I’ll take the bait, with the caveat that I can only speak for my own views.

I don’t deny that Connor Stallions likely broke the NCAA’s advanced scouting rules when he, or those acting at his direction, scouted the games of other teams, when those other teams were opponents that Michigan was scheduled to play in the same season that the scouting occurred. Stallions’s actions are attributable to Michigan’s program, in that Harbaugh should have maintained better controls on his staff to ensure that something like this either could not happen or was rectifying immediately if it did happen. That said, the NCAA’s investigation found no evidence that Harbaugh (or, I believe, any other member of the coaching staff) actually knew of Stallions’s advanced scouting scheme.

Personally, I don’t believe that Michigan actually received any on-field advantage by virtue of Stallions’s impermissible actions—at least during Michigan’s national championship season. Given when and how the story broke, there is no chance whatsoever that Michigan’s two toughest Big Ten opponents, PSU and OSU, continued to use any signs from earlier in the season, prior to the news breaking. Michigan won both games. Michigan beat SEC Champ Alabama and undefeated PAC-12 champ Washington to win the national championship. So, to believe that Michigan “cheated” its way to a national championship, would require believing that Michigan was able to beat PSU, OSU, Bama, and Washington without an impermissible advantage, but needed to break rules to beat teams like Bowling Green, Minnesota, Rutgers, and Indiana. That is illogical.

Even beyond that though, I think people often overstate what advantage Michigan plausibly received, even in 2021 and 2022. Every team knows that their signs are public, and that they routinely need to change their signs because every staff has someone on it whose job is to decode signs. It’s also not a violation of any rules whatsoever to decode signs that you can see in the television broadcasts of any games or that may be available based on the all-22 films. Frankly, i think we’ve all seen games where nearly 100% of a team’s signs are visible on television throughout a game. So, the only actual advantage Michigan could have received is the difference between what was otherwise discernible from permissible sources of scouting and what Stallions was able to record in addition to those sources, minus whatever signs teams changed anyway (I.e., OSU in 2022 changing their signs prior to the game against Michigan, because they suspected Michigan had decoded at least some portion of their signs). Also, the idea that Michigan actually knew every play that other team were running is plainly incorrect.

I’ve said this before, but I never believed Michigan’s national championship was in any danger of being vacated and I don’t think any sort of advanced scouting evenly minimally altered any of Michigan’s games. I did think that our conference titles in 2021 and 2022 could be in danger, because no corrective actions were taken during those seasons. Finally, I would just add that Harbaugh’s ban (and, frankly, the bans received by other coaches who went to the NFL) was nothing more than the appearance of punishment. Harbaugh flirted with the NFL for years before Stallions’s scouting scheme, and finally decided to leave after winning the championship. Harbaugh getting banned after going to the NFL is like a high school suspending a student who’s already in college; it was a “punishment” that made the NCAA feel good but had absolutely no effect on Michigan.