Pete Thamel predicts a short suspension, at most, for Sherrone Moore

Michigan football head coach Sherrone Moore is reportedly facing a Level II NCAA violation for allegedly deleting a thread of text messages amidst the investigation into Connor Stalions’ impermissible scouting. But whatever punishment Moore might face, it’s not apparently likely to be very steep.

That is, at least, how ESPN’s Pete Thamel sees things as he sifts through the tea leaves in the wake of the draft Notice of Allegations being reported on. Facing just a Level II violation, Thamel doesn’t expect the punishment for Moore himself to be much more than a short suspension, if even that.

“As a Level II, I would think ultimately that gets distilled to a short suspension of some kind,” Thamel said on the ESPN College GameDay podcast. “It could be no suspension, it could be a short suspension. I don’t think we’re looking at anything — it’s hard. If you look at what happened in the college basketball scandal, it’s hard to have a significant — you’ve really got to break some rules to do that.”

Specifically, Moore is alleged to have deleted a thread of 52 text messages when news broke that Michigan was under investigation for the impermissible scouting. Those texts were later retrieved and Moore was slapped with the Level II for the non-cooperation.

If there had actually been something of import discovered in the texts, Thamel suspects it would be well known by now. And the absence of a smoking gun with respect to Moore leads him to believe whatever punishment to be handed down won’t be overly stiff.

“He obviously allegedly deleted a thread of 52 text messages,” Thamel said. “It does later say he turned them over. If the text messages had like, ‘Hey Connor, what’s Ohio State’s run sign?’ or whatever, it would probably be noted in here and it’s not. So, I think that he’s in here for the act of failing to cooperate, basically. And then eventually he did and you can read through the lines here and say, seemingly, there was no giant smoking gun or they would’ve noted the smoking gun. And there would’ve been a Level I.”

This also stands in contrast with four former Michigan coaches, including Jim Harbaugh, who are no longer on staff in Ann Arbor and mostly coaching in Los Angeles with the Chargers organization now. That group all got hit with Level I violations.

But, given that Harbaugh and Co. are likely to be coaching in the NFL for the foreseeable future, it seems unlikely the NCAA punishments can hold much sway over them.

There’s also the reality that, barring a negotiated settlement between Michigan and the NCAA, this case isn’t likely to result in punishment’s being handed down until after the 2024 season. That means whatever suspension Moore might get will more than likely be at the beginning of the 2025 season.

And given that time and staff changes have created some — and will add more — distance between when the violations occurred and when punishments are handed down, Thamel is curious how hard Michigan plans to fight back.

“Look, it’s a place — this is damaging to Michigan, reputationally,” Thamel said. “I don’t think you can argue that. When you have your school with a Level I, your former head coach with a Level I and the language in here, it’s like, ‘reckless indifference to NCAA rules.’ That was for Stalions. But reputationally, Michigan can either just lay down and work with them and probably get to an end quicker, or they can push back on things. Really the only thing I can see them pushing back on is Sherrone Moore. Because they don’t really care about the other stuff. Like you don’t care about Jim Harbaugh getting a three-year show cause or a five-year show cause or whatever it may be. So that is really the one thing that’s in the crosshairs. And obviously if they hinted at some kind of postseason ban, they would push back with a lot of vigor on that.”