When there is money to be made, we can count on the NCAA to be toothless. And that’s how it’s shaping up to be in college football this season, as report after report keeps dropping regarding the depth of the Michigan Wolverines cheating scandal. Yet we saw this weekend that the mediots don’t care, boosting the Wolverines in their poll rankings—and the Vegas gamblers don’t seem to care, either, lowering the odds.

First, let’s take on the mediot issue: more votes were cast for Michigan as the No. 1 team after the news broke last week that the team has been cheating since at least 2021. So much for the media being any sort of bastion of integrity. This isn’t a court of law, so the Wolverines are not “innocent until proven guilty”; the NCAA demonstrated a much lower threshold than that in prior punishments of suspicious activity.

The media is taking the same stance as it has with cheating in MLB and NFL: ho hum. This is because the mediots know so many Americans are bereft of ethics and moral integrity when it comes to sports. Mediots also are struggling to maintain their relevance in a sports world that no longer seems to value journalistic integrity: reporting facts can get you fired, and reporting unpopular facts can put a journalist out of work.

Okay, so the mediots play into this, simply because Michigan has a big fan base that spends lots of money it doesn’t have, much like the SEC fans have been doing for almost three decades. As the fictional Che Guevara once sang, “And the money kept rolling in from every side …”—except the side of the decent and the honest and the losers of contests against the cheaters of the world, we suspect. This is a doomed gamble.

An Akufo League won’t work, in any sport. As a childhood friend of ours recently stated, “I could talk baseball all day, anytime. I just can’t watch the current state of pro ball.” We agree with that sentiment, more and more every day. There’s only so much to squeeze out of the minority that support the cheating victors, after all, and those who support the others? Will pocket their money and look elsewhere for entertainment.

As for Vegas, well … Michigan is now suddenly favored to win the CFP “title” over two-time defending champion Georgia. The bettors know there will be no penalties for the Wolverines until the money is made, banked, and deposited. The NCAA’s recent judgment of decades of cheating in Kansas Jayhawks basketball reveals this: when the organization slaps Michigan on the wrist, no one has to give their money back, really.

So why not go all in on the team that everyone knows is cheating to the tune of a 33-3 run over the last two-plus seasons, right after the school’s worst season (2020) in recent memory? That’s how you turn it around quickly in any sport: you cheat. Look at the New England Patriots, the Boston Red Sox, the San Francisco Giants, and the Houston Astros for blatant examples of this. When you can’t win honestly, you start cheating.

And there is no punishment for it, really, when the fans eat up the “newfound” success, the mediots’ mythmaking to explain it, and the glory of being able to thump their chests while screaming, “Champions!” That’s how pathetic and shallow a lot of American sports fans have become: they wouldn’t teach their kids to cheat in school (or maybe they would), but they accept grown men cheating in their paid professions. Unreal.

Interesting psychology, for sure. Its origins? The Cold War with the Soviet Union, when the West realized how much the East was cheating to win in the Olympics and other international competitions—and American sports fans were willing to look the other way to “show those Commies that we are better than they are!” Somewhere, Stalin must be laughing his head off at the pervasive nature of his legacy in sports.