail and keep the story in the headlines. Guess which one the Ann Arbor scholars chose?

Remember when Nick Saban took over Alabama and the team was immediately embroiled in a textbook scandal? Or how about earlier this year when Georgia had to fire a staffer for betting on football? Oh, you don’t remember those things? That’s probably because Saban and Kirby Smart handled them.

In those mafia movies, the crime bosses are less concerned about people who know they’re breaking the rules and more focused on drawing attention to those specific dirty deeds. Likewise, programs like Alabama and Georgia are happy to take a slap on the wrist (often self-inflicted) as long as a trusted donor can quickly make the problems disappear from the headlines and the team can focus on winning games.

Instead, Michigan bought a pink Cadillac.

The latest headlines are about Stalion’s attempt to land a job coaching high school football in Michigan. On the surface, it’s the perfect job for UM. It appeases Stalion while hiding him somewhere the national media won’t look. But it looks like the powers that be in Ann Arbor haven’t quite put their finger on the wheel. The deal has fallen through, and emails have been leaked.

Stalions has since found another job coaching high school football in Michigan, meaning this is definitely the last we hear from him. OH WAIT!

With Stalions refusing to stay quiet and coach after coach getting caught up in his mess, Michigan can’t throw this story away. It’s a joke in what should have been a victory lap.

Ultimately, it probably doesn’t do much to directly hurt the product on the field. But as they should have learned last year, the more Michigan thumbs its nose at the NCAA, the more likely it is that the organization will blame the Wolverines for an otherwise minor transgression.

Which is simply phenomenal theatre for everyone else.