{"id":88711,"date":"2025-12-19T00:50:49","date_gmt":"2025-12-19T00:50:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/88711\/"},"modified":"2025-12-19T00:50:49","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T00:50:49","slug":"michigan-is-dirtiest-program-in-college-football","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/88711\/","title":{"rendered":"Michigan is dirtiest program in college football"},"content":{"rendered":"

Michigan\u2019s interim coach Biff Poggi stood up<\/a> at bowl news conference in Orlando Monday and said his players feel \u201cbetrayed.\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019s right. They should.<\/p>\n

But let\u2019s be clear about who betrayed them \u2014 because it wasn\u2019t just disgraced former coach Sherrone Moore<\/a>, and it sure as hell wasn\u2019t just last week. The betrayal at Michigan has been institutional, systemic and years in the making.\u00a0What those players are feeling now is simply the bill coming due for a university that decided winning mattered more than integrity, transparency or basic accountability.<\/p>\n

Michigan didn\u2019t just stumble into this mess.<\/p>\n

Michigan engineered this mess.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt has been a tumultuous time,\u201d said Poggi, who is preparing his scandal-scarred team for a game against Texas in the upcoming Cheez-It Citrus Bowl. \u201cA lot of \u2026 first disbelief, then anger, then really, what we\u2019re in right now is the kids, quite frankly, feel very betrayed, and we\u2019re trying to work through that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Poggi spoke Monday about listening, about empathy, about putting arms around shoulders after Moore was fired and arrested following allegations of an inappropriate relationship with a staff member that escalated into criminal charges. Poggi\u2019s tone was humane and appropriate. He\u2019s trying to clean up emotional wreckage he didn\u2019t create.<\/p>\n

But his most telling word was \u201cbetrayed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Because if you\u2019re a Michigan player, you weren\u2019t just betrayed by a head coach\u2019s personal implosion. You were betrayed by a university that put that coach in charge in the first place \u2014 knowing exactly who he was and what he represented.<\/p>\n

Why was Sherrone Moore even the head coach of Michigan football?<\/p>\n

That question should be shouted from the roof of the Big House.<\/p>\n

Moore wasn\u2019t some unsuspecting outsider. He was a central figure in the Connor Stalions sign-stealing scandal that rocked college football and permanently stained Michigan\u2019s so-called national championship two years ago. He was sanctioned. He was suspended. He literally tried to delete text messages tied to the cheating operation. And Michigan still elevated him to head coach.<\/p>\n

Not despite the scandal \u2014 after it.<\/p>\n

That decision alone tells you everything you need to know about Michigan\u2019s priorities.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s rewind.<\/p>\n

Two years ago, Michigan was caught running a sophisticated, illegal sign-stealing operation that went far beyond \u201ceveryone does it.\u201d This wasn\u2019t a rogue intern with binoculars. This was an organized system involving travel, filming and data collection that violated NCAA rules and competitive ethics.<\/p>\n

And what did Michigan do?<\/p>\n

It circled the wagons.<\/p>\n

President Santa Ono \u2014 now conveniently gone \u2014 stood shoulder to shoulder with former head coach Jim Harbaugh, calling him \u201ca man of honor\u201d while the evidence piled up. The administration threatened legal action against its own conference. The goal wasn\u2019t truth. It wasn\u2019t reform. It was survival. Keep the machine running. Get to the playoff. Win the title.<\/p>\n

Mission accomplished.<\/p>\n

Then Harbaugh bolted to the NFL, leaving Michigan holding the bag \u2014 and instead of hitting the reset button, the university doubled down. It promoted Moore, a sanctioned coach tied directly to the scandal, because continuity mattered more than credibility.<\/p>\n

And now we\u2019re supposed to act shocked that the same administration that minimized cheating allegations also waved off reports earlier this season of Moore\u2019s alleged inappropriate relationship? Michigan claimed it couldn\u2019t verify whether the affair was real.<\/p>\n

Does anybody actually believe that?<\/p>\n

Or was Michigan, once again, in the middle of a season and unwilling to look too closely at anything that might derail it?<\/p>\n

Funny how clarity usually arrives after the last whistle.<\/p>\n

Now Michigan has announced \u2014 with a straight face \u2014 that it\u2019s launching an investigation into its athletic department. That\u2019s not accountability. That\u2019s damage control.<\/p>\n

If the university truly wants answers, it shouldn\u2019t investigate the athletic department. It should investigate itself. Its leadership. Its culture. Its repeated willingness to subordinate ethics to football success.<\/p>\n

Because this isn\u2019t just about Sherrone Moore.<\/p>\n

This is about a program that racked up NCAA violations, suspensions, probation and fines north of $30 million.<\/p>\n

This is about a university that responded to a blatant cheating scandal not with reform, but with rationalization.<\/p>\n

Of course, Michigan fans don\u2019t like hearing this. They\u2019ll say everyone cheats. They\u2019ll say it\u2019s a witch hunt. They\u2019ll say the banners still hang.<\/p>\n

But here\u2019s the uncomfortable truth: no major program in college football has combined competitive success and moral failure quite like Michigan over the past few years.<\/p>\n

Other schools get caught and clean house.<\/p>\n

Michigan gets caught and closes ranks.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why the national championship feels tainted. Not because Michigan didn\u2019t have good players \u2014 it did. Not because Michigan didn\u2019t win a bunch of games \u2014 it did that, too. But because the institution made a conscious decision that how it won didn\u2019t matter.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why Poggi says the players feel betrayed. Because they were told to trust the program. To believe in \u201cThe Michigan Way.\u201d To represent something bigger than themselves.<\/p>\n

And it turns out that something bigger than themselves was a lie.<\/p>\n

They were sold stability and handed chaos. Sold integrity and handed hypocrisy.<\/p>\n

Michigan\u2019s reputation as one of the nation\u2019s most respected academic institutions didn\u2019t deserve this. Its players didn\u2019t deserve this. And college football fans didn\u2019t deserve yet another lesson in how power tries to protect itself.<\/p>\n

The cause of Michigan\u2019s problems isn\u2019t complicated. It isn\u2019t bad luck. It isn\u2019t one rogue coach or one bad decision.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a philosophy.<\/p>\n

And, quite simply, that philosophy is:\u00a0 \u201cWin at all costs.\u201d<\/p>\n

When that\u2019s the standard, scandals aren\u2019t surprises \u2014 they\u2019re inevitabilities.<\/p>\n

Email me at mbianchi@orlandosentinel.com. Hit me up on social media @BianchiWrites and listen to my new radio show \u201cGame On\u201d every weekday from 3 to 6 p.m. on FM 96.9, AM 740 and 969TheGame.com\/listen<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Michigan\u2019s interim coach Biff Poggi stood up at bowl news conference in Orlando Monday and said his players…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":88712,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[13797,42560,16465,7642,139,141,140,48088],"class_list":["post-88711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-cheating","tag-cheez-it-citrus-bowl","tag-jim-harbaugh","tag-michigan","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-news","tag-sherrone-moore"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88711","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88711"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88711\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}