Analyzing where things stand with ongoing NCAA investigation into Michigan sign-stealing scandal

During his live show Thursday morning on the On3 YouTube channel, Andy Staples addressed the current state of the Michigan sign stealing scandal and whether we can expect more developments on the situation.

“The NCAA is still investigating. I spoke to somebody the other day who is involved with this situation, and the NCAA is still trying to gather information,” Staples reported when asked by a listener what’s up with the whole ordeal. He says there’s really no end in sight but that may not be a bad thing for Michigan.

“This could take a while. I don’t know what they’re going to find. The person I talked to seems to think the NCAA might not find what it thinks it’s going to find.”

Staples went on to explain that the primary person to punish for this would be a head coach who has already left the college game entirely.

“With NCAA cases, they kind of want pelts on the wall. The biggest pelt is gone. Jim Harbaugh is with the Chargers now. So the head coach accountability piece of it — as long as they said something that broke the rules happened — they could have tagged that to Jim Harbaugh because he was the head coach. They still could, presumably, because he’s the head coach of the Chargers right now.”

But at that point, what is the NCAA really accomplishing? “I don’t know how incentivized they are,” Staples added of the NCAA’s motivation to punish Harbaugh at his new job. He also doesn’t think Michigan now has any reason to give in and work with the NCAA on this.

“If you’re Michigan, I don’t know that there’s any incentive to cooperate or deal with that. Just let it runs its course and I think they’re probably going to be fine. If they want to vacate something later, we all watched the games. But, they would have to find more.”

Obviously, there were some findings that led to a suspension during the season for Harbaugh. But could that be it in terms of punishment? Staples seems to think the NCAA could really be running into a dead end with this case.

“We’ll see that they find. They felt they had enough, and the Big Ten took what the NCAA had and decided to suspend Jim Harbaugh. But again, with no Harbaugh there, with other assistants who have gone on to the NFL, I don’t know what they’re going to find. I don’t know if they’ll have access to enough stuff to find it.”

For the NCAA, though, if they really want to pursue this issue and punish Michigan, they can.

“I don’t know how incentivized they are, but I will say this: that rule about advanced scouting and sending people to other stadiums to record signals, that rule is still in effect,” says Staples. “Unlike the transfer rules, unlike NIL rules, that rule has not been enjoined in court. So they can actually work on that case.”

Whether the NCAA ultimately decides to make anything of that case remains to be seen.