The NCAA announced some initial penalties for Michigan football yesterday, reminding us that here on MNC Wednesday, we never tolerated cheaters. From the start of our reviews on the mythical national championship in college football, we made this clear—disqualifying multiple “winners” of the national “title” when we started our column series on that issue back in March 2020. Here is the NCAA statement:

“The agreed-upon violations involve impermissible in-person recruiting contacts during a COVID-19 dead period, impermissible tryouts, and the program exceeding the number of allowed countable coaches when noncoaching staff members engaged in on- and off-field coaching activities (including providing technical and tactical skills instruction to student-athletes).  The negotiated resolution also involved the school’s agreement that the underlying violations demonstrated a head coach responsibility violation and the former football head coach failed to meet his responsibility to cooperate with the investigation. The school also agreed that it failed to deter and detect the impermissible recruiting contacts and did not ensure that the football program adhered to rules for noncoaching staff members.

The committee will not discuss further details in the case to protect the integrity of the ongoing process, as the committee’s final decision — including potential violations and penalties for the former coach — is pending.

The agreed-upon penalties in this case include three years of probation for the school, a fine and recruiting restrictions in alignment with the Level I-Mitigated classification for the school. The participating individuals also agreed to one-year show-cause orders consistent with the Level II-Standard and Level II-Mitigated classifications of their respective violations.”

The Covid dead period occurred around the 2020 season when Michigan posted a 2-4 record and clearly was a program in decline. The illegal recruiting issues clearly impacted players who would be a part of the Wolverines’ 2021, 2022, and 2023 teams that went a combined 40-3, won 3 B1G titles, and won the CFP “title” last season. All those players should be ruled ineligible, basically, thus mandating 40 vacated wins.

[Editor’s Note: This ruling is entirely separate from the still-under-investigation cheating scandal.]

We want to review the cases from the past where we DQ’d teams from their Associated Press MNCs, for consistency. Auburn (1957), Oklahoma (1974), Clemson (1981), Auburn (2010), and Michigan (2023) all were ineligible for our MNC analysis due to their respective cheating, probation issues, etc. We would have disqualified Michigan in 1997, too, for violations revealed later but never acted upon by the NCAA.

However, those Wolverines weren’t going to win our sabermetric analysis, anyway, so we don’t need to include them. Based on subsequent legal action by USC (2004) which the NCAA lost, we wouldn’t disqualify those Trojans as the NCAA acted without sufficient evidence and only out of punitive spite as demonstrated in U.S. court appeals, etc. So, to review, here are the issues with the schools listed above, going back in time:

  • Auburn 1957: on probation during the season for paying players
  • Oklahoma 1974: on probation during the season for illegal recruiting
  • Clemson 1981: later violations dating from 1977 to 1982 for illegal recruiting and paying players
  • Auburn 2010: use of player who was illegally recruited and should have been ruled ineligible

The 2023 Michigan Wolverines can celebrate if they want to (now), but history and posterity will know facts. The school also joins Auburn as two-time cheaters that should never be acknowledged for their claims to the mythical national championship in those aforementioned seasons when clearly the teams were cheating.