Some scandals never seem to go away. Watergate and Teapot Dome made their way into the history books, and Hunter Biden can’t walk across the street without doing something stupid that makes headlines. Even fictional scandals can stick in our minds; ask anybody of a certain age who shot J.R., and it’ll trigger memories.
The University of Michigan is probably hoping that its 2023 football scandal would’ve gone away by now, but it keeps rearing its ugly head. For the uninitiated or those who forgot, the Michigan Wolverines had a football analyst on its staff who had an elaborate system of stealing other teams’ signs that blew up into a scandal the same season that the team won a national championship.
“The Michigan Wolverines have found themselves embroiled in a scandal that is giving them press for the wrong reasons,” I wrote when the scandal was first emerging. “Allegations of sign-stealing have arisen just as the Wolverines face a spate of games against tough rivals. The NCAA notified upcoming opponents, including Michigan State, Penn State, and Ohio State of the investigation.”
Flashback: New Wrinkles Emerge in the Michigan Football Cheating Allegations
The investigation into Connor Stalions and his alleged sign-stealing dated back to 2021. Investigators later learned that Stalions had bought tickets to several high-profile Wolverine opponents and sent family and friends to those games to figure out what each of those opponents’ signs meant in order to give Michigan an advantage.
The scandal led to a three-game suspension for then-head coach Jim Harbaugh in 2023. During the suspension, offensive coordinator Sherrone Moore took the helm, and when Harbaugh high-tailed it to the NFL after the 2023 season, Moore became head coach.
Now Moore is facing a suspension of his own for the scandal.
Michigan football coach Sherrone Moore is expected to be suspended for two games for the upcoming 2025 season as part of self-imposed sanctions by the university for the Connor Stalions advanced scouting scandal, industry sources told ESPN.
The suspensions will be for Michigan’s Week 3 and Week 4 games against Central Michigan and Nebraska. Moore will also be barred from any team-related duties during those weeks, and will receive additional recruiting-related penalties. The NCAA can still punish Moore in addition to the self-imposed school penalties. A final resolution is expected before the start of the season.
The timing of the suspension allows Moore to coach the Wolverines in the team’s game against his alma mater, Oklahoma, in the second week of the season. The NCAA is working with Michigan to determine the scope of the repercussions of the scandal. Last year, the NCAA concluded that the Wolverines committed 11 violations, six of which were Level 1 violations — the most severe.
ESPN says that Moore’s suspension stems from his attempts to cover up his involvement in the scandal:
Moore’s suspension ties back to allegations that he deleted a thread of 52 text messages with Stalions.
The alleged deletions came in October 2023 on the same day that media reports revealed Stalions was leading an effort to capture the playcalling signals of future opponents.
According to a draft of the notice of allegations obtained by ESPN last year, the texts were recovered via “device imaging” and Moore “subsequently produced them to enforcement staff.” Moore is accused of committing a Level 2 violation, according to the draft.
Interestingly enough, Moore served a single-game suspension in 2023 for a totally different NCAA violation.
As I said at the start of this article, some scandals won’t go away, no matter how much the parties involved wish they would. I’m sure the Wolverines are ready for all of this to go away.
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