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Heather Dinich, ESPN Senior Writer
As No. 1 Michigan prepares to face No. 2 Washington on Monday in the College Football Playoff National Championship Presented by AT&T, Wolverines players pushed back on allegations of their involvement in the highly publicized sign-stealing scandal, saying any possible NCAA penalties, including vacating wins, wouldn’t detract from their accomplishments this season.
“We did things the right way as players,” Wolverines quarterback J.J. McCarthy said during a teleconference Wednesday. “… It would be very unfortunate [to] not get recognized for all the hard work that we put in and everything we accomplished over this last year.
“But at the end of the day, you know it’s not going to change the amount of accomplishment and the amount of pride for being on this football team and just everything that we accomplished because we know what we put in. We know the work that we put in, and we know that we did things the right way as players. Whatever happened, with all the outside controversies, it’s out of our control, and whatever the NCAA wants to do is out of our control, but we’re going to appreciate the things we did control and accomplish.”
Michigan will take the sport’s greatest stage on Monday with two separate NCAA investigations still looming — one into the sign-stealing scandal that allegedly spanned multiple seasons, and another into alleged recruiting violations during the COVID-19 season. It’s possible the program will face NCAA sanctions that could include vacating wins.
While a majority of college football teams, if not all, try to steal signs during games from opposing sidelines and from game film they study, the NCAA prohibits off-campus sign stealing. The Big Ten this season suspended coach Jim Harbaugh for the final three games of the regular season for an off-campus sign-stealing operation led by former staff member Connor Stalions, who resigned Nov. 3.
Harbaugh, who also served a university-imposed three-game suspension at the beginning of the season for the alleged recruiting violations, said any talk of NCAA sanctions at this point is purely “living in the world of rumorville or speculation.”
“We don’t have any room to be doing that at this point,” Harbaugh said. “Our time’s spent elsewhere.”
Michigan sophomore defensive lineman Mason Graham said he felt most of the allegations of cheating were aimed against the defense, but said their only edge is watching film to study tendencies.
“I feel like we just have a high football IQ here at Michigan,” Graham said. “And you know, we go over specific situations multiple times a week, just kind of just learning more about the game every day, every meeting, just kind of just building the IQ and being smarter football players all around so we pick up on things faster. Even if it’s in-game adjustments stuff, I think little stuff like that film study really helped us this year.”
McCarthy on Wednesday also alleged rival Ohio State was legally stealing their signs in 2019 or 2020 and the Wolverines “had to adapt.”
“They were doing it the legal way,” McCarthy said of the Buckeyes. “We had to get up to the level they were at and make it an even playing field. It sucks because we do work our butts off. We do watch so much film and look for the little tendencies and spend like 10, 15 minutes on one clip alone just looking at all the little details of the posture of the linebackers or the D-end … little stuff like that where it’s like, OK, you can say it’s all sign stealing, but you know, there’s a lot more that goes into play … a lot of work that gets masked just because of the outside perception of what sign stealing is all about.”
Graham said it was all part of the adversity the team overcame this season, and that’s not something the NCAA can take away.
“We’ve kind of been working all the way up until this moment,” Graham said. “Things happen along the way that don’t fall into place. We’ve overcome a lot of adversity this season. I felt like it’s brought us closer together.”