Michigan’s cheating, Northwestern’s hazing, and the business of college football: Telander

CHICAGO - Herewith, a snapshot of two football coaches--and, by extension, a look at the wildly-popular, high-pressure, chaotic and financially gigantic world of college football itself. (And dare we say, corrupt world?)

In 2023, Jim Harbaugh, then the head coach at Michigan, led his Wolverines to a 15-0 record and the College Football Playoff National Championship, beating Washington, 34-13, in the title game on Jan. 8, 2024. En route, Michigan destroyed foes so thoroughly that it seemed ridiculous. In fact, it was.

The mid-season, four-game stretch against Nebraska, Minnesota, Indiana and Michigan State was nearly insane, with Michigan winning by a combined score of 198-24. But here’s the thing: Michigan did indeed have great talent. But it was also cheating.

Head coach Jim Harbaugh of the Michigan Wolverines celebrates after defeating the Washington Huskies during the 2024 CFP National Championship game at NRG Stadium on January 08, 2024 in Houston, Texas. (Stacy Revere/Getty Images / Getty Images)

In what has been described as an elaborate sign-stealing scheme concocted by former staffer Connor Stalions, the Wolverines knew what some opponents’ plays were before they happened. Okay, let’s amend that. Stalions was gone by the tail end of the 2023 season, and it’s possible Michigan’s wins that season—particularly the huge one over Ohio State—were legit. Maybe.

But cheaters cheat. A coach does it a little; he’ll do it again. Once the NCAA found out about the earlier deception, the penalty was soon to come, being finalized Aug. 15. Here’s where it gets interesting.

Michigan got basically nothing substantial as penance, only an estimated $30 million-or-so fine (chump change for boosters). No lost games. No post-season bans. No scholarship reductions. No banners dropped from the ceiling. No surrendering of the golden National Championship Trophy. Harbaugh himself swiftly skated off to the NFL, where he now coaches the Chargers, with no handicap, no fine, no penalty for what he oversaw at Michigan.

He did get a 10-year show-cause order, meaning he can’t come back to the NCAA without sitting out a season. So he’ll stay in the pros, naturally. The devious Stalions and his posse, who dubbed themselves "the KGB," also destroyed evidence (Stalions tossed his dirty cell phone into a pond), and everybody at Michigan stonewalled the NCAA investigators. Harbaugh said he knew nothing about anything. Naturally.

But love that trophy! Michigan pride!

Of course, such pride depends on whether you have moral fiber in your spinal column. An amusing part to this whole thing is that Urban Meyer, the coach who oversaw a crime-laden Florida program (31 arrests during his tenure) and was swiftly canned by the Jaguars when he took his act to the NFL in 2021, is outraged that Harbaugh didn’t get a suspension from the NFL.

"There’s an elephant in the room here that no one’s talking about," Meyer spewed recently on his "The Triple Option" podcast. It's possible he’s only angry because he once coached Ohio State. Buckeyes, I’m sure you know, are programmed to detest Wolverines.

Head coach Pat Fitzgerald of the Northwestern Wildcats watches the team warm up before the game against the Nebraska Cornhuskers at Memorial Stadium on October 2, 2021 in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Then there’s Fitzgerald, the former long-tenured head coach at Northwestern. Fired in the sloppiest of fashions in the summer of 2023 by school president Michael Schill because of the coach’s alleged culpability for letting a hazing scandal rage unchecked, Fitzgerald got his payback last Thursday. He concluded his lawsuit against Northwestern with an undisclosed settlement from the school. We may not know the exact sum, but consider this: Fitzgerald had $68 million remaining on his contract. His suit was for $130 million.

I’ll go out on a limb and say he got deep eight figures. And I’m sure he’ll be back coaching again. Northwestern said in a statement that it "did not establish that any player reported hazing to Coach Fitzgerald or that Coach Fitzgerald condoned or directed any hazing." It seems hard to believe that the man running the show knew nothing about what was essentially a racial issue festering in the locker room, but we’ll take NU’s word for it.

When Fitzgerald hired attorney Dan Webb, co-executive chairman of the mighty Winston & Strawn law firm, to be his counsel, you knew this was a gloves-off death match. Webb, you might recall, represented Bill Gates and Microsoft in complaint brought by the United States, General Electric in a price-fixing case, and successfully prosecuted a retired general in the Iran-Contra affair. He was also appointed as the special prosecutor in the Jussie Smollett fake hate crime mess.

The overarching thing here is that because of its stupidity and arrogance and endless refusal to call elite college football what it is—a huge business with young pros, not "student-athletes"—it will continue staggering about, watching money and ethics fly out the window.

Almost 40 years ago, I wrote a book called "The Hundred Yard Lie: The Corruption of College Football and What We Can Do to Stop It." It was re-printed with updates in 2020 as, "The College Football Problem," but the message was the same. In the book I made an example of a flurry of ethical corruption that took place at Michigan back when I was a writer for Sports Illustrated.

Legendary Wolverine football coach Bo Schembechler rose to the affront, declaring, "Telander's a loser. He’s been a loser all his life."

Could be. Might be, Coach.

But I guarantee I got a spine.

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The Source: This article was written by Rick Telander, a contributing sports columnist for FOX 32 Chicago.

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