There was no serious consideration for the NCAA to vacate any wins from Michigan’s 2023 national title season.
The NCAA said Friday that Michigan didn’t lose any wins as part of its punishment for its advance scouting scheme because the saga didn’t involve any ineligible athletes and because the NCAA had immediately alerted the Big Ten about what Michigan was doing.
Michigan was fined tens of millions of dollars, former coach Jim Harbaugh was given a 10-year show-cause penalty and Connor Stalions got an eight-year show-cause penalty from the NCAA on Friday. The NCAA highlighted the lengths that Stalions went to steal teams’ signs via in-person scouting and that “aspects of the record suggest that there may have been broader acceptance of the scheme throughout the program. At minimum, there was a willful intent not to learn more about Stalions’ methods.”
Advertisement
However, the NCAA did not take the step of vacating any wins or even giving Michigan a postseason ban. The NCAA even said in the infractions report that a postseason ban was “required” in Michigan’s case and that a multi-year ban would be appropriate. However, the NCAA said that “a postseason ban would unfairly penalize student-athletes for the actions of coaches and staff who are no longer associated with the Michigan football program” and “thus, a more appropriate penalty is an offsetting financial penalty.”
After the NCAA notified the Big Ten of Stalions’ scouting in October of 2023, the Big Ten suspended Harbaugh for the final three games of the season less than a month later. Michigan, which went 15-0 on the way to the national title, won all three of those games and even beat Penn State and Ohio State without Harbaugh on the sidelines.
There once was a precedent, however, for the NCAA to vacate wins for incidents that do not involve player eligibility. The NCAA forced Penn State to vacate all wins from 1998 through 2011 as part of its punishment for the Jerry Sandusky sex abuse scandal and the Nittany Lions faced a postseason ban. But in 2015, as part of a settlement with Pennsylvania state officials, the NCAA restored Penn State’s vacated wins.
The most recent team to have wins vacated is Arizona State. The Sun Devils had two wins vacated from the 2022 season under coach Herm Edwards and eight in 2021. Kentucky had nine regular-season wins and a bowl game vacated in 2021.
